– Directors/writers/editors/dops/sound designers: Heather Frise and Velcrow Ripper

– Producer: Velcrow Ripper

– Diary by: Mary Ellen Armstrong

A temperate rain forest doesn’t happen overnight. Neither does a film about one, apparently. While the b.c. forests may have a thousand or so years over the film, Bones of the Forest also took its own sweet time.

1989: Heather Frise and Velcrow Ripper make their first venture into the maelstrom that is b.c. environmental politics. And it isn’t intentional. What started out as a back-to-nature getaway gives birth to an experimental anti-corporate look at the complexities of the logging wars.

Spring 1989: Frise, having just finished an English degree at McGill University, plans a trip to a place she’s always wanted to see – b.c.’s Queen Charlotte Islands. Velcrow, a Concordia film grad (class of ’86), who had just finished his first animated feature, I’m Happy, You’re Happy, We’re All Happy, Happy Happy, goes along for the ride.

The trip is an inspiration. Coming in by ferry they’re struck with the irony of the place – the stunning beauty and the obvious devastation from clear cutting. While hitchhiking, everyone wants to talk about the recent blockades. The idea for a film is germinated.

A kayaking trip to the tip of South Morseby Island produces 30 rolls of painstaking experimental time-lapse photography and animation. Five weeks later, thieves make off with their packs, tents and sleeping bags as well as the camera and all the film.

Summer 1990: Back in Toronto, application is made to the National Film Board’s Program to Assist Filmmakers in the Private Sector program for a 16mm short experimental film. The board agrees to provide processing and printing.

Spring 1991: Grants come back from the Ontario Arts Council ($15,000) and the Canada Council ($20,000).

After picking up a 16mm Bolex and a folding kayak from the local Buy and Sell, they head to New York City for their first interview. Thomas Berry, an elder eco-philosopher and author, talks in 10-minute sentences. It becomes obvious that their film budget won’t support lengthy storytelling.

Not wanting mere sound bites, they decide to record the interviews in Hi-8 and transfer to film. Another stop at another Buy and Sell in Montana, and they have a Hi-8.

Summer 1991: In Vancouver they uncover an article about Jim Gillespie, a retired logger who’s paid the price for complaining about corporate logging practices. Arsonists, widely suspected to be loggers, burned down his cabin.

Ripper and Frise find him, and he’s a talker. Four hours of tape inspire them to consider a feature-length project focusing in on old people, those who’ve been around long enough to witness the accelerating environmental damage in b.c. over the decades.

Meanwhile, a logging blockade is happening in the Walbran Valley. For a month they document the conflict, sending footage out for the news. They meet two veteran activists to feature in their film.

August 1991: The Road Stops Here, a half-hour doc they quickly pieced together based on footage shot in Walbran, is screened as an activist tool all over the world. It’s picked up by ytv, Knowledge Network and zdf in Germany.

Fall 1991: Trying to recreate some of the original lost footage, they do some time-lapse nature photography in Clayoquot Sound. They film retired logger turned activist Pat McClory getting arrested during a blockade in Bolson Creek.

Winter 1991 to summer 1992: Setting up an office on Galiano Island, they decide they aren’t going back east until the film’s done. They begin logging and putting together a paper edit, but they need more money. Applying to the Non Theatrical Film Fund is a huge undertaking. The proposal is nearly 80 pages.

Summer 1992: The Non Theatrical Film Fund says no, explaining it just funded a similar project. Ripper and Frise wonder how similar it is.

After a move to Vancouver and two months spent editing and optical printing at Cineworks, the cash is gone. They investigate environmental organizations as potential funding sources.

Fall 1992: After sending out a package containing the 10 letters of support gathered for the Non Theatrical Fund application and a copy of The Road Stops Here, funding starts coming back in $1,000 increments. Meanwhile, they trek to San Francisco to film the Columbus Day riots and the role of colonialism grows to become an important part of the film. They ask the Canada Council for finishing money.

Winter 1992/93: Canada Council agrees to only $6,000. It’s suggested they do more editing and reapply for the next deadline.

Spring 1993: Months are spent searching the b.c. archives for footage. The optical printing work is completed on a printer borrowed from filmmaker Dirk deBruyn.

Summer 1993: The full Canada Council grant of $14,000 comes through and a kem six-plate 16mm editing machine is copurchased with George Harris, founder of the Gulf Island Film and Television School.

The Hi-8 colors aren’t translating well to film, so all the interviews are transferred to black and white. They wait three months for the nfb to make the transfers, but the results are excellent – it doesn’t even look like it was shot on video.

Mass logging blockades in Clayoquot Sound are documented.

Winter 1993/94: Frise does the scratch animation sequences for the film. Editing and interviews continue.

Summer 1994: Private investors chip in another $15,000 and a Mac-based computer sound editing system is purchased. A Challenge ’94 grant allows Frise and Ripper to pay themselves and hire a post co-ordinator. Jean-Luc Perron comes to Galiano for a week to record most of the music.

Fall 1994: The oac kicks in $35,000 for completion. They return to Toronto to finish the post at the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto and to attend the Toronto International Film Festival, where Ripper’s animated short, Leave Me Alone Don’t Ever, is being screened.

They show the Steenbeck cut to distributor Hangemah Paneh of France’s Celluloid Dreams. Panic sets in when she suggests the film might assume viewers have more information on the subject than they do.

Miumi Jan, editor of Zero Patience, spends a day with them; they leave with pages of possible changes. They edit for two more weeks. Jan does this twice more before she’s through.

A positive test screening at the nfb leaves them confident the film is finished, but after booking dialogue editor Paul Durand for two weeks they discover they’ve shaved off too much. It’s now 68 minutes. They put back some scenes they’d always liked.

Winter 1995: The elaborate sound cut takes four months. A deal for music rights is struck with a German industrial band called Einsturzende Nuebauten and Hardkiss, a techno group.

Spring 1995: During the sound mix with Daniel Pellerin at Film House, the computer crashes on day one. A ProTools system is borrowed from Michael Werth of Sound Dogs. Benevolent spirits smile on them and the mix costs only $6,000. The neg is cut in Montreal by Ginette Blaine. Funds are running low again; the Clayoquot Island Preserve comes through with $15,000.

Summer 1995: The waiting game. Months pass and still no print from the film board. They’re forced to show a ragged work print to the Toronto festival and it’s rejected. Convinced that not getting the print immediately from a private lab was their major mistake, they rush the negative out to Gastown in Vancouver for a print.

August 1995: Bones of the Forest is screened for the Vancouver International Film Festival the day it’s back from the lab. They want it. The next day there’s an outdoor screening for 200 activists at the international conference of the Rainforest Action Network in Clayoquot Sound.

September/October 1995: Bones of the Forest has its world premiere as one of five galas at this year’s viff.