The Beauty and Joy of Spending Time with Artists: An Interview with Conor McNally
When I watched Conor McNally’s 2017 film ôtênaw, I knew I wanted to find an excuse to speak with him and learn more about his approach to filmmaking. I was taken by the amount of space Conor offers within the film: space for Dwayne Donald, the Nêhiyawak storyteller and educator who narrates the film throughout, space for viewers to take in the stories shared, and space to sit with the land and the city that we all call home—its brutal history, as well as its gifts. The film’s layered form interweaves with Donald’s rich storytelling in ways that left me feeling connected to this place while also more knowledgeable about it. It’s a feeling that runs through all of Conor’s work; his ability to connect viewers so intimately with the subjects he works with illustrates the care and comfort he brings to projects and the relational ways in which he approaches the form.
What follows is a discussion with Conor about his work, recorded in early May 2026 and edited for length and clarity.
Christina Battle (CB): When we first met you were documenting Alma Visscher’s natural ink-making workshop for the Edmonton Arts Council. I was reading an interview that you did where you were talking about your work, and I’m curious to know more about how you differentiate your creative work from your freelance work. Or how do you distinguish between the two and define them?
Conor McNally (CM): When I was younger, let’s say even 10 years ago, I really wanted to have this distinction between the work that I get hired to do and my own work. I guess I still want that distinction, but it’s becoming blurred. There’s the work that I get hired to do, like for the Edmonton Arts Council, versus work that I produce and spearhead myself and have more creative control over.
CB: I can see that in your work. When I look at your Vimeo page, I can tell which are works that you’ve spearheaded, as you said, and which are, maybe, contracted. But even with the contract work, your own voice and strategies for working still seem to carry over, which I find very interesting and quite rare. You don’t seem to shut off that part of yourself entirely to do that kind of work. Do you feel like you say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to things based on whether you can have that kind of input yourself or not?
CM: Not exactly. I think I say yes or no depending on if I need the money.
CB: Yeah, totally!
CM: I’ve directed a couple of episodes for a CBC show called Farm Crime, which is a true crime documentary TV show, and I did an APTN show called Amplify, where I was hired as a director, and those instances were really interesting because there was a show creator—that’s like the executive producer—and it’s really their show. And in some ways, I was just brought on because they were like: Oh, Conor is a director in Alberta, this is in his wheelhouse and he can do this kind of stuff. But they have their own cinematographers that they bring in. I may provide a paper edit, but somebody else does the editing and the colour grading. Those projects are like a job where I’m a director, but I don’t have to pick up the camera, I don’t have to order catering or any of those kinds of things that I also have to do on shoots for my own films. And, you know, I’ve enjoyed those gigs because they’ve allowed me to work with people I’ve never worked with before and taken me to really cool places. But it’s interesting because I don’t have full creative control with those projects.
Whereas say, doing a video for the Edmonton Arts Council, Jenna Turner—who’s the communications director, and usually my boss, and who I now have a pretty long rapport with—she’s kind of like: This is what we need a video on, go do your thing. And when I send it to them they’re usually just like: Yeah, this is great, finish it up. In those instances, I’ve been the director, the cinematographer, and I’ve done the editing—obviously the budgets are way smaller than a CBC TV show, but I get to actually be fully creative, as opposed to being just a director where they have a formula and stuff that they’re following and I don’t feel like I have as much control within the confines of the script or the production.
CB: That’s what struck me seeing you work while at Alma’s workshop. I don’t exactly remember how Alma introduced you, but it was something like: Conor’s here to document; and I was kind of like: Okay, whatever. But then I remember you were in the corner turning on a light table with these jars of hand-made inks sitting on top and I was like: Oh, this is somebody who really cares about images! And that, to me, is very important, because my background is also experimental film and video. And as an artist, you always think about the world of documenting as somewhat different, right, as that kind of talking head version of whatever documentary tends to look like. But you were thinking about colour and textures and reflections, and were immersed in the creation of the image, and I thought: This is something different. I was really struck by that.
CM: That’s nice, yeah, I think it’s that I gotta keep these jobs interesting for myself as a creative person. In a perfect world, I would have infinite money, and it would be like: Conor, you can film slow motion trees blowing in the wind and make a 20-hour-long film that people have to go sit through at the Metro Cinema. But with those documentations of another artist’s practice, I feel like I’m able to be creative and try to be reflective of their aesthetic. I feel like I have a lot more creative control with a project like that.
