Episode 199: Trevor Mack

There’s been a lot of buzz about Portraits From A Fire, and it’s all well deserved. The feature film – which won filmmaker Trevor Mack the award for Best BC Emerging Filmmaker at the 2021 Vancouver International Film Festival – is a gutting, poignant, and funny masterwork, and it is finally available for all to see on VOD. 

Portraits from a Fire centres on Tyler (William Lulua), a 16-year-old member of the Tsilhqot'in First Nation who has the dreams of any kid with a camera: a career launch at the Sundance Film Festival. But for now, he’s wearing a tuxedo t-shirt, and debuting a space film with cardboard characters for an audience of three at his reserve. It’s a dispiriting turnout for Tyler, who already experiences pixilated visions of a mother he never knew and lives at arms’ length with a father (Nathaniel Arcand) who avoids him.

And then Tyler meets a mysterious young man named Aaron (Asivak Koostachin). With the input of Aaron and the discovery of a long-lost digital memory card, Tyler comes to see his path, not in films about a sci-fi future, but in preserving the past. 

Portraits From A Fire is a gut-punch of a journey, completely unpredictable, about trauma and blood memory and why we create art. In this fascinating and gripping episode of the YVR Screen Scene Podcast, filmmaker Trevor Mack reflects on his own journey with this remarkable film. Episode sponsor: Fish Flight Entertainment