SILVICOLA - Saskatoon Theatrical Release at The Roxy Theatre

Join us for the Saskatoon theatrical release of SILVICOLA, Jean-Philippe Marquis’ award-winning feature length documentary. After a successful festival circuit and theatrical launches in BC, Quebec, and Ontario, the film continues to captivate audiences and critics across Canada and around the world, being hailed for its remarkable, and visually artful portrayal of “[British Columbia’s] legendary woods, but also of [the] unrelenting logging industry, and of the tenacious individuals caught in between, trying to reconcile the two” (Taylor Beaumont, For Reel)

SILVICOLA will screen at the historic The Roxy Theatre, one of the last surviving ‘movie palaces’ in Canada, everyday from June 16 to June 19 at 7:15PM
Tickets 🎟 → https://bit.ly/4c2dhk3

ABOUT THE FILM
Silvicola / dir. Jean-Philippe Marquis / 2023 / 80’ / Canada / English
A Red Cedar can live for over a millennium, sustaining multiple life systems and human cultures. But a rapacious chainsaw can decimate the same tree in a few short hours. And in the economy of commercial logging the tree only has value once it’s been cut down and transformed into a commodity.
At a time when the planet’s old growth forests are threatened as never before, Jean-Philippe Marquis has crafted a dazzling and unsettling film essay on contemporary forestry practices in the Pacific Northwest — home to the world’s oldest and most majestic woodland
Drawing on his own working experience in forestry, Marquis ventures into remote locations and worksites to encounter people whose livelihood and labour is connected in various — and often contradictory — ways to the forest economy and related cultures.
While a Haida forager roams old growth woodland, identifying evidence of a culture that used cedar trees to make everything from baby papooses to canoes, workers at an industrial nursery form an assembly line, producing over 300 million seedlings every year for monoculture timber plantations. Meanwhile commercial loggers clear-cut an entire hillside with devastating speed, leaving a solitary tree planter to scramble over the ‘green trampoline’ of waste they’ve left in their wake.
Juxtaposing sublime aerial imagery with vérité workplace footage, Marquis tempers his critique of neoliberal forestry practices with an up-close understanding for people who labour within the system.

Silvicola was produced with the support from Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, and the NFB Filmmaker’s Assistance Program.
Marketing and promotional assistance provided by Telefilm Canada.