Filmmaker reminisces about his youth while creating romantic comedy

Correction: Darrell Dennis is a member of the Adams Lake Indian Band, not Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc as first reported.

A First Nations filmmaker from British Columbia dipped into some of his fondest youthful memories to create his latest project.

For Darrell Dennis, a member of the Adams Lake Indian Band, the result is Sweet Summer Pow Wow, a romantic comedy that will screen in theatres across Canada starting Aug. 22.

Dennis wrote and directed the film about a young couple, Jinny and Riley, played by Tatyana Rose Baptiste and Joshua Odjick. 

The teens face obstacles during their summer of love, which blossoms on the pow wow circuit.

“It's a movie that I guess has been a long time in coming,” Dennis said. “It's really is a love letter to my youth, travelling around the pow wow circuit. 

“Growing up in the interior of B.C., I grew up on kind of an isolated reserve. And one of our favourite things during the summertime was to go to all the pow wows as a good way for us to get out there and meet people from the other reserves in the other communities and, naturally, to meet girls from other communities.”

As Dennis, who is in his early 50s, grew older he would reminisce about the “innocent time” of his youth. He’s long had a desire to create a film depicting those days.

“As I got older, I noticed that there was no romance movies for Indigenous people,” he said. “There was no innocent love stories for our people. So, I really felt like that was kind of a topic I wanted to write about. And so, I drew on my experiences as a teenager travelling the pow wow circuit and used that as a topic for a romance movie.”

Dennis said he does see a bit of himself in the lead male character.

“I wasn't as cool as Riley,” he said. “I would never have been able to get a girl like Jinny. I was like really shy.”

If he were to have a conversation with a girl while he was growing up, it was, in all likelihood, because she was the one who initiated the chat, Dennis said.

“I guess Riley is more of an aspirational character. There is Riley in me, but more I wish of what I could have been.”

Dennis directed another comedy, The Great Salish Heist, which was in Canadian theatres last year.

“For the longest time, a lot of Indigenous films were made by non-Indigenous people,” he said. “And I think for the longest time that was how they were comfortable seeing us, either as a problem to be solved or as a culture to be preserved.”

But things have changed.

“Now that a lot of our people are making our own films, we are the ones that are wanting to tell our own stories,” he said. “In most of those stories, we are wanting to centre ourselves as the heroes. We are wanting to make more mainstream movies about ourselves. We're wanting to be the heroes in the Marvel movies.

“I think that my generation now is making those movies that we saw other cultures doing. I think that's the reason why, for the longest time, we didn't see ourselves in those movies because it was not our people making those movies. And they didn't know how to portray us.”

Legendary actor Graham Greene, a member of Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario, has a supporting role in Sweet Summer Pow Wow. 

Greene was also in The Great Salish Heist.

Dennis said he has known Greene for several years, ever since the latter was cast in a TV pilot for APTN based on Dennis’ stage play Tales of an Urban Indian.

“Since then (Greene’s) said that anything I write, he’ll come in and do,” said Dennis. “So, we've had a great relationship ever since then. From now on, every movie I write there has to be a part for Graham Greene in it.”

Sweet Summer Pow Wow was first screened at the Victoria Film Festival on Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14) this year. The film captured the festival’s Audience Favourite award.

It has been shown at other festivals across the country since and was picked as the runner-up as Audience Favourite at an Oakville festival in Ontario.

“Audiences across Canada have really been embracing it and loving it,” Dennis said. “So, we're very happy now that the rest of Canada, mainstream audiences, get to see it. And we're very excited.”

Sweet Summer Pow Wow will be shown at various Cineplex Odeon and Landmark Cinemas.

“It's been a film that not just Natives have been enjoying but non-Natives have been really enjoying it,” Dennis added. “And we're excited for all audiences to be able to get a little taste of the pow wow culture and be able to see Indigenous people in the lights, the romantic light, and not have to see us in those the trauma stories that they're so used to seeing us in.”