Danis Goulet puts a Spin on Sundance festival

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"I never imagined making this film a year ago that it would end up anywhere," said Danis Goulet, director of Spin, a short film that was featured at this year's Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The film festival, an annual showcase for independent films and film-makers from around the world, took place Jan. 15 to 25.

Goulet's film was one of 16 screened as part of the festival's Native forum, which highlighted films made by Indigenous people from Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Australia.

"Sundance is such a huge festival and it gets a ton of recognition. The fact that the Native forum is a part of it is really encouraging and supportive," said Goulet, who was born and raised in La Ronge.

"Aboriginal film, the way I see it, has incredible potential, especially things done by

Aboriginal actors. The history of Aboriginal film is that there are many stories out there but they are not necessarily being told by Aboriginal people's own experience," Goulet said. "There's sometimes been a history of not consulting with people even though you're trying to tell a story about them."

Shot in New York City, Spin is a comical look at a DJ and a record he can't quite muster up the courage to buy because he is too afraid of what others may think.

"I like stories about when people are placed in scenarios where what their interpretation of what's going on is very different from the way things really are," said Goulet.

Goulet originally made this film, her first ever, as part of a two month workshop she was attending at the New York Film Academy. After filming wrapped, Spin premiered at the imagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival in Toronto.

"imagineNATIVE is quite connected with Sundance," said Goulet. "There was a programmer for the Native forum named Bird Runningwater and he was basically the catalyst for my film getting into Sundance."

Although her fascination with the camera began at an early age, Goulet did toy with a career in politics. Her father, Keith Goulet, is a former Cumberland MLA.

"When I was a kid I thought (politics) might have been a direction that I might head. I was a bit of a talker when I was a kid so people imagined me ending up as a chitty chatter politician. Politics, I've always grown up with it, so it's definitely part of what influences me," said Goulet.

Prior to making Spin, Goulet had been working as an assistant casting director in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and Toronto where she currently lives. Nowadays, Goulet continues to juggle her work in casting and an upcoming short film project. She also hopes to one day develop a feature film.

"It's basically about a Metis girl who decides to build a tipi inside her house to live in and it's a metaphor for her hiding out. She's a teenager so she's struggling with the whole idea of traditional versus contemporary living and also her identity within that," Goulet said. "What I want to express in a feature is a sense of humour and comedy that exists in the Aboriginal community that I don't think you see on film very often and that's what I'm really excited about doing."