Yellowknife (Apr 08/05) - Versus Ivan had its southern premiere at the Kingston Film Festival last month.

Yellowknifer Chris Gamble shot the dark comedy here last summer and held its world premiere at NACC last December.

Chris Gamble shoots a chase scene from the bed of a pickup truck on 50th Street last July. He's seeking a distribution deal for his movie Versus Ivan. - NNSL file photo

The screening in Kingston, Ont., sold out, which left writer and director Chris Gamble waiting outside while family and friends of cast and crew, as well as a few curious strangers, packed the theatre.

Many of the crew members were from Ontario and this was their first chance to see the finished film.

Gamble spotted Canadian filmmaker Don McKellar and Mike Weaver, director of Century Motel, hanging around outside the theatre prior to the showing.

He's not sure if McKellar and Weaver got in or if they even wanted to see his film.

It's for those sorts of chance meetings that Gamble is spending time in Toronto these days.

Gamble spent much of his time at the Kingston festival picking fellow filmmakers' brains on the Canadian Film Centre's feature film project.

The Film Centre fully funds the projects it accepts, with budgets of $250,000 or $500,000, compared to the $90,000 budget of Versus Ivan.

The Centre requires that the filmmaking team not have made more than one feature length film, so for Gamble, now is the perfect time to apply.

New script in works

As well as putting together a film presentation on the proposed Deh Cho bridge, Gamble is also working on a dramatic film script he describes as Donnie Darko meets Memento.

"I'm planning on sitting down this afternoon and getting another five or 10 pages written off," he said last Tuesday.

Gamble graduated from Queen's University's stage and screen program back in 2003. A sizeable contingent from Queen's showed up for the screening.

"All of my fourth year housemates came, but they didn't get in," he said. "I felt really bad."

Four of his professors attended the screening, including the head of the film department.

"People seemed really positive about it," he said. "It was a great audience. The only audience it might have been second to was the premiere's audience in Yellowknife. It would be pretty hard to top that."

The Kingston audience loved Versus Ivan, said Gamble. There was a question and answer session after the screening.

"They were asking about the stylistic choices and the budget," he said. "I'd tell people how 98 per cent of the budget came from the Northwest Territories."

Focus on Yellowknife

Gamble said the film, which was completely shot on location in Yellowknife, mostly in offices and on city streets, challenged the audience's preconceptions of the NWT.

"People seemed really interested in the Yellowknife aspect of it," he said.

"Especially with the opening scene of ice and snow, and after that it being summer the whole time. I don't think it's exactly what people expected."

Something people always ask is what the mosquitoes were like. In the nighttime dream sequence shot at Parker Park, viewers can see the little pests darting around in front of the camera.

Gamble let lead actor Liam Karry, the main mosquito sufferer turned dragonfly advocate, field those questions.

Gamble is still looking for a distribution deal to get Versus Ivan released into theatres or onto DVD.

There's also a new trailer that should help sell the film.

The first trailer, put together with just the opening footage shot months before the rest of the film, didn't give viewers a real sense of what the film was about, Gamble said.