KONELINE: Our Land Beautiful (2016)

KONELINE: our land beautiful is a sensual, cinematic celebration of northwestern British Columbia, and all the dreamers who move across it. Some hunt on the land. Some mine it. They all love it. Set deep in the traditional territory of the Tahltan First Nation, KONELINE captures beauty and complexity as one of Canada's vast wildernesses undergoes irrevocable change. An art film with politics, drama, and humour, KONELINE: our land beautiful explores different ways of seeing-and being. A guide outfitter swims her horses across the vast Stikine River. The world's biggest chopper flies 16,000-pound transmission towers over mountaintops. KONELINE's characters delight while smashing stereotypes: white hunters carry bows and arrows; members of the Tahltan First Nation hunt out of a pickup with high-powered rifles. There are diamond drillers-both Native and white-and elders who blockade them. There's a Tahltan son struggling to preserve a dying language, and a white guy who sings "North to Alaska " as his stuffed moose gazes on. KONELINE: our land beautiful does not lecture; it surprises with cinematic action and visual poetry. It is a bold experimental film from some of Canada's leading documentary artists.