Director and filmmaker Trevor Mack is back in the Cariboo this week hosting a film workshop at Tl’etinqox (Anaham) and working on several new projects.
His two day workshop Jan. 17 and 18 focuses on directing, acting, camera operating, and writing.
The students taking the workshop are ages 29 and younger and the goal is to have their film premiered at the Cariboo Chilcotin Film Festival in March.
Mack is also working on a new film Out of the Barren but clarifies that this film will not be ready for the Williams Lake Film Festival taking place at the Gibraltar Room in March.
He says the film that he will be premiering at the festival is one that he made while he was in New Zealand last year called Sech'el.
His short film Out of the Barren is currently in development and he is also working on a script for a feature film version of this project.
Mack is both writing and directing Out of the Barren, which is about an Indigenous teenager going through life trying to make hard decisions in ever-blurred situations.
“It’s an incredibly personal story for me and I think it is a contemporary, extremely relevant story that paints a very real picture of what’s happening in North America today,” Mack says.
“It’s about a Indigenous teenager in Canada, but it’s a universal story that I think has no better opportunity than to be told right now.”
Forced to choose between his new found love and his recently discovered cultural background, he says the Indigenous teenager’s life is ruptured when an open-pit mine is proposed near his hometown.
Mack says he is also working on a new documentary which is still in the developmental stages.