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Despite having one of the world’s largest land masses, Canadians generally live in large urban centres, clustered close to the US border cloistered away from the rest of the wild, open, picturesque landscape that is this great country. Since most of us experience the Canadian landscape through the small patch of grass with some trees on it we let our dogs run through, it’s not a mystery that we’re a little bit confused about the definition of the word “park”. On Thursday, May 19, 2011, Parks Canada has its 100^th birthday and there is no better way to celebrate it than taking a good, long look at the majesty of the wilderness surrounding us. Enter the National Parks Project, a multi-platform, multi-media project specifically designed to help Canadian celebrate what should be most important to us: our land.

Producer Ryan Noth explains that five years ago he met a representative from Parks Canada at a television conference in Banff. At that time Parks Canada was looking for a multi-media project to engage a more urban, youthful demographic. From there, Noth sat down with colleagues Joel McConvey and Geoff Morrison to brainstorm potential for the project. “We kind of came up with these recipe cards that said ‘two filmmakers, four musicians, one park, five days,’” says Noth. McConvey adds, “It was literally just an afternoon sitting around coming up with the concept for the National Parks Project, which was musicians, parks, let’s go make a film, we like all these things, let’s put them together.”

From there the seed grew into the project it is today: one filmmaker, three musicians, five days, thirteen parks. Naturally, this project needed to be Canadian, but for the producers, Canadian film is a long-time love and their desire to showcase some of their favourite filmmakers was simply a bonus. “We really wanted to inspire more discussion about Canadian cinema, so that was kind of the impetus for the whole project,” says Noth.

Canada is a vast, sparsely populated country. While art and literature have delved deeply into the psychological relationship Canadians have with our land, film has yet to join the discussion in a profound way. “We were really annoyed and frustrated that a lot of Canadian filmmakers weren’t making films that dealt with the landscape,” says Noth, “We really wanted to take them and almost force them to examine the landscape cinematically and to do that from their own urban experience.” This was far from a directive for the filmmakers involved, however. “These films are very personal,” says Morrison, “None of the directors had mandates to go out and make a scientific documentary about the park. They were all asked to make a personal response to their experience there; a film about their own personal reaction and inspiration.” Noth agrees adding, “I think some of the better films in the collection are people who just went there and responded directly to what they had in front of them.”

The freedom they were able to give the filmmakers and the ultimate finished product are a significant source of pride for the producers. “We were able to make a series of nature films that is different from what one might typically expect,” Morrison says, “I really credit Parks Canada for having the courage and being brave enough to let us do this… to let these artists go out and really do something that was completely unrestricted in terms of no censorship or no really mandate that they were trying to get across. Just to create something.”

The project encompasses a genuinely astonishing amount of Canadian talent, including filmmakers Scott Smith (Falling Angels), Zacharias Kunuk (Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner), Peter Lynch (Project Grizzly), Sturla Gunnarsson (President of the Directors Guild of Canada), Kevin McMahon (Waterlife), Louise Archambault (Familia), Hubert Davis (Hardwood), Catherine Martin (Trois temps apres la mort d’anna), Daniel Cockburn (You Are Here), John Walker (A Drummer’s Dream), Jamie Travis, Stephane Lafleur (Continental, a film without guns), and Keith Behrman (Flower and Garnet), along with musical talent including Andrew Whiteman (Broken Social Scene), Kathleen Edwards, Andre Ethier, Casey Mecija (Ohbijou), Ohad Benchitrit (DoMakeSayThink), Don Kerr, Jim Guthrie, Bry Webb (Constantines), Sophie Trudeau (Godspeed You! Black Emperor), Chad Ross (Quest For Fire), Dale Morningstar, Daniela Gesundheit (Snowblink), Sandro Perri, Mishka Stein (Patrick Watson), Shad, Melissa Auf Der Maur, Sam Roberts, NPP music director Paul Aucoin (Hylozoists).

How did they manage to get together such a diverse and talented group of artists for the project? “It ended up being a much easier sell than I thought it would be,” Morrison says, “In hindsight, why wouldn’t it be an easy sell? Someone else will pay for you to go on this trip and pay for you to have this creative, artistic experience and work with these other respected and innovative interesting artists,” adding, “I’m incredibly proud of the lineup of artists that were willing to step forward and go on these crazy adventures, some of which were more far flung and dangerous than others.”

It seems actually quite ambitious to have put together so many creative people for such a large project in only five years, but the producers laugh it off. “It was a lot of screaming and the odd complete meltdown,” says McConvey. Despite it being no small feat, the end result is something all of them should be proud of.

In the second part of TFS’ talk with the producers of the National Parks Project, we discuss the film’s reception, its multi-media aspects and the realization of five years of hard work.

The National Parks Project is screening at Royal Cinema starting Friday, May 20. Stay tuned for our week-long series on this incredible project.