CB: You’re documenting the artist—not just documenting their work, but also their practice—so it makes sense to want viewers to see what that feels like. I have a million questions now just based on this thread, but maybe to back up a second, can you talk a bit about how you got into making films in the first place? Why film and why documentary? What led you toward that?
CM: My dad is a professional actor and a public school teacher. Growing up, my brother and I were running around in local theatres or on film and TV sets. Both my parents were very encouraging and when we were teenagers they bought a super high-end MiniDV camera for us to use and make silly videos with. We used to make claymations and do lots of performing. I went to Stage Polaris, which was like a theatre school for kids in the 90s, and then I went to Victoria School for the Arts for junior high and high school. At Vic we had a film and TV class, and I remember in grade 10 our teacher, Mr. Jackson, who really knew his stuff, put on Federico Fellini’s Amarcord (1973), so I got to see that when I was like 15. We got to do a film noir kind of recreation of The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941) and all these things where we got to just like, shoot stuff.
CB: Was it always doing recreations of existing works?
CM: No, there was original stuff too. Really goofy stuff, like high school kids do. You know, I was thinking about this recently, because I have a daughter who’s almost 13, and because of social media, kids now, when they’re producing things, it’s kind of like: Is this going to be public? I think there was a benefit to knowing: No, this is just going to be shown on a screen for a few people, and it’s not going to go online. You could embarrass yourself a little bit more and not be as worried that it was gonna live on forever, because most of these things we made in high school, they’re on VHS tapes and I don’t know if they’re playable anymore.
CB: Yeah.
CM: I think it was my dad who was like: Well, you really need to go down to FAVA (Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta). He knew people that were involved with the organization, and I guess the rest is history. It sort of just snowballed. And I think the draw to documentary, part of it—and I’ve maybe talked about this in interviews before—is actually just the feasibility aspect in terms of not needing a big crew. I can just get a camera and start shooting stuff. I like stories, I like visiting with people, and I like learning. I like hearing people talk about their craft, or their profession, or their life stories. I find it interesting. And, being able to document it—there’s a certain privilege and responsibility with it too. You know, documentary has this long history of extraction, of taking stories and then capitalizing on them, or manipulating them for the director or producer’s own ends to sensationalize something. I think it was in university where I started reading about Fourth Cinema1Attributed to Māori filmmaker Barry Barclay from a lecture he gave at the Auckland University Film and Media Studies Department on September 17, 2002. Fourth Cinema, sometimes referred to as Indigenous Cinema, describes a move away from the gaze prioritized in First cinema, where the camera points toward a community from the perspective of the colonizer. Representing Indigenous communities from within, Fourth Cinema allows for a centering of Indigenous experiences and perspectives. and the ethics behind really being part of the communities that you’re filming, and telling the stories in a good way. I mean, I hope I’m doing that, you know. That’s one thing; you’re like: Am I doing this right? I think so. But there are also challenges to that, too, because sometimes I wonder if maybe I sensationalized something a little bit more, the film would gain more traction with distributors and audiences, because they expect certain kinds of conflict to drive the narrative. And if I’m not highlighting those conflicts, I wonder, am I missing out on like these emotional beats that would draw in wider audiences? With nanekawâsis (2024), for example, so much of George Littlechild’s story comes from his experience as a 60s scoop foster child. But in that film, George and I didn’t want that to be the whole thing. Obviously it’s a part of his life, but I think in a lot of other films that would have been the central motif. So, yeah, trying to find joy and bring that forward, as opposed to the darkness, you know?
CB: Your presence as a maker and community member and the relationship that you have with George and the other artists you highlight in your work are also visible in the style of filmmaking that you work in. When you talk about extractive works, formally those often look like two people sitting on couches in a room that’s in some rented Airbnb, not in their own home, with a camera directed straight on them. But you approach getting to know the folks that are in your work by spending time with them, and I’m imagining there’s tons more footage that doesn’t make it into that final cut, or isn’t even recorded in the first place. It makes sense to me that once you get to know someone and you know their story, part of that story may contain darkness, but that isn’t the thing that you talk about all the time, or how you think about that person, or how they think about themselves. So, that starts to become more visible in the way that you work as well. Was it a conscious decision to make experimental documentaries as opposed to traditional or standard documentaries? I was reading that your introduction to working with film was an analog introduction. Did that background of working with the material help shape that direction?
