Port Moody filmmaker Eva Wunderman has been to Canada's high Arctic to film a reunion between Swedish and Inuit relatives, heard the stories of grieving Second World War vets in caves in Micronesia, and chronicled the lives of recovering crystal meth addicts.
But a film recounting community and business efforts to rebuild PoMo's Mossom Creek Hatchery after a 2013 fire appears to be winning her the most acclaim locally after it was posted to the volunteer organization's website last week.
Wunderman, who divides her time between Hope and Port Moody to run her film company, said she is pleased with the results of the Mossom doc even though her other projects kept her from being on hand for every milestone of the 17-month rebuilding.
Phoenix of Mossom Creek — After the Fire shows the devastation after a Dec. 13 fire destroyed the hatchery and education centre, and recounts how the community came together and a $1.2-million project was completed at roughly half the cost because of donated materials, time and resources.
Using her Canon XF 105, Wunderman shot the project in various stage of construction, including the grand opening and the day the first coho were released into Burrard Inlet.
"I had no idea about fish, none at all," said Wunderman, recalling how a chance conversation with Mossom volunteer Elaine Willis got the ball rolling on the volunteer film project. "As I went along, it became more interesting because I could see the potential... Then it grows with yourself learning about Mossom Creek and fish hatcheries."
The documentary might have lacked some of the drama of her other recent film projects but Wunderman said she enjoyed the lack of structure and the freedom to be spontaneous, not knowing how it would all turn out.
"I had to find the drama," she said, noting she discovered that element in the video she shot of thousands of coho that died when the oxygen was cut off by sediment in the plumbing after the fire. Also providing some tension was the concern about getting enough funds to rebuild the hatchery into a state-of-the art education facility.
"The community spirit was amazing to see," Wunderman said.
Now that the Mossom project is edited and available on the website (mossomcreek.org), Wunderman is busy with another project for Swedish TV that has an imminent deadline.
Called Edna's Bloodline, it follows the European ancestry of former Nunavut commissioner Edna Elias, whose great-grandfather was a gold-seeking Swede named Petter Norberg. Wunderman went to Kugluktuk, Nunavut in April to film a reunion between Elias and Frederick Norberg, a Swede and one of Petter Norberg's distant nephews.
It was a challenging project, working in an extremely cold environment, but Wunderman believes she succeeded in showing how the Inuit and Swedish families could come together despite their cultural divide.
At one point, Elias' family offers to cook some polar bear meat, which appears to shock the Swedish relatives, who were thinking about the politics of eating the meat of an endangered species while the Inuit look at it as a means of survival.
"It's seeing how we can understand each other," said Wunderman of her documentaries, including the Mossom film. "We don't have to always agree but [understanding] will help us get along in the world."
