Director/writer: Peter Lynch – Producer: Peter Starr – Executive producer: Louise Lore – Cowriter: Nicholas McKinney – Cameraman: Rudolph Blahacek – Diary by: Louise Leger

It’s no surprise that The Herd defies categorization. From the genre-bending director of the acclaimed Project Grizzly, Peter Lynch, the film manages to fuse documentary and dramatic sensibilities with an evocative, poetic undertone.

Filmed on location from The Bering Strait in Alaska to the Beaufort Sea in the Northwest Territories, The Herd is an impressionistic odyssey of spiritual and physical survival that ruminates on the conflict between man and nature, past and present.

‘The nfb hasn’t made a film at this level for a long time,’ says producer Peter Starr. ‘I think it’s part of our commitment to work with very creative filmmakers and give them the creative freedom required for such a film.’

The story centers on a little-known segment of Canadian history: in 1929, Carl Lomen, the Alaskan ‘Reindeer King,’ sold part of his reindeer herd to the Canadian government, which wanted to move the herd in an attempt to provide a livelihood for the Inuit of the Mackenzie Delta, where a famine was predicted.

On Dec. 29, 1929, Andrew Bahr set out on the 1,500-mile trek with a small team of Inuit and Sami herders and 3,000 reindeer. The reindeer drive was expected to take 18 months but instead took six years.

Toiling through mutinies, deaths, fierce weather and the endless struggle to steer 3,000 capricious reindeer, in 1935, Bahr finally delivered the herd to Reindeer Station, near Kittigazuit, an area around which descendants of the original herd continue to roam.

The film combines dramatization with original film footage, images and artifacts. The sequences filmed in the North for the most part let the visuals tell the story, with no dialogue except an internal monologue by Bahr (played by Doug Lennox, with Graham Greene providing the voice).

In the words of Lynch, The Herd offered ‘two white boys the chance to go on a real Arctic adventure.’ But it turned out to be much more than was bargained for. ‘It was such a moving, awe-inspiring experience, in terms of experiencing the landscape and the local people.’

The film’s original budget was approximately $800,000. Word is that it significantly exceeded that amount, but Starr avoids naming a figure.

‘Put it this way,’ he says. ‘This was really guerrilla filmmaking and we were able to get a lot of donations – arctic clothing, for example, props. That’s the kind of support Peter Lynch gets. At first we went out somewhat modestly, and we very quickly realized it was a more ambitious project.

‘When you look at what we ended up with – a beautiful, feature-length epic – this was a low-budget film.’

Summer 1993: Nick McKinney, lounging at his cottage in the Gatineau Hills, hears the story of Bahr’s trek from a family friend. McKinney is intrigued.

September 1994: McKinney begins researching the story at the National Library in Ottawa.

September 1996: McKinney brings the project to Peter Lynch. ‘I thought he was the ideal guy to do the film and he was taken with it,’ McKinney says.

January to May 1997: McKinney and Lynch write an initial treatment, present it to the National Film Board, and McKinney heads to Seattle and Fairbanks, Alaska, for research. Upon his return, a small exploratory/development parcel is secured from the nfb.

May 1997: Heading north for a preliminary shoot, Lynch and cinematographer Rudolph Blahacek are dropped off in the middle of the Tuktoyaktuk peninsula for a first encounter with the descendants of the herd. Traveling by plane and snowmobile with Inuit guides, they attempt to shoot the herd in the wild.

However, after just eight seconds of exposure to the cold, their Hi-8 video camera freezes.

‘We sat down for a minute to prep the equipment and to have a cup of tea,’ recalls Lynch. ‘A minute later we turn around, and the herd is gone. We asked the guides where they were and they just laughed, said that the reindeer were 10 miles north by now. It was then that I realized how gargantuan a quest this had been, how impossible, how delicate it was to herd reindeer.’

As for shooting the landscape, he says, ‘It was like learning to see again, it was all about figuring out where to place the camera, and how to look at the Arctic because the horizons are so different than in cities.’