CM: Yeah, I guess so. I mean, working with analog film wasn’t until my early 20s. Prior to that it was VHS and Digital8 and mini DV and we were digitizing the footage to edit. But yeah, the 16mm class that I took at FAVA, taught by aAron munson and Rick Gustavson, was also around the time that I saw Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983). I reference that film anytime I write a grant application, I’m like, I want this to be just like Sans Soleil. You know these sort of essay films, like F for Fake by Orson Welles. I haven’t really made an essay film, but it’s always in the back of my head. I think part of it is that I’ve seen lots of conventional documentaries and I’m so bored by the end, because the beats are all the same. I guess I’m always trying to think about how I can deviate from that a little bit. The other documentary that really blew my mind when I saw it is called Iraq In Fragments (James Longley, 2006). I saw that at the Global Visions Film Festival (now Northwest Film Festival) in the early 2000s, and that totally blew my mind in terms of documentary form. I set out to shoot nanekawâsis all on film but, as time went on, I realized how unsustainable that was, from a cost perspective, but also a lot of times, I had to go film with George by myself, and to run a film camera and get sound and all that by yourself is super difficult. So I was like: Okay, I’ll just shoot some stuff digitally. But, obviously, I like the aesthetics of film and the way it looks. I also really like how, when you’re shooting on film you just have this much time to shoot, and that’s all you got.
CB: I think I asked that question too, because I was introduced to filmmaking on 16mm film, and it sets up a particular kind of framework for working, it really did inform the way that I think about time in moving images. Even how you plan to work with film is a unique way of working. As you say, you can’t do it all, or you can’t do some parts by yourself. I feel like it shaped my sensibilities as a maker, even when I’m shooting video.
CM: Yeah, definitely with editing too. I’ve been asked to edit other people’s projects and I’m like: Okay, well, just so you know, I’m a very simple editor. I do cuts, maybe the odd fade, but I don’t know effects and I like to keep things simple. I think that stemmed from learning on film, you know, working on a Steenbeck,2Steenbeck refers to a brand of flatbed editors, where celluloid film and sound stock are cut, and spliced together as part of the analog filmmaking process. for example. But something else I was thinking about, one of the challenges of working with film in documentary, in my experience, is that you roll the camera and it’s running and someone’s talking, and I find it’s difficult to be listening to them and paying attention to the camera, because you’re like: Is it gonna run out of film? I don’t know if I really like that feeling, because I think if you’re shooting an interview, you should be dialed in on the subject. One documentary that really inspired IIKAAKIIMAAT (2023) with Lauren (Crazybull) is this NFB film by Loretta Todd called Hands of History (1994). It was all shot on 16mm; it’s beautiful, especially the way that film renders paintings and the colours that come through. That was the reason for shooting with Lauren on film, and later, to shoot with George on film. 16mm really honours their paintings. If I could go back in time to when film was really cheap and there were labs in Edmonton…but, you know, it’s more about economics now, right?
CB: And how you can be creative economically. I wanted to ask a bit more about essay films as being the way that you think about making your work. Because I actually feel like a lot of your longer form documentaries slip into essay film mode at times, when your voice does seem to be very present, even aesthetically, and then kind of like layering back to the individual that you’re interviewing. Maybe it’s something about these layers of different styles and formats coming together, and essay film being one of them.
CM: I mean, I’m flattered that you say that. In hindsight, in some ways, McDavid (2015) is very much an essay film. It’s a piece of docufiction if you will. That’s not me in the film per se, but maybe it’s like an alter ego or my subconscious, because I am an Oilers fan, and I live in Edmonton, and I’ve lived here my whole life, and blah, blah, blah, and those were all my real clothes. But yeah, I need to do a true essay film, something where, you know, if I’m not narrating it, then maybe I’ve written all of the narration. The Vale (2012) is my closest work to an essay film, and that is kind of a poem to Mill Creek Ravine that I made the year Chris Marker died, and that’s all I was thinking about. I wrote the entire narration for that film, and had an amazing local actor (the late Anne McGrath) narrate it. That’s my closest essay film, but I’d like to get more overt with it. The cool thing with essay films is that they’re sort of genre-bending in a lot of ways. There are so many different kinds of essay films. And I guess that’s the appeal to me, that essay films can be very experimental.
