The Wake

Directed by Norma Bailey

Canada, 1986 (fiction, 58 minutes, colour, English)

Also known as "Veillée funèbre"

Image: © National Film Board of Canada

Film Description:
"Set in contemporary Alberta, The Wake is the story of the love affair that blossoms between a well-meaning Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer and a young Métis woman. The Métis have a strong sense of community, but there is also a feeling of separateness defined by racial origins and economics. In this atmosphere, the romance offers a new sense of hope. Then, during a dark winter's night on a frozen lake, something happens to change the lovers' lives forever."
-- National Film Board of Canada (source)

Film Credits (partial):
Written by:	Sharon Riis
Produced by:	Norma Bailey, Ches Yetman
Principal Cast:	Frank Adamson, Bill Alcorn, Cynthia Alcorn, Ken Charlette, Diane Debassige, Linda Migwans, Jean Paul, Victoria Snow, Michelle Thrush, Timothy Webber
Cinematography:	Ian Elkin
Film Editing:	Lara Mazur
Music:	Ron Halldorson
Production Company:	National Film Board of Canada / Office national du film du Canada

(sources)

Notes about The Wake

Part of the Daughters of the Country series.

(sources)

Quote by the Director

"[For the Daughters of the Country series of films about Métis women] I developed the ideas from reading the history. [...] I said, OK, I'll make these fictitious people and this is what they're going to do. I did very little research with people. It was secondary to reading all the books that are around. There were four women who wrote the scripts for me, and I developed the material with them. [...] They wanted to do it because of what I wanted to do, which is focus on women. [...] Well, for the performers, I'm just scouring reserves, everywhere, looking for Indians who can act. The whites for the film I get through regular agencies—go to Toronto and do a casting. That's pretty straightforward. But the Indians, you've just got to hunt around, in Calgary, Manitoba, Alberta, and some from Ontario. The crew I've got from Manitoba are all freelance. The NFB doesn't have a staff crew in the regions."
-- Norma Bailey (source)

Quote about The Wake

"[In The Wake, Norma] Bailey and [Sharon] Riis deploy the conventions of the Western, melodrama, and romance genres to render visible white complicity in the colonial oppression of Indigenous peoples. Bailey constructs white complicity in the figure of Jim, the RCMP officer. In many ways, Jim functions as the contemporary version of the lone Western hero, a cop substituting for a cowboy. Jim's partner, Officer Crawford, a racist bully, is the bad guy who obsessively patrols the roads, seemingly looking for opportunities to harass and beat up on Indians. Bailey and Riis are evoking the sympathetic or pro-Indian Western in which the viewer empathizes with Indigenous peoples. The difference here is that there will be no white male hero riding to the rescue, as epitomized in Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves (1990). Most Western narratives are driven by the good guy/bad guy dichotomy, but Bailey dismantles such binaries. Though Jim is positioned as the good cop to Crawford's bad cop, he is part of the problem, representing colonial oppressive power as an RCMP officer."
-- Kathleen Cummins (source)

Bibliography for The Wake

Book Chapters

Doyle, Judith. "Norma Bailey." Interview with Norma Bailey. In In a Different Voice: Conversations with Women Artists and Filmmakers, 21-23. Toronto: Funnel Experimental Film Theatre, 1986. [exhibition catalogue]

Brief Sections of Books

Cummins, Kathleen. Herstories on Screen: Feminist Subversions of Frontier Myths. New York: Wallflower, 2020. (pp. 91-94, 133-138, 203-208)

Web Sites about The Wake

National Film Board of Canada. "NFB -- The Wake." National Film Board of Canada. http://onf-nfb.gc.ca/en/our-collection/?idfilm=16800.
Office national du film du Canada. "ONF -- Veillée funèbre." Office national du film du Canada. http://onf-nfb.gc.ca/fr/notre-collection/?idfilm=4891. [in French]