Skin for Skin
In 1823, the Governor of the largest fur-trading company in the world travels across his Dominion, extracting ever-greater riches from the winter bounty of animal furs. In his brutal world of profit and loss, animals are slaughtered to the brink of extinction until the balance of power shifts, and the forces of nature exact their own terrible price.
Interview with Writer/Director Kevin D.A Kurytnik and Writer/Director/Producer Carol Beecher
Watch Skin for Skin here:
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
CAROL: Part of it was wanting to work with the National Film Board of Canada and to create a film that would reflect their mandate of telling Canadian stories to Canadians and to the world. We have a great deal of respect for the NFB and have always held the work that their filmmakers do in the very highest regard, especially the animators.
KEVIN: We have always been interested in myth. Our last elaborate animation project, Mr. Reaper's Really Bad Morning, was about the personification of Death having, as the title notes, a really crap day. In proposing the Skin for Skin project to the NFB, we wanted to attempt to make a Canadian myth based on our history. Canada, like many countries created by settlers, sees the land and the animals as nothing but economic resources. We all find ourselves today on the precipice of human extinction with climate change, clean-water shortages and a host of other pressing issues. Part of the purpose of mythology is to create ways of living through story. We thought that was a good use of our creative time.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
KEVIN: It is of the moment. It is about corporate arrogance and greed with lots of strong visuals and intense moments. At a couple of film festivals, I have had audience members walk up to me a few days later asking me why the film is still in their thoughts. For a lot of people who see the film it has emotional value. Some people are so moved by it that they cry. We tried to make a film that works on the subconscious as myth does, and for some people it certainly seems to have succeeded.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
CAROL: I think, personally, I just wanted to make an unapologetically Canadian film. This is how our country was founded, it wasn’t pretty or romantic, and that attitude that the land is there to be exploited and pillaged for profit is still here, and that needs to change. Even though we specifically meant to make a Canadian film, we were very cognizant of creating something of a Canadian myth. When dealing with that we dug deep into myth and symbolism from all over the world and found a surprising amount of similarities. For example, Raven is a very important trickster figure in Celtic and Norse myth, as well as in the First Nations’ spirituality and traditions.
KEVIN: Our film is a journey, which is a universal theme in Story. The specifics in our story are what make it unique. We start with a natural journey that turns into a supernatural journey across Canada. The landscapes and events are carefully defined by locations where they take place. For example, the sequence where the canoe is beached on a sea of bison skulls represents the area that became the province of Saskatchewan, where millions of bison roamed and were a food source for the First Nations peoples until the settlers slaughtered the bison to near-extinction.
The heads are the sacred part of the animal, so the plain of skulls is the dreamscape where the Governor undergoes his trial, where he has to change his way of thinking or be destroyed. As another example, the next sequence, which takes place in the sea of burning tar, is meant to represent Alberta, which is the heart of the oil and gas industry in Canada.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
KEVIN: Our film was originally called True North, which comes from our national anthem; there is a line that ends with “...true north strong and free.” In our research, we discovered that the motto for the Hudson’s Bay Company, which is part of their logo, in Latin reads Pro Pelle Cutem, which translates to “skin for skin.” The Hudson’s Bay Company was the first corporation. It was chartered by the King of England on May 2, 1670. The HBC took the Latin quote directly from the Bible, from the Book of Job: “Then Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life.’” The first corporation in the world’s motto is from Satan!
The Governor, a businessman who turns into a shaman, a wounded healer, was not our original intent. That came from all our research into dreams, shamanism and myth.
Our development was always on two parallel tracks: the supernatural myth elements and the history of the fur trade. We always knew we were going to do a darker, more intense version of the fur trade; all our research pointed to the fact that the working conditions were bad, and that those employed in it did dangerous work. From the beginning, as much profit as possible was the primary agenda. We even discovered that the voyageurs were not taught how to swim so they would take fewer chances when going over great bodies of water. If you fell in, you often drowned!
CAROL: We had a really great team, they were very involved in the story and visual development. We had our vision, they really got behind that and helped to make that even better. It wouldn’t be the film it is without their creativity, talent and input.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
CAROL: It’s been very positive, people are getting the spiritual and environmental message, which is very heartening. I’m also really happy about how moved people are, that they are responding to our characters in an emotional way, and that is very satisfying. As an animator, you also have to understand acting and how to get across emotions, especially considering we’ve made, in essence, a silent movie: there is no dialogue to convey emotion, just the acting and the sound design. We had a great team and they worked really hard on that.
KEVIN: Much positive support. It is extraordinary that some of the biggest fans of our film are from places as diverse as the US, Mexico, Portugal and South Korea. When people get it, they really get it.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
KEVIN: Occasionally, we get a person who does not get the film, they wonder why the film is not about the First Nations people of our country. My answer is that this story is about the Governor who was a Scotsman and fancied himself a Celtic warrior. We even re-designed the historical canoe the real Governor Simpson owned to have Celtic symbols, both on the prow and on the front and back of the inside of the canoe.
The wooden good-luck charm that you see as the canoe heads into the storm around midway into the film is a rough wooden sculpture of the Celtic god Cernunnos, the half-man, half-animal god of animals, wealth and the underworld, and in some cases he is the god of the hunt. Our story is about a businessman who is stripped of everything and built back up, even physically, to change his point of view and to consider nature not just as a resource, but as a spiritual thing.