CB: What you seem to also be homing in on is that desire to share your own voice, whether it’s through voiceover or storytelling or a written script. Actually, I think all of your films do that, but I think because you brought up McDavid within this conversation on the essay film, when I watched that, I was thinking: Oh, this feels very much like a response to what it means to live in this place, because you begin by talking about the arena being built. So, it’s very clearly based on someone’s experience of thinking about what it means to live in Edmonton, right?
CM: Yeah.
CB: And I feel like that’s what essay films allow for—a chance for a filmmaker to share their voice.
CM: I think the challenge, though, is—say you were to think about nanekawâsis: there are elements of essay filmmaking in it, but I’m still trying to focus on the subject and really elevate their story and let their voice speak for themselves. I’m really cautious to not have the quote unquote voice of God, which is typical in so many classic, Ken Burns-style documentaries where it’s like: “And then George Littlechild moved to Vancouver from Edmonton.” I think there’s also the idea that—and maybe this is just the pretentious artist in me, or maybe I read this somewhere years ago—audiences are smarter than I think mainstream cinema gives them credit for. From my own experience, when I go see a film, I don’t want it to tell me everything. I want to leave the film with lots of questions and I want to be thinking through as the film is progressing. I guess I want to be someone who is producing films that people either have more questions about afterwards, or have questions about during the film, or questions they’re continually reflecting and meditating on. I keep threatening to make a slow cinema film, but then I chicken out and get cold feet, because I’m like: Oh, people are gonna hate this. And the challenge of being an audience member watching it. But I have to remind myself: Wait a minute, I love those kinds of films. There is always an audience. I just watched this Vietnamese movie called Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Phạm Thiên Ân, 2023). It’s long—three hours or so, with like 10-minute-long shots where a guy goes from one spot to another, and then talks to somebody about existentialism or God or whatever. You think about Béla Tarr, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. I love those moments when you’re just sitting in a theatre or in your basement and just in a dream world. But to actually produce those films, I’m such a chicken, because I’m like: Oh, nobody’s gonna want to see this. In the screenings for nanekawâsis, I would look around during some long shots and people were getting fidgety. Maybe it’s the age we live in, but I have this anxiety about how the audience is feeling. It’s a weird thing as a filmmaker, because I want to be really, really selfish, but I don’t think that’s my nature. So, I’m kind of like: Oh, I got to think about everybody else watching the movie too.
CB: Experimental cinema has its own audience, and there are festivals dedicated to it, and probably with an experimental film, you’re not going to really see it in a context where an audience isn’t ready for it.
CM: I don’t know, though, because even with nanekawâsis, it’s experimental and it brought in a lot of people that I don’t think were expecting it to be experimental because of the documentary alignment to it. George had lots of his family members come to the screenings, and just art lovers and Indigenous art lovers—and they’re not used to that form.
CB: I was just remembering this artist talk that I went to where Ernie Gehr was speaking. He is an American experimental filmmaker who makes very structural experimental films. And I don’t remember which film he was discussing, but he was talking about what led him to make that particular film was that he was really into early Martin Scorsese films. In the film, the characters are in a back alley, and while the dialog is going on you can see the rain pooling on the ground in the shot. And for Ernie, when they cut away, he wanted to sit with that rain on the ground for a while longer. And that’s what inspired his work. That always stuck with me, it’s the things you notice in a narrative film or in the world that you want to just stay with for a while longer. Working experimentally allows you to do that.
CM: Yeah.
CB: I think that being a painter allows you to do that as well. So, in that sense, that sort of time that you take does really still centre the artist and their work. You know, maybe a general audience isn’t so used to, or familiar with thinking about that, but I think from an artist’s perspective, watching it, it’s like: Oh yeah, this all makes sense. I feel like I’m getting into those paintings, actually.
CM: Yeah, that’s a good way to think about it. I think we’re just in—I don’t want to say the worst timeline, because I try to be positive, especially around the kids—but yeah, it’s just a really weird time with cell phones and short form content. (Every time I hear that word ‘content’, I want to die.) But you know, maybe there is also hope, because I’ve seen some articles about how Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids are yearning for cellphone-free spaces. And I know that attendance at Metro Cinema has been really good over the past little while, so people still want to go to the theatre and have that shared experience where phones aren’t present, and you’re actually going to sit through something.