Besides capturing footage that remains in the film today, Lynch forges alliances with the local people that will prove invaluable in later trips.

Upon his return to Toronto, he and McKinney immerse themselves in intensive research, hiring a researcher and going to Fairbanks, Seattle and Ottawa.

June 1997: A second exploratory trip is taken, this time to Alaska.

August 1997: Hadley Obodiac joins as associate producer. Among other duties she takes on the monumental task of arranging for the crew’s Northern transportation.

September 1997: The nfb gives the project the go-ahead and arrangements are made quickly to go to the Northwest Territories, to ensure that the team will be able to capture the Arctic in different seasons and weather conditions.

The cast and crew set up a home base in Inuvik and principal photography begins. From Inuvik, the troupe travels by plane and by snowmobile to various locations in the Yukon and Northwest Territories.

‘In that setting, little things like food and transportation become very important,’ says Obodiac. ‘We had to fly to go to different locations every day, usually flying for an hour and a half and landing on water or an iced-over lake. We always had to have a backup plan in case weather prohibited us from landing where we had planned. It was a challenge – there is a thin line between going for it and protecting the safety of the crew.’

While filming on the Yukon’s Herschel Island, the cast and crew come into close contact with polar bears.

‘We saw three polar bears in two days,’ says Obodiac. ‘One time, we were just breaking for lunch and we saw a polar bear about 50 feet from where we had just been shooting. I’m busy counting heads, getting everyone into the cabin, but Peter and Rudolph are out there, wanting to get the bear on film and the sound recorder guy had wandered in direct line with the polar bear.’

October 1997: After returning to Toronto, the group assesses what other footage is required and heads back to the Northwest Territories and Yukon.

Challenges in terms of travel, weather – and herding reindeer – continue. In order to film the deer, the team has to locate them by helicopter or a ground positioning satellite.

‘We then had to hire a herder and helicopters and snowmobiles to corral them,’ says Obodiac. ‘But we didn’t want to put the deer at risk, so there were always questions of whether the ice was firm or whether it was glare ice, which is dangerous.

‘It could take three days to herd them to a location – we’d be shooting other things while the herder was bringing them closer. But the reindeer would often turn back, so it was like three steps forward, one step back.’

Says Lynch: ‘We were always on to Plan d by noon.

‘We also had very tight windows of when could use the animals. You can herd them with helicopters, but as one native said, `They get wise, eh?’ After a while, especially during mating season, they just ignore the helicopters even though they are 30 feet above them.’

November 1997: McKinney and Lynch continue to work on the script. ‘We wrote the film in reverse,’ says McKinney. ‘We were shooting in the Arctic before we’d written the script, because going there changed the way we looked at the characters and the story.’

However, throughout the project, historic research was far-reaching, with McKinney, Lynch and the hired researcher scouring archives from New York to Inuvik, assembling diaries, telegrams, memos, letters, maps and newspaper clippings.

Eventually, the story’s key characters emerge: Bahr (Lennox), Lomen (David Hemblen), who kept Bahr and the herders supplied while on the trail, and Erling Porsild, a Danish botanist who is hired to plan the route but turns into Bahr’s nemesis.

December 1997: Filming of documentary-style re-enactments and indoor dramatic scenes begins. Editing of the Arctic footage is already underway, with Caroline Christie at the helm. Footage from the North, historical footage and dramatic insets are woven together.

June 1998: Editing is finished and Dolby sound mixing begins.

‘It was tough to get the sound up north, with all the support vehicles and helicopters around,’ says Starr. ‘So there was a lot to be done here. It was important to capture the sounds of the North, the stampeding reindeer, the crunch of the snow, the wind.’

Composer Ken Myhr’s score is added.

September 1998: The Herd debuts at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the nfb is seeking out theatrical venues and international distribution for the film.

Public screenings:

Saturday, Sept 12, 6 p.m.

Varsity 8

Sunday, Sept 13, 10 a.m.

Varsity 7

Press & industry screenings:

See Website for daily updates: www.bell.ca/filmfest