- 3 months ago
- #slashback
- #sxsw
- #sxsw2022
EoM contributor Lindsey Dunn speaks with Nyla Innuksuk, director of "Slash/Back" and two of the cast members Tasiana Shirley and Nalajoss Ellsworth.
In this discussion, Innuksuk talks about why she wanted to tell the story, why she chose Pangnirtung as the perfect setting, and how the community came together to tell the film. Shirley and Ellsworth share about their characters and their experiences on set. And we all end with a quick game of "Would you rather?" It's a fascinating discussion, made all the more enjoyable by the opportunity to interview teen actors.
Screening in-person and online during SXSW 2022. #SlashBack #SXSW #SXSW2022
SXSW Festival Page: https://schedule.sxsw.com/2022/films/2053751
Official Website: https://www.thefilmcatalogue.com/films/slash-back
Official Synopsis:
Pangnirtung, Nunavut: A sleepy hamlet nestled in the majestic mountains of Baffin Island in the Arctic Ocean, wakes up to a typical summer day. No School, no cool boys (well... except one), and 24 hour sunlight. But for Maika and her ragtag friends, the usual summer is suddenly not in the cards when they discover an alien invasion threatening Pang. But these teenagers have been underestimated their whole lives, and using makeshift weapons and their horror movie knowledge, they show the aliens you don't fuck with the girls from Pang.
World premiere during SXSW 2022.
In this discussion, Innuksuk talks about why she wanted to tell the story, why she chose Pangnirtung as the perfect setting, and how the community came together to tell the film. Shirley and Ellsworth share about their characters and their experiences on set. And we all end with a quick game of "Would you rather?" It's a fascinating discussion, made all the more enjoyable by the opportunity to interview teen actors.
Screening in-person and online during SXSW 2022. #SlashBack #SXSW #SXSW2022
SXSW Festival Page: https://schedule.sxsw.com/2022/films/2053751
Official Website: https://www.thefilmcatalogue.com/films/slash-back
Official Synopsis:
Pangnirtung, Nunavut: A sleepy hamlet nestled in the majestic mountains of Baffin Island in the Arctic Ocean, wakes up to a typical summer day. No School, no cool boys (well... except one), and 24 hour sunlight. But for Maika and her ragtag friends, the usual summer is suddenly not in the cards when they discover an alien invasion threatening Pang. But these teenagers have been underestimated their whole lives, and using makeshift weapons and their horror movie knowledge, they show the aliens you don't fuck with the girls from Pang.
World premiere during SXSW 2022.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00I'm here for Elements of Madness. This is Lindsay Dunn, and today I am here with the director and two of the cast members from the movie Slashback, which will be showing during South by Southwest 2022.
00:16With me today, we have the director, Nyla Inuksuk, Tassiana Shirley, who plays Micah, and Naljoss Ellsworth, who plays Uki.
00:30Welcome to all of you today. Thank you for joining me to talk about your film.
00:34Thanks so much.
00:38Nyla, let's start with you. I watched the movie, but I always like to hear the director's elevator pitch instead of trying to summarize in my words.
00:47So what is it about? What is Slashback about? How would you describe it to somebody?
00:52Yeah, Slashback is about a group of teenage girls from a remote Arctic community who take on an alien invasion.
01:02I love it. Brief? To the point?
01:06Thanks! Putting me on the spot there.
01:08What made you want to tell the story?
01:10I grew up loving movies that were scary and kids' adventure movies like The Goonies and E.T.
01:21And being in Nunavut as a kid, it is such a beautiful place and a great place to be a kid having adventures with your friends.
01:32And so I always thought it would be a great place to make a movie like this, and certainly aliens have always kind of been a fascination of mine.
01:45So it was really fun to have it all come together.
01:50Well, Pang is a real place.
01:52Why did you choose this location, and are you from there, or what's your connection to the place?
01:59Yeah, I myself am not from there.
02:02My sister-in-law, Julie, her family is from there, and my nephews are from Pang.
02:08I visited, before I'd even met her, before my nephews were born, to shoot a documentary about Inuit square dancing.
