Documentarian explores experimental slow cinema

Shortly after the pandemic started, filmmaker Kevin Nikkel felt the need to get moving, so he strapped a canoe to his car and headed for the waters of Nopiming Provincial Park with his family.

“Being in the middle of nowhere felt like the perfect solution,” says Nikkel, a documentarian and film historian known for features such as Tales from the Winnipeg Film Group and Establishing Shots, an oral history of the film group published last year.

The point of the trips was to get away from it all, but Nikkel couldn’t fight his natural inclination to keep some sort of visual diary.

“I’m a bit compulsive about cameras. I like to have one along in case something happens,” says Nikkel, whose kids learned to paddle at Manitoba Pioneer Camp.

But what the cameras captured weren’t death-defying trips down frothing rapids. Instead, they snapped melodic snippets of Nikkel’s travels up the Bird, the Rabbit, the Winnipeg and the Manigotagan rivers, resulting in his latest film, Nopiming Triptych.

Shown concurrently on three screens, the 55-minute film is Nikkel’s first excursion into experimental slow cinema, combining footage from dozens of paddling trips and several cameras to create a multi-dimensional journey as depicted from several vantage points.

The final cut was culled from about 50 hours of footage, shot over the course of three years.

The new film isn’t Nikkel’s first to be centred on paddling Nopiming. In 2021, he released a documentary on the topic for CBC Gem. But Nopiming Triptych is different because it’s more closely aligned with the meditative pastime, less concerned with speed than it is consumed by the experience on the water.

“There is a loose narrative, but the shots are mostly long takes and shots of hands paddling and their rhythm. I feel like it can replicate the sense of being on a canoe yourself,” he says.

The film screens tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Graffiti Gallery (109 Higgins Ave.) as part of Space)doxa, local artist Greg Hanec’s ongoing live performance series.

Before the show, Hanec will perform as Philia, and during the screening in the gallery, composer Nathan Reimer (Nahthan) will perform a live ambient score. Admission is pay what you can.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com