Haida filmmaker reflects North Vancouver high school experience in new short

By Abby Luciano, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter NORTH SHORE NEWS

A North Vancouver filmmaker is set to release his latest short film, Shacktown, next week, reflecting on the experiences he and his friends had growing up on the North Shore.

Shacktown focuses on teenager Nevin who lives on the "Rez" and is convinced to start selling weed. But when a dealer tries to recruit his younger cousin, Nevin stands up to protect him. Nevin, however, has to make the choice of getting the money or facing the consequences.

"Growing up in high school, there's lots of fork-in-the-road moments where you can go one way or the other," filmmaker Mike Nichol said. "For Shacktown, that's what I was thinking, when you don't have the support, who's there to help you?"

Nichol is an emerging Black Haida filmmaker who was born and raised in North Vancouver's Lynn Valley. His family is from G̱aw Tlagee (Old Masset), an Indigenous Canadian village on Graham Island in Haida Gwaii, B.C.

Last year Nichol was selected in the Indigenous edition of Telus Storyhive, a program that gives people from underrepresented communities in B.C. the opportunity to share their stories. Shacktown was filmed over two days on the Capilano Reserve, telling what is a very personal story for Nichol.

The young filmmaker thinks back to an episode in his own life, being involved in the wrong crowd. Some friends were selling weed, and the cops came. That brought Nichol to his own "fork-in-the-road moment." Did he want to keep going down this path, or not?

"I wasn't even the one doing it, but you're hanging around the wrong crowd, and it can happen. That was where my parents came in and helped me," Nichol said.

He transferred schools to focus on sports, and was grateful he had friends and family that he could talk to. Now he is using these experiences to relate to others who may have gone through similar situations or need support.

"Seeing yourself in the story, the lesson can make a lot more of an impact rather than someone else," he said. "So that's kind of why I wanted to make this story with these kids."

But Shacktown isn't just about those fork-in-the-road moments, he said, adding that it also shows how some urban Indigenous kids navigate the world on a daily basis.

"It's not always about their culture, it's just their day-to-day lives," Nichol said. "I was trying to take a neo-realist approach to filmmaking, where it's people in poverty that are just trying to get by on everyday problems."

Nichol was recently selected to participate in the Whistler Film Festival Indigenous Fellowship in December, where he will work on a web series about a group of Indigenous kids struggling with their identities.

Shacktown will premiere on Telus Optik TV on Nov. 12, and play in Los Angeles during the LA Skins Festival on Nov. 23.