02:17It was a documentary that I produced with the National Film Board of Canada, and it was, there are these pockets of Nunavut that, or communities in the Arctic, where the tradition of square dancing was brought in from the whalers in the 1800s.
02:36And so they, it's considered Inuit tradition, and Pang is one of those places.
02:44It also happens to be one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and in the summertime, there's 11 days where the sun just never sets.
02:53It kind of circles around the horizon, and so that's kind of, when I was trying to think of places for an alien invasion movie,
03:05it was, it was, it was those, those fjords in Pang, which are really kind of, stand out from the rest of the Arctic landscape, some of the other communities.
03:17Sort of, it's sort of isolated, maybe the perfect place to invade if you're going to start out and find some place where you can put your hooks in.
03:28Tassiana, you play Micah, who is kind of the de facto leader of this group of friends.
03:34How would you describe this character, if it was a friend of yours, instead of a character you were playing, how would you describe Micah to somebody else that's never met her before?
03:46Hmm, well, actually, Micah, I do see a lot of similarities between Micah and myself.
03:54I feel like we're both kind of, sort of like the leader or the, the dominant one in the friend group, the one who plans everything out and, and ties the rest of the friend group together.
04:07She's very, she's very, she's very, she's very, she's very direct and, and dominant and sort of has no filter.
04:15She's, and she's, she, she's in the beginning of the movie, she's very ashamed of, about who she is, about her culture and her family and her identity as an Enoch.
04:31and she's um during the duration of the movie it's really a journey um you can see of Micah
04:39learning to to embrace and love herself in her identity so she's she's she's a growing individual
04:45and you know she I would I would I would like to be friends with her if if she was an actual person
04:54so do you think you know do you think Micah wants to be the leader is that the role that
05:01she chose to occupy or do you think people put her in that role
05:06well um it is in my opinion um it is like um a matter of both factors um she she's very you can
05:19see she's very confident in in um in herself as a person and and doesn't really like when other
05:27people um take take over her job or try try to do things uh better than her um in that way she's
05:37very confident but um also like with her with her home life she's an older sister and she's often seen
05:44uh you know taking care of her of her little brothers and you can see that a lot of responsibility
05:51is placed on her so it is um a matter of you know her um she her wanting to be in the position of
06:02dominance but also it was um a responsibility to her as well okay so now just I put the same question
06:10to you now playing the other sort of dominant character um who's I'm probably pronouncing all
06:20these names wrong but Uki or uh what how would you how do you say her name and tell us about this
06:25character um I would say it was like a hard cue like okay but I would say that she doesn't really
06:34like to listen to other people she's like she's kind of very like I don't I'm not going to do what
06:39you say like I'm not going to do that but I think she's very like she speaks of her mind
06:46um she I don't know I've never thought about that question before but I would say that she's a very
06:55she doesn't want to listen to anybody she's she speaks her mind
07:00and I I don't know do you think you're like Uki
07:07I I don't think I'm very like her at all she she does some risks risks that I would never ever do I
07:17think the only thing that we share is our opinions and we have a lot of them so yeah yeah I noticed in
07:24the movie there's a lot of rivalry between these two characters where do you think that comes from
07:30um I think like I think both of them just want to have like their own way and they're kind of
07:40frustrated with each other that they can't have their own way or like they want something different
07:44that the other person does is that how you see it too Tassiana yeah totally they're both very um
07:53con both Uki and Micah are very confident in themselves and they're also very stubborn
07:58they both have their own way and and they they both like to express their their opinions and and
08:05like um sort of plans differently um so it it really clashes between the movie but it
08:12in the end it really just uh strengthens their friendship yeah the other two the other two
08:18friends are more they kind of go along with what Micah does and and Uki doesn't do that you know so
08:29it's it's it's interesting to see you guys butting heads it's definitely one of the more enjoyable
08:35parts of the movie Nyla you could have told an alien invasion story with adults but instead you chose
08:41teen girls why did you go that direction um I think it for a couple of reasons one was that um
08:52I really love the the kids movies that um that I grew up watching Goonies and E.P. and and Jurassic Park
09:03and and so I was really excited to do something that was targeted at a at a younger audience but was
09:11really really fun and a little bit scary and so um the reason I kind of decided on teenage girls was
09:21I once was one and and I remember it being a complicated time and also a really special time
09:28where your friendships are kind of the most important thing to you and you're trying to figure
09:35out who you are and for indigenous women it's also an added layer of of processing some shame that you