CB: And see different styles or forms, or ways of thinking about moving images. That’s what I’m excited about. And it is true, in a weird way, there are so many moving images now, which should be a good thing, but so many of them are just not exciting, or they’re standard in a way that’s not interesting.
CM: Yeah, yeah.
CB: People can do whatever they want; you’d think they’d be weirder, actually.
CM: We’re in a state of commodification, where “creators” don’t want to make it weird, because so much of the stuff you see on social media, it’s selling something,
CB: Yeah, even if you don’t know or realize it. Getting back to something we started talking about earlier, I’m very taken by how many of your works highlight other artists.
CM: It’s kind of an accident in some ways, or maybe it started off as an accident, and now people think of me that way. It’s a tough one because it wasn’t like I purposefully set out to do work about people that either tell stories or make poetry or paint or sculpt, but it sort of just has happened and maybe I don’t know what it is about. I’m trying to put my finger down on it, because, now that I’m reflecting on it, I’m like: Oh, am I just pigeonholing myself into this genre? But, I think the simplest answer is that I love art; I love seeing art. It makes me really happy. I like hanging out with artists. You know, they’re my people.
CB: Yeah.
CM: I like talking about weird stuff and hearing stories, so I think that’s what keeps me going in that field. I was filming with Cheyenne Rain Legrande for the Edmonton Arts Council last week; we had met a couple times, but we had never spent any one-on-one time together and by the end of our shoot I was like: Oh, this is awesome. We were having a really good time. We were just playing. We were shooting Cheyenne putting beads up and down in slow motion, using weird angles and putting drapes in front of everything. You know, part of it is that when I work with artists there’s this understanding of play, and maybe that stems from growing up in theatre and doing lots of improv. I haven’t done improv as an adult, but as a kid I was always doing make believe, playing house or with action figures. My parents tell me that, when I was a little kid, they thought maybe I had ADHD. They were like: Yeah, Conor didn’t want to sit at his desk, he wanted to be playing that he was a superhero, or a Ninja Turtle. Everything was always make believe. And so, I think that continues on into my professional life; when working with artists there’s this willingness to just be creative. They’re like: Oh yeah you want to shoot a video about me? Let’s be creative, let’s goof around and have fun. I didn’t know George before making nanekawâsis and now, you know, he’s my uncle. We’re super tight. And some of the best times I had making that film were just us driving or walking around, whether it was in Edmonton or on Vancouver Island, and just laughing about silly things. George is a real, true performer, and when the camera came out he could just dial it in and go into his spiel. But the most fun was when we were just being silly, and I had the camera going, and he was like: Oh, you’re gonna film my haircut? There’s a scene where he’s talking about this painting inspired by his trip to Mexico. We were watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, and then his partner and I went out into their back garden, and the sun was in golden hour, and I was like: George, come on we have to shoot something. He was in his pajamas, and I was like: Let’s just shoot an interview. George was really into it; it’s my favourite moment in that film, because it’s just us being creative—and by that point he trusted me to do my thing. So yeah. That’s a really long answer, but I think I focus on artists because I like sharing that kind of creative joy.
With ôtênaw (2017), Dwayne Donald (whose stories guide the film) didn’t really know me when we started. He had seen my McDavid film, and that’s where that initial trust came from. He was like: Conor’s an Oilers fan; he’s going to do something different. And I think he was stoked, because I kept telling him: I don’t want this to be just me filming your walk. I want to make it my own thing and there’s this shared end result.
CB: You talk so much about storytelling, too, and, first off, I feel like that’s what artists do, and that’s what artworks do. So, you have that in common with the film’s subjects. But also, there’s this layering that happens materially and creatively in your work and an understanding that you’re going to add your own sensibility to the film. Pitching something like that to an artist, they’re gonna be like: Yes—and maybe even imagine what you mean, even if it’s not it exactly. Whereas, pitching that to someone else, maybe they’re like: I have no idea what you mean. With artists, you’re speaking the same language from the start, which, I imagine, gives you a lot of creative freedom and ideas.
CM: Yeah, and maybe this is why I can’t get a “normal job”.
[Both laugh.]
Because I sort of work in a stream of consciousness way, you know what I mean? Even when applying for grants—and, I mean, this is common for a lot of artists, but the project I describe in the grant I write is usually very different from the end result, because I love this stream of consciousness, where I don’t have a storyboard. I’ve got these ideas, I see these colours, I know I want to use this lens, I want to use this music, but I don’t really know the end goal. Everything that I’ve done so far, for better or worse, has been formed in the edit.
