KONELINE: Our Land Beautiful

Palm Spring International Film Festival. Director Nettie Wild recently won the Best Canadian Documentary Award for "Koneline" at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. Totted as a spectacular visual experience covering the northwestern British Columbia landscape, the cinematography (Van Royko) is pretty until it becomes repetitive and mundane. Luckily, various Tahitian First Nation personalities are introduced into the film, and their lives and struggle to hold on to their beliefs while the rest of the world slowly penetrates their once peaceful land help move the film along. There is a political view point trying to be told here, but it just can't make it to the forefront - which is the point of the film according to Nettie. Highlights include the saving and transporting of the struggling salmon, and the filming of the placing of a transmission tower carried by a large helicopter. "Koneline" could have have lived up to it's cinematography hype had it possibly been in the hands of a director not so afraid to make a stand and/or had it focused in more a few of the stories characters. #psiff2017