09:43might have in your indigeneity and and figuring out um how to be prideful and and and so I think that
09:53certainly when I was developing the script in it's uh in it's the the kind of the script as we
10:02came to know it with my co-writer Ryan Cavan we were um at that point had already shot a poopoo concept
10:09with some of the actors um and so when we went up to Nunavut we were really exploring these ideas of the
10:17alien invasion through the eyes of teenage girls now and what is you know of course it not surprising
10:27as these teenage girls all they wanted to talk about was was their friendships and boys and uh
10:32where they kind of like fit in with within those friend groups and and that sort of thing so those
10:40dynamics we just knew would have to be a part of uh of the movie because even in the middle of an alien
10:48invasion those things find a way to you know like get in the way anyway how did you go about finding the
10:58right cast um it was this uh it kind of a great process of um we knew that we couldn't I knew
11:10that a traditional um audition process wasn't going to work just because there weren't casting agencies
11:17in Nunavut there were some uh there's this great show produced by Nala Jasa's mother Connelly that was
11:26that was fantastic and so actually having support of our Nunavut producers Stacey and Dalithia was was
11:33great also the the arts organization Kagevut as a physical space for us to hold the the workshops
11:40because we kind of held the auditions as acting workshops rather than um auditions and so we had
11:49people um the the young girls come in and I worked with Christine Tutu who's an actor a theater actor
11:57who's got um television and film experience and she ended up working in our prop department and was with
12:02Dustin Pang uh and so in those first couple days with Christine we were workshopping some pages of
12:10the script and I was you know moving girls around and trying them out and but um it was really treated
12:18like an acting workshop and then at the end there was um some casting done for this proof of concept
12:24and then with that proof of concept um I went out and and started but that's where I found my producing
12:31team and eventually my co-writer and um and yeah and then we started doing the the casting in earnest
12:39and it was um by that point Nala Jasa had aged out of the the youngest character role um and so I was
12:48worried about her not being able to act in the movie thinking that she wasn't old enough to act
12:53alongside the teenage cast and it was actually really heartbreaking and um and then we and and when I
13:04met Tassiana I knew she hadn't been a part of our proof of concept but I knew right away that she
13:10had to be in um in the film she was so naturally gifted and um but I assumed that she actually was
13:22initially cast as Nala Jasa's character because I thought that that would be the hardest role to
13:27play the Uki character so I actually thought okay Tassiana is the strongest actor we's we've seen and
13:35in so I think she has to play this role and then it was just this at one point these this this we just
13:42made this decision like oh my gosh what if Nala Jasa maybe we should have her come in one more time
13:48and this was a day before we were supposed to be flying out to film the movie um let's have
13:53Nala Jasa come in one more time and read and we uh Melissa Hood which was our acting coach and who
14:01had spent some summers living in Pang and was a really great resource for us we she we we had
14:09Nala Jasa kind of do some do some stuff for us on camera we had a conversation and we're like
14:15I think I think she can handle this and so we did some shifting had Tassiana we were like okay you
14:22have to learn a whole new role now and take on this chat this new challenging role of Micah
14:28Nala Jasa you've got a week to learn this this script and it was um so it was uh it was a kind of
14:35very dramatic but in the end um it really wonderful that we were able to figure it out
14:42wow it sounds like everything fell into place just when you needed it to Tassiana and Nala Jasa in
14:49your roles you had to shoot firearms and defend yourself from evil predators I'm curious is this
14:58the type of acting you're used to or what did you have to do to prepare for these roles
15:03um I think we already like I think we already knew like most of the stuff that we already
15:13do in there because or I did because my data also like takes me out hunting we go on hunting trips
15:21together I've shot a rifle before um I already like kind of knew we didn't actually like shoot it
15:27we just like looked in the scope and like just and then that's it but I think yeah I already knew
15:36most of this stuff I never had to learn anything on set I don't think so you're used to like cutting
15:42an animal's throat you know that kind of stuff you go about around doing quite often
15:47yeah no and I mean when we were even shooting our proof of concept it was I was looking to Alexis
15:55when she was slicing up she had to uh slice open a seal and and even just the girls um the the way
16:05you prepare food uh the braiding of the intestines which is very delicious and it's just you know this
16:13um so much what I think was wonderful about about the process and and was that the with that the girls
16:21were able to share a lot of what they knew with with some of the crew that weren't from Nunavut
16:26and so they were doing a lot of of sharing and um and a lot of that lent itself to the to the film
16:34in so many ways. Tassiana is that is that the same deal for you you're a skilled hunter already?
