Plays January 30, 8:30pm at Cinematheque

In 2005, Winnipeg filmmaking collective L’atelier national du Manitoba received a treasure trove of archival video footage from a CKY TV dumpster. The collective used the footage to create Death by Popcorn: The Tragedy of the Winnipeg Jets. An infamous legal battle followed, with CKY challenging L’atelier’s right to use the footage. Much has been written about the copyright issues. But what to make of the film itself?

Death by Popcorn is an ambitious found footage video collage constructed out of the discarded, half-forgotten ephemera of local Winnipeg television and the original Winnipeg Jets. It’s a manic mess of a movie, but it’s supposed to be. Footage of hockey games, local sportscasters, commercials, and bizarre interviews tangle together to create a movie that feels like it was built from the debris of the Winnipeg Arena.

When it’s at its best, Death by Popcorn is very entertaining. I laughed out loud many times during its 65 minute running time. Any Winnipegger will appreciate the static-sprinkled commercials for perogy-makers or Nick Hill shouting, “C’mon down!” from beneath his cowboy hat. The movie feels tailor-made for Winnipeg kids of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and it sort of feels like a look inside the mind of those generations, our memories littered with snippets of old TV jingles, news anchors, and Teemu Selanne skating down the rink.

But it never amounts to much more than that and I don’t think it’s trying to; Death by Popcorn accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. But The Tragedy of the Winnipeg Jets is just that: a tragedy. It’s a story of a city losing its identity, and I can’t help feeling like this is a bit of a missed opportunity to really tell that story. Any Winnipegger will find a lot to like in Death by Popcorn, but I just wish it offered a little more depth.

Published in Volume 68, Number 17 of The Uniter (January 22, 2014)