THE GREAT SALISH HEIST
Where: Cinecenta, Student Union Building, University of Victoria, 3800 Finnerty Rd.
When: Friday, March 15, 5 p.m., 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $15 ($10 for students/seniors)
Every time Darrell Dennis puts film ideas down on paper, the actor-writer-director-producer does so with specific locations in mind. “And it’s usually where I’m from, and what I’ve experienced,” he said.
Dennis initially wanted to make The Great Salish Heist in B.C. near Shuswap Indian Reserve, where he was raised. But filming eventually took place in Duncan, which has quickly become a favourite shooting location for the Vancouver-born, Los Angeles-based artist.
He shot over consecutive summers in the Cowichan Valley, beginning with The Great Salish Heist in 2022. A second feature he co-wrote, directed and filmed in Duncan, Sweet Summer Pow Wow, is due for release this year with many of the same producers and crew on board.
He wants Indigenous stories to take place in Indigenous communities, and always has a picture in his head of what that should entail. Duncan had everything he needed in that regard, and despite the “incredibly huge” differences between the Coast Salish and Interior Salish peoples, tonally he liked what he saw during shooting.
“The landscape of the coast — the terrain, the feel — is so different from what I grew up with,” Dennis said. “The whole vibe and way of looking at things is completely different as well.”
The Great Salish Heist screened at this year’s Victoria Film Festival and is currently touring Island cinemas. Based on a story by Cowichan Tribes member Harold C. Joe and University of Victoria grad Sophie Underwood, the film will be shown twice at Cinecenta on Friday, followed by screenings at the Cowichan Performing Arts Centre in Duncan on March 24 and the Star Cinema in Sidney in April.
“To be able to experience this thing you worked on and fretted over with an audience is incredibly important,” Dennis said of the screenings. “I can think something is good, but until you actually hear the reaction from an audience and get that feedback, you never know.”
Joe will attend most of the screenings and participate in Q&A sessions with the attendees, which makes perfect sense. The character of Steve Joe, who is played by Dennis in The Great Salish Heist, is based on Joe’s career as an archeologist, and mirrors his real attempts at repatriating items stolen from First Nations throughout history.
The Great Salish Heist, which also stars Graham Greene, Tricia Helfer and Ashley Callingbull, is part mystery and part comedy, with Greene — an Academy Award nominee for supporting actor in 1990’s Dances With Wolves —providing much of the comic relief during filming. Dennis had worked with Greene several times in the past, but what effectively drew the esteemed actor to the project, according to Dennis, was the upbeat attitude of everyone involved.
“When Graham likes to play on set, boy does he play. There’s about two hours of footage of Graham improvising that we couldn’t use.”
It was important for the filmmakers to show some of that levity on screen, Dennis said. “I’ve been in this business for over 30 years as an actor and writer and filmmaker, and one thing I’ve found from the very beginning is that anything involved with [the Indigenous community], fun is probably the last word for any of them. It is about trauma, that sort of thing. A big mission for me once I started to create my own projects was to create the types of films I wanted to see. Why not have a fun heist movie?”
Dennis believes this will be the beginning of a new wave, thanks to federal funding grants from the likes of Telefilm Canada, the Indigenous Screen Office and the Canada Media Fund.
“In the last five years, I’ve been seeing huge leaps from funding organizations ensuring that Indigenous people are telling their own stories and choosing stories that Indigenous people want to tell. It has become a lot more accessible to us as Indigenous filmmakers.”