16:41uh no actually well I had never I had never acted in any um in any other film before this so I had no
16:52no experience with like uh props and um um you know the whole situation with the the weapons and the
17:00different guns but um uh I know I I personally have uh don't usually go out hunting a lot so it was it was a
17:10new a new experience for me with the with the actual rifle that um I was seen in a couple scenes
17:17with but the props department did a really good job in you know showing me how to use it correctly and
17:23safely and just making it look as real as possible on camera it wasn't uh an operating rifle it was uh I
17:32believe it was brought uh from an antique shop that it was um it was not not operatable so
17:41it was it was all safe and it was it was a really a great learning experience for me.
17:47Thank you for explaining that yeah I mean I I've only had one experience where I shot firearms and it
17:53was super awkward it was much more awkward for me than you see it on tv it looks so easy and then when
17:58you go to pick it up you're just this feels completely unnatural to me so um I appreciate
18:05you sharing that with me um Nyla I understand it was quite a process getting to film here and you
18:13are the first to ever film at this location can you tell us about that process um it was I think there
18:21have been some shoots before nothing not a narrative feature I think like this but the community of
18:29Pang is wonderful in that it's um built with artists there are really amazing artists um throughout
18:36the community there's a textile um uh museum and and space for creating uh woven textiles and also
18:46print making um so it was really kind of wonderful to to kind of be in this place and try and essentially
18:55we we had a welcome tea and we're saying we need a lot of help um from everybody like if you can sew if
19:02you can drive if you can drive a boat if we need your help and so people just came to the youth center and
19:09and we all were like introducing ourselves but this it was um it was a really great uh process to kind
19:19of be immersed with the community and I remember one of our drivers Jonah telling us um that if there
19:28was beluga that showed up that he'd be driving us that day he would be out on his boat and then one
19:36day you know pretty deep into filming sure enough beluga show up and and he told us that it was the
19:44first time he was ever not going to go out that he was sending his son out instead on his own and that
19:49he wanted to be there driving with us and so it was you know really special to feel like we were um
19:56you know that that we had the the community behind us so I just have one question for you guys
20:02it's a would you rather so would you rather have to defend your home from aliens or zombies
20:09aliens you think why is that zombies are so scary oh my gosh I would I would never want to deal with
20:23like a zombie I know they want to kill me but aliens what what if they want to like like team up or
20:30whatever I don't know all right what do you think uh I I'd have to disagree with not much us I would
20:40definitely would rather fight uh zombies rather than aliens I feel like aliens with the whole um you
20:47know unexpected you don't know a thing about them um I feel like it could it could totally escalate
20:55they could like you know they could probably do crazy things that you don't even know about because
21:01um and I just feel like with zombies you know they're already dead just okay just yeah the enemy
21:09you know we know what zombies are we don't know what yeah all right what do you think nyla
21:17yeah I'm with Tessian on that before we go is there are any do any of you have social media channels
21:28you want to promote where people can continue to follow your work you can follow slashback film
21:34at slashback film on instagram and we're going to be updating when that account when we're going to be
21:41in texas and and I think that's going to probably be the best way to find out what we're up to
21:47okay great I will have that in the show notes and the youtube channel so that people can
21:55follow you south uh slashback will be showing at south by southwest from march 13th to the 17th
22:02including an online screenie so good luck to all of you and thank you for your time today
22:08thank you thank you bye and this has been Lindsay for elements of madness goodbye everybody
22:17thank you
22:25you
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