CAROL: We’ve had a few people cite us for cultural appropriation, and I find that really puzzling. We are looking at our country’s history, and we need to use what is there to tell that story. This is a fur trade story and along with the Scots, who were the people in charge, there were First Nations and Métis people, and francophone people involved. Their presence is there, and it is very important that they are there, they have to be. The Indigenous story is not ours to tell, but deep down there are so many connections, and that’s what we tried to bring to our film.
We had a very positive and humbling experience when we had an exhibition and screening at our school, the Alberta College of Art + Design. This event had the blessing of a Métis Elder, Edmee Comstock, who is the great-grand-daughter of Jean-Baptiste Bruce, first Métis President at the Red River Colony in Winnipeg, in the late 1860s. Louis Riel, a Métis founding father of the Province of Manitoba, was his Secretary at that time. The Métis are typically descendants of French settlers and the Cree First Nations people, and this distinct cultural group came predominantly as a result of the fur trade. She said our film was beautiful and thanked us for sharing it with her. We were incredibly moved by this very positive experience. Also, as you can see, history is complicated.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
CAROL: More people will get to know about the film and we’ll get more audiences for it.
KEVIN: We are very proud of this film and want as many people as possible to see it.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
CAROL: We’re very fortunate to be NFB filmmakers, that alone provides a huge platform to amplify this message. One of the next steps is to design an educational package for high schools and post-secondary institutions to be able to include our film as part of the curriculum for history, social studies, English, art, and ethics courses. I’d also like to see our film get programmed into more film festivals, especially ones with an environmental focus.
KEVIN: The NFB is doing a great job supporting the film!
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
CAROL: The response that we are getting is the one that we wanted. People are understanding the spiritual and environmental message and really responding to the beauty and flow of the film. We’ve won a couple of audience awards; those ones are really special because we make films to share stories with people, and those awards show that we are really communicating, and that’s important.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
KEVIN: We believe that the greed that started with the fur trade and with the invention of the corporation threatens the earth and our very survival. This film is a small salvo at that type of thinking.
Would you like to add anything else?
KEVIN AND CAROL: We love Australia! We have visited Melbourne twice and Sydney once and hope to visit again. Uluru and Hanging Rock were big inspirations for the spiritual aspect of landscape in Skin for Skin.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
CAROL: I’ve got a personal project that I am researching called A Family War Diary. It’s an experimental documentary of the history and memory of a Canadian family during WWII. My uncle served with the Canadian Army in Northwest Europe during the last few years of the war, and I’m following what he experienced and reflecting back on what was happening to the family back home on the farm in Saskatchewan. I was very fortunate to receive an Alberta Foundation for the Arts Grant for research and development.
KEVIN: Secret stuff, too soon to mention in detail. We hope to do a short with the NFB again at some point, and I am developing a feature animation about the end of life and a new beginning. It is at least partly a comedy!
Interview: September 2018
We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series, music video, women's films, LGBTQIA+, POC, First Nations, scifi, supernatural, horror, world cinema. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
Skin for Skin
In 1823, the Governor of the largest fur-trading company in the world travels across his Dominion, extracting ever-greater riches from the winter bounty of animal furs. In his brutal world of profit and loss, animals are slaughtered to the brink of extinction until the balance of power shifts, and the forces of nature exact their own terrible price.
Length: 15:01
Director: Kevin D.A. Kurytnik & Carol Beecher
Producers: Carol Beecher (Fifteen Pound Pink), Bonnie Thompson (Producer), David Christensen (Executive Producer)
Writer: Kevin D. A. Kurytnik & Carol Beecher
About the writer, director and producer:
CAROL BEECHER and KEVIN D.A KURYTNIK (writers/directors/animators) have been exploring the art and craft of animation for 30 years. They have collaborated on 15 animated works since they formed their production company, Fifteen Pound Pink Productions, in 1994. Partners in life as well as art, their films, such as Mr. Reaper’s Really Bad Morning (2004), Business as Usual (2010), and their series, Intergalactic Who’s Who (2009), have screened in 21 countries, winning more than a dozen awards. Their approach encompasses almost every form and aspect of the craft, from cameraless animation, to drawing directly on 16mm film, to CGI. To create their work, they draw upon their many influences as visual artists, storytellers, and voracious fans of every genre of cinema. Carol is working on developing several projects as producer for Fifteen Pound Pink Productions, and Kevin is permanent faculty for animation at the Alberta College of Art + Design in Calgary, Alberta.
Veteran National Film Board producer BONNIE THOMPSON has worked on more than 70 documentary, interactive, and animation productions out of the North West Studio. Her work has aired on national and international television and online, and has screened at prestigious festivals in Canada and worldwide.
Thompson’s credits include Birth of A Family, which premiered at 2017 Hot Docs Film Festival; Skin for Skin, a short animated film which premiered at 2017 Fantasia; the feature documentary Angry Inuk, which won the Hot Docs Audience Award, the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival’s annual Canada’s Top 10 Festival and many more; the Oscar-nominated animated short Wild Life; and the online interactive documentary, Bear 71, which won a Webby and was named FWA Site of the Year.
Instagram: @onf_fnb
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month?
Streaming free of charge on NFB.ca, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as on Vimeo, where it’s been selected as a “Staff Pick.”