Film-maker struggles to tell contemporary stories

Through determination and honesty, Saskatchewan film-maker Rueben Martell is trying to bring to the screen a film about the realities of Native people as they live today.

Martell began filming A Life Less Empty last year but had to halt production when funding for the project ran out. Martell describes the film as a Native love story with a legacy of abuse, love and survival.

"It's basically a Native love story that tries to show the real side of relationships and that not everything is a cookie cutter outlook but a realistic look into relationships," said the 29-year-old from Waterhen Lake.

On Sept. 2, Martell held a dance in Meadow Lake to help raise funds to finish the film. The event was hosted by two of the film's stars, Nathaniel Arcand and Dakota House.

Unfortunately, the dance failed to attract as many people as Martell had hoped it would, but he's confident he'll still be able to find the necessary funding to allow him to resume filming in October. He hopes to complete the film in time to enter it in the Berlin Film Festival, one of the world's most prestigious film festivals, which runs annually from Feb. 9 to 19. By showing his film abroad, he hopes he'll be able to reach a larger audience, leading to greater opportunities, he said.

This father of two welcomes any donations or funding to help in the completion of the film. His motivation to get this film done, as well as to create other real stories, comes from the negative image Native people have and he wants to break that stigma by portraying Native characters that all people can relate to.

"We basically have to show people that we are not these negative people that steal and drink. There are some people like that but we can't all be characterized like that," said Martell.

Martell didn't go to school to study film-making; instead, he took a different approach to learning the ropes of the film industry. He started out in sales at the Native youth magazine Rez X, then moved on to a position as a reporter. Martell was then hired by Big Soul Productions as a production assistant on the television series Moccasin Flats, where he rose to the rank of assistant director. Although he enjoyed his time working on the series, Martell wanted to get out on his own and tell his stories about real situations that Native people actually deal with and experience.

"It just seems like with Moccasin Flats we're kind of all like gangsters, pimps and prostitutes and it's just not that way," he said.

Right now Martell is focusing on finishing A Life Less Empty, but he has a couple of other ideas for films he's anxious to develop. One of the projects he describes as a murder hate crime mystery.

"It's basically about a group of friends who accidentally kill a gay friend and it's made to look like a hate crime," said Martell. "It's basically a story about loyalty within a small group of friends."

He says the reality of this story is stirring up a lot of negative feedback, which doesn't really surprise him. But that negativity won't prevent him from proceeding in a project he believes in.

"I bring it up and a lot of people really don't like the idea because they say 'It doesn't sound like something I'd watch,'" said Martell. "I think that's the kind of thing you have to aim for. People aren't comfortable watching it but you have to show the kind of wrongness of society."

He'd also like to produce a film depicting the true-life drama of Neil Stonechild, a 17-year-old man whose frozen body was found on the outskirts of Saskatoon in November 1990. No charges have ever been laid in Stonechild's death, but many allege he died after being driven outside the city by Saskatoon police officers, who left him to fend for himself in freezing temperatures.

"I read the book and I met a lot of people who were involved in it and it just seems in all honesty they haven't been telling too much of the story. Like they tell a story about a Native guy but it's not what really happened," said Martell.

He admits that producing a film that is so delicate and requires asking a lot of questions would be challenging, but "it's all in the paper trail and investigating," he said.

"At the end of the day, generally what we need to do is find out the truth. In the story of Neil Stonechild, all of the evidence is there already."

For a sneak peak at the trailer for A Life Less Empty or to lend financial support to the film, visit www.myspace.com and search rueben306.