CB: I have been thinking a lot about documenting, recording, and archiving while watching your work, but hearing that so much comes together in the edit, which I really relate to, it shifts what I’m thinking about with your work. When I think of documentary as archive, I think about recording a person, a moment, a place, or a perspective, and then having that on the record. But I feel like the way that—maybe not all, but some—editors work is also by thinking about moving imagery as a record, and then sculpting it together to make something make sense. In terms of how you think about making work, I’m imagining that you have all this material to begin with—and maybe you don’t entirely know how your edits are gonna go—but you sort of know how you want things to unfold. Do you think about editing as the creative time of shaping and figuring it out, or do you have more of a master plan when you’re shooting?
CM: Definitely no master plan. Lots of times, like, in the film about my brother Riley, Very Present (2020), the footage you see was most of what I shot. There were maybe three or five minutes of extra footage on the cutting room floor and that was it. I think it’s a bit of both, because I very much love being behind the camera; I love operating the camera. In fact, I despise editing. I don’t like the solitariness of it, and being alone in this room staring at a computer. I love going to somebody’s house with the camera, and meeting people, and framing shots, and lighting things. That’s what I love doing; the editing has just come about as a necessity, where, in order to contain a budget, I’m like: Well, I’ll just do the editing myself. Even if I was paying an editor, I would probably just be over their shoulder, bossing them around, so I’m like: Why don’t I just do that myself? But, that said, it is fun when an edit comes together.
CB: How did you come to make nanekawâsis? Because you mentioned that you didn’t know George before making the film. How is it that you come to think: Oh, I’m gonna make a film with this person?
CM: When I was making IIKAAKIIMAAT with Lauren, I was talking to my friend Dr. Matthew Wildcat, who’s a professor at the U of A. His family knows George quite well and have for years. And Matt was like: You know, George has a very similar story to Lauren’s; it’d be interesting if you interviewed him and included him as an Elder in the story. So I did that, but then during the edit, I was like: Oh, this doesn’t work. His story is way too big, and it takes the audience away from Lauren’s story, and it’s confusing. But I had spent all this money and shot all this footage, so I called George up and was like: Hey, I got some bad news and some good news. The bad news is, I’m cutting you out of this film, and the good news is, I’m gonna make a feature film about you! I sort of just said it and then I got a Canada Council grant for that film, and then COVID happened, so there were all these delays, but it was really a happy accident, and maybe it wouldn’t have worked if we didn’t click. I went out to Vancouver with my brother Riley, and longtime friend Dmitri Bandet, and we spent a few days filming with George, and really hit it off. Then he came to Edmonton, and then I’d go back out there. Every time we were visiting, it was like: Let’s keep shooting; I’m coming to town, let’s shoot more. Or I’d be like: Oh George, I’m filming a different project on the island; how about I come see you after and just sleep on your couch and keep it going? To George’s credit—and you know, maybe it’s because he’s a professional artist—he had time to just say: Yeah, my schedule is open, I’m just painting in the garage. Come hang out.
CB: Amazing.
CM: Yeah, it was such a good experience.
CB: And what about with IIKAAKIIMAAT? Did you know that you wanted to make something about Lauren’s work originally?
CM: I think we were introduced through some friends. I was familiar with her work, as a fan, similar with George. I remember seeing her work and being like: Whoa, this is so cool; I love these paintings! And then we met, and I think at that time, I was really dead set on shooting a documentary in 16mm. I thought: This is gonna be my thing. That was around the time I saw Hands of History, and I just thought it would be a good collaboration, and again, we hit it off and became pals. Everything seems so foggy now—you know, something led to something led to something. That’s the creativity of even how the works get started, I think there has to be a certain degree of reciprocity. You know, if she was like: Hey, I gotta move some paintings, can you help me with that? I’d be like: Yeah, for sure. You know, different ways of becoming friends. Even if we go further back, I did a piece with Tiffany Shaw Collinge for the CBC, that actually might have been my first artist documentary. That was a happy accident where a film friend of mine couldn’t do it so they asked me to step in. And then Tiffany and I became pals and I shot some family photos for her, and we shared lots of parenting stories and just became pals. Like I said earlier, you know, I like hanging out with artists.
