MOOSEJAWTODAY.COM — Guitar Lessons is a new movie from filmmaker Aaron James starring Corb Lund, Kaden Noskiye, and Conway Kootenay. MooseJawToday.com spoke with James about filming in a small town in Alberta, representing the Cree language, and exporting Prairie culture to the world.
Guitar Lessons is about a 15-year-old Métis boy — played by Kaden Noskiye — who inherits a guitar from a father he never knew. He seeks out a prickly local oilfield contractor — played by Corb Lund — rumoured to have a rock-star past, and asks him for lessons.
A special screening of the film shows at the Moose Jaw Cultural Centre at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 7. Tickets are $10 at the door.
“It’s a wonderful film, I love it,” said James.
James has been working in the US for most of the last 15 years. The pandemic forced him to stay in Canada for a while. He had some time, he said, but no project to spend it on — until an Alberta town contacted him with an idea.
“A community in northern Alberta, High Level, Alberta, they were fans of my first film, Hank Williams First Nation. And they got it in their head, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to make a movie up here? We hear Aaron’s kicking around in Calgary without much to do, why don’t we invite him to make a movie?’
“So, they did, and they raised some money and asked me if I had a story.”
The story was written from an experience James had while working as a substitute teacher in Wabasca, Alberta. Wabasca is a small Cree community that became short of teachers early in the pandemic. A friend remembered that James had an education degree and invited him to teach for a couple of months.
A mischievous student found out James was a musician and started carrying a guitar and asking him for lessons.
“So I wrote a little story about this random kid asking for guitar lessons, and that’s what turned into the movie,” James laughed.
High Level turned out to be a great community to shoot a film. The whole town pitched in — more than half of the cast and crew were enthusiastic amateurs from the community, making it a Prairie movie by Prairie people.
“It was just fun,” James said. “We had about four crew people who had worked on film before, and maybe four professional actors. Everybody else, all the cast and crew, are local folks who just wanted to come and intern and be part of the movie.
“You know, we had a pharmacist holding the boom mic and truckers and ranchers filling in here and there. Some communities have good, active theatre groups that put on ambitious plays like Hamlet — well, we had an ambitious community that came together to make a film.”
James said the community was thrilled to have them and lined up to provide whatever they needed.
“‘You need an old car? A barn? You need a snowmobile? You need some cute kids, or an ugly one-eyed dog? We’ll have it there in the morning,’” James recounted. “People just wanted to come and participate.”
Cree language and culture have an important place in the film, brought out especially by Cree comedian and actor Conway Kootenay. Kootenay plays the outrageous Ernie.
“I grew up among Cree, and I’ve lived with them and worked with them all my life,” James said. He is a self-described farm boy from Peace River, Alberta. “I love the language and the culture and the people, and I feel at home there. So, it’s just the most natural thing for me.
“Many of us who live in northern Alberta, even if we’re not Cree, it’s still part of the culture.”
James said that representing that northern prairie culture with its combination of Indigenous and settler influences is an important part of the experience he’d like audiences to have with his films.
He described being in High Prairie, Alberta 15 years ago for a showing of Hank Williams First Nation and having a Cree woman express her gratitude for representing her people.
“A kookum, that’s the Cree word for grandmother, came up to me and lifted me right up off the ground in a big old bear hug,” James remembered. “And she said, ‘I’m 78 years old, and that’s the first time in my life I’ve seen my language, my people, my land up on the big screen.’
“And she thanked me for that, and that’s the experience people are having with Guitar Lessons. I mean, it’s a good film, but what makes it special beyond that is just that it’s us. We recognize ourselves and our kids and our land and our language up on the screen.”
