Northstarling is an impressionistic, wordless study, shot in black and white on grainy 16mm film, of the grinding poverty of a young mother, trying to support herself with sex work, in the bleak Winnipeg winter. Co-directed by Daniel Gerson and Trevor Mowchun, the story is written and performed by Carrie Parenteau, an Ojibwe actress.
The film opens with Parenteau staring at an apple, which she can’t afford to buy, in a convenience store. Her days are an endless round of hunger, loneliness, and waiting in the snow, in a thin parka, to pick up johns. She takes a succession of men downstairs into a squalid basement, work which seems as dehumanizing as it is boring. She spends a few precious moments with her young son, and chats with other women working the streets. The filmmakers use superimpositions and jump cuts to suggest the emotional and mental stress of her bare bones, subsistence life. We see her staring at a local mural celebrating indigenous culture, which only seems to underscore how far it is possible for a people to fall, when their homeland is invaded, conquered, and their culture is destroyed. If the title suggests a little bird who has gotten lost in her migratory pathway, Gerson, Mowchun and Parenteau have created an elegiac and infinitely sad portrait of a bleak world, where moments of hope and connection are few and far between.
My articles on experimental film are freely available to all, but are supported by monthly and annual donations from readers. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support my work. Thank you.