CB: To have a body of work that illustrates that, or shows that to others is really wonderful, because you don’t see it so often.
CM: I’ve never thought about that.
CB: I mean, obviously I think very highly of artists and creative people who are doing artistic work. But I often think about how, as a society, we really devalue it. I mean, I think even for ourselves, we devalue it.
CM: For sure.
CB: Highlighting those experiences and ways of thinking about the world—I just think we need more of that. So, it’s really awesome to know how it happens.
CM: Yeah, I was shooting something for the National Film Board as a cinematographer a couple weeks ago, and we got to shoot Elder/kokum Kathy Hamelin making bannock on 16mm film. And I was sort of just pinching myself and like: Oh, it’s 2026 and you’re getting paid right now to shoot 16mm film? So, as annoyed as I can be with the state of filmmaking, or, when I don’t have work and I’m trying to find a normal job, I have to remind myself that I’ve been a professional filmmaker in Edmonton for the past 10 years now and it’s a job that, when things are going well, I love. I usually hire my brother Riley, and my friend Dmitri to work with me. It’s very privileged. But also, you know, if somebody wants to hire me for $100,000 annually with health benefits . . .
CB: And a pension.
CM: Yeah, I’m down. I’m down for that too.
[Both laugh.]
CB: I also wanted to ask you about film distribution. I had reached out to you back in the summer when I was doing this research for the La Lumiere Collective in Montreal on how difficult it is for artists to distribute films that are over 40 minutes. Because in this country, we don’t really have a lot of film festivals. You can show at all of them, and that’s not really necessarily going to help get your film out there. It’s a really difficult length of time to program, which is why shorts are often easier to program for a festival. We started this conversation talking about freelance work and hustle and the challenges of that. I’d love to hear what you think about the state of distributing artistic films.
CM: I’ve learned a lot in the past two years, since making nanekawâsis because with ôtênaw, you know, as a longer film, I think that showed at imagineNATIVE in Toronto, and following that, CFMDC and Vtape were both interested in it. And I was like: Oh, that’s so exciting. Sometimes I would find out where it was screening—at universities and at an art gallery. Actually, it was through Vtape that IIKAAKIIMAAT screened at the National Gallery in Washington, which I thought was really cool. But with nanekawâsis, the CBC had approached me about streaming it on CBC GEM, and it was like $10,000 for two years, which was cool. But you need to have errors and omissions insurance and a lawyer to vet the film in order to screen with them, and I had not done any of that. It didn’t even cross my mind that a mainstream broadcaster would be interested in the film. So, I paid a lawyer to tell me what I had to do to clear this for them, and I would have had to reopen the edit and remove stuff; we would have had to contact George’s foster family for permission, and it was just way more work than the $10,000 that CBC was offering. It was a major heartbreak for George, I felt like I really let him down because it didn’t work out.
CB: It shows you the difference, though, between mainstream documentary and artistic works, that legality is maybe why they shoot the way that they often shoot.
CM: Totally. Now I’m like: Oh, next time I make a film, I’m gonna have to hire a lawyer before I pick up a camera. But I don’t like thinking that way because I like to just pick up a camera, not really knowing what I’m doing, not really having a plan. I think it’s maybe better for me as a creative person to stay away from that stream of distribution and just continue with, you know, community screenings.
CB: I think this feature-length issue that La Lumiere Collective is thinking about is important, because at festivals, time is often a hot commodity. That’s why, often, at least in Canada, film festivals will have a small handful of features, and then, everything else is shorts programs, because they don’t have the real estate of time.
CM: That’s tricky, too, because I love short movies, but I’ve gone to film festivals before and sat through programs of short films, and I’m like: Oh, I’m exhausted.
People just expect free stuff now, you know. If I put in nanekawâsis on YouTube, maybe that’s a solution to it being seen. But then I feel like that undervalues everything that I’ve done.
CB: I don’t know. It’s kind of like when we were talking about writing grants; I feel like we should not have to spend so much time writing grants, because it’s just such a crapshoot.
CM: It’s a lottery.
CB: Yeah, and so then it’s like: Okay, how do we keep making work if distribution is also tricky.
CM: My master plan is to get a normal nine-to-five job, and then not put so much pressure on myself to get the grants in order to pay myself for groceries or for bills, just let the normal job take care of that, and then just make films for fun again.
