Bandwidth Digital Releasing, with backing from Arctic Air‘s Adam Beach, has launched a new film exhibition series that uses profits from screening first-run Hollywood movies on First Nations reserves to subsidize aboriginal movie production and distribution.

This is a familiar script for the Canadian industry, which subsidizes homegrown TV production by airing of glossy U.S. network imports, or relies on skills and expertise from Canadian talent at work on Hollywood movies shooting north of the border to encourage the production of local scripts and movies.

First Nation audiences, however, are unusual because they’ve long been ignored by Canadian film financiers and exhibitors.

“We joke you have better odds at the gambling table if you’re an aboriginal filmmaker,” Jeremy Torrie, an Ojibway filmmaker with Winnipeg-based High Definition Pictures, told Playback Daily on Monday.

“We want to change that,” he added, despite the odds against such an effort.

Torrie recalls in June 2011 sitting in a Sagkeeng First Nation sweat lodge with Arctic Air star Adam Beach and former broadcast exec Jim Compton, both of whom are also Ojibway, and complaining about efforts to get his latest film, Path of Souls, off the ground.

Telefilm Canada liked Torrie’s script about a grieving widow on a spiritual journey to complete her dead husband’s thesis, but didn’t see a movie.

Torrie recalled being told Telefilm needed to see the film in post production before weighing whether to make an investment.

So Torrie, Compton and Beach during their ceremonial sweat bath put out prayers asking for a much-needed leg up to get the script before the cameras.

“Whatever will be, will be, but please guide us. There may be people who we have not met. Help us to appeal to them to have this broader vision,” Torrie remembers the trio urging in their appeal.

In the end, Path of Souls, starring Adam Beach, Laura Harris, Corey Sevier and Lorne Cardinal, got made, and earned Torrie best director prizes at festivals in San Francisco and Winnipeg, before the movie was sold to Super Channel in Canada and Direct TV in the U.S.

“The movie happened, against all odds, and it turned out beautiful and we’ve taken it out around the world,” the director told Playback.

Now Torrie, Compton and Beach are backing Bandwidth Digital Releasing, a new venture whose profits from commercial exhibition on First Nation reserves will be put into the not-for-profit Adam Beach Film Institute.

And Torrie credits digital technology for allowing Bandwidth Digital Releasing to sign an exclusive distribution deal with Entertainment One to get its movies before First Nations audiences, starting April 11.

“It’s basically an innovation on an existing model. We’re just capitalizing on what’s out there,” Torrie said.

The first weekend screenings from April 11 to 13 on the Brokenhead Ojibway Nation reserve 45 minutes north of Winnipeg will feature movie titles like Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy, Torrie’s Path of Souls, Neil Burger’s Divergent, The Lego Movie, Ivan Reitman’s Draft Day and Steve McQueen’s Oscar winner 12 Years a Slave.

The screenings will be done in pop up theatres, using 4K digital projection technology, 35 foot wide screens, and 5.1 digital Dolby surround sound technology for a state-of-the-art viewing experience.

Bandwidth Digital Releasing will split revenue from the first-run movie exhibition and DVD and film merchandise sales on site with distributors.

And it will retain revenue from food and beverage concession sales.

Successive screenings will be held from April 17 to 20 on the Norway House Cree Nation Reserve in Manitoba, and on the Sandy Bay First Nation reserve on April 25, 26 and 27.

After that, Bandwidth Digital Releasing hopes current discussions with First Nation reserves and tribes across North America will allow an eventual penetration of a drastically under-served film-going market, and the creation of an aboriginal film and TV studio from fledgling roots.

“We’re just capitalizing on what’s out there. We are story-tellers first. Let’s harness that. Let’s use our experience and enthusiasm and have it expand exponentially,” Torrie insisted.