CBC.ca – Arts – Film – The Plight of the ‘Peg

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/winnipegjets.html

I watched this “art-house documentary” (read: bizarrely edited and off-puttingly assembled found clips) on the death of the Winnipeg Jets hockey franchise. In some parts, it’s unwatchable, in others, tragic and moving. Much, I imagine, like living in Winterpeg.

This article on the ‘Pegger filmmakers, though, highlights the kind of manic zaniness that results from being citizens of a cold, underappreciated city whose biggest symbol of civic pride was stolen from them.

Using found footage, Atelier members Walter Forsberg, Matthew Rankin and Mike Maryniuk crafted Death by Popcorn, an art-house documentary about the long, unhappy demise of the Winnipeg Jets, who debuted in 1972 and were sold off in 1996 to become the Phoenix Coyotes. There are no happy endings, no big heroes, no last-minute cavalry charges in this tale. Just defeat piled on defeat, and that’s the way the Atelier likes it.

“I feel there are these very American models of nationalism, which are very triumphalist in nature, and they aren’t suited to Canada, definitely not to Winnipeg,” says Rankin…

The Atelier does love its irony. Founding members Forsberg, 24, and Rankin, 27, met at McGill University, where the former was studying film and the latter was taking history. They ended up in Rankin’s home province of Manitoba. They formed the Atelier in the frigid, irony-inducing February of 2005, “to compose cin

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