CB: Yeah—but then you have time to make them.
CM: I know, because when I get home, I know I’m just gonna want to eat dinner, play with the kids, and play Lego.
CB: I think the arts councils should just give artists money.
CM: A universal basic income.
CB: Yeah, money that doesn’t have to be endlessly explained as to how you’re spending it, because we’re gonna spend it on making art. There was that study out of Ireland that just came back where they gave artists a UBI, and the program more than paid for itself, artists spent the additional funds within the community, hiring people and this and that.
CM: That’s the thing—whenever I make something, I’m hiring local people to work with me. The money is staying within Edmonton.
CB: Andevengoing further than that, right? Because, then those people are able to keep making their artwork and they’re spending money to hire others and buy materials.
I think making films is an incredible trade and a skill that a lot of people—most people—don’t know how to do, and we would collapse if we didn’t have them to keep making us movies. People really do value film and art. Even though they might not recognize that they value it, I’d argue most people are spending a lot of their time streaming films and television, right? It’s a huge industry and economy that we tend to ignore, even ourselves.
CM: Yeah, that was my whole upbringing growing up with an actor dad. It was always kind of like: The arts are so important, but we live in Alberta, it’s not super valued here, so you’re gonna struggle.
CB: Ugh, yeah. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we lose so many artists. This is why I think I was so hung up on thinking about documenting and archiving artists’ voices, because, there’s so many artists who just stop being artists because they can’t afford to keep doing it. It’s such a shame; we lose so much.
CM: Yeah. I mean, we got to be hopeful.
Conor McNally is a filmmaker based in amiskwaciy (Edmonton, AB). He has made numerous films to date, including ôtênaw (2017), an experimental 40-minute documentary following the oral storytelling of Dr. Dwayne Donald. In 2020, Conor was commissioned by the National Film Board of Canada to create a short film about his brother Riley. The resulting film, Very Present, was screened nationally along with other short films detailing experiences of isolation. In 2024, he produced, directed, shot and edited nanekawâsis, a feature-length film focusing on the celebrated and beloved nêhiyaw painter George Littlechild. The film premiered at DOXA and has gone on to screen at film festivals nationally and internationally. Conor is a father and a proud citizen of the Métis Nation within Alberta.
Filmography:
The Vale (2012) is a meditation on the importance of “green spaces” in an urban setting, and the ways in which locales are shaped and imprinted by historical events. It is an ode to one sacred site in particular, a poem about how nature inspires both the mind and feet to wander.
McDavid (2015): A portrait of a sports fan’s twisted infatuation with a new “generational player.” Edmonton, Alberta serves as the backdrop of how urban identity and the genuine spirit of sports fandom are corrupted.
ôtênaw (2017) is a film documenting the oral storytelling of Dwayne Donald, an educator from Edmonton, Alberta. Drawing from nêhiyawak philosophies, he speaks about the multilayered histories of Indigenous peoples’ presence both within and around amiskwacîwâskahikan, or what has come to be known as the city of Edmonton.
Very Present (2020): How does prolonged confinement shape our experience of time? Filmmaker Conor McNally explores the question in the company of his brother Riley, a young man who’s learning to cope with a new—yet strangely familiar—reality.
IIKAAKIIMAAT (2023) is a short documentary focusing on the life and work of Blackfoot and Dene artist Lauren Crazybull. The film provides viewers with a personal story of resilience.
nanekawâsis (2024):George Littlechild ia a celebrated and beloved nêhiyaw (Cree) artist. At 65 years of age, Littlechild shares his wisdom, perspectives on social issues and Indigenous history, and insights into his personal history and artistic career. A proud Two Spirit person, Littlechild has channeled his desire for healing into the bold and colourful works of art that characterize his unique artistic vision.
Footnotes:
- 1Attributed to Māori filmmaker Barry Barclay from a lecture he gave at the Auckland University Film and Media Studies Department on September 17, 2002. Fourth Cinema, sometimes referred to as Indigenous Cinema, describes a move away from the gaze prioritized in First cinema, where the camera points toward a community from the perspective of the colonizer. Representing Indigenous communities from within, Fourth Cinema allows for a centering of Indigenous experiences and perspectives.
- 2Steenbeck refers to a brand of flatbed editors, where celluloid film and sound stock are cut, and spliced together as part of the analog filmmaking process.