Yellowknife (Dec 10/04) - How many movies have you seen where the protagonist lives in an apartment on Gitzel Street, frequents the Black Knight, and hopes to represent the NWT at the national bocce ball championships?

Versus Ivan is certainly unique in that respect.

It's also the only feature film where the Yellowknifer office makes an appearance in the background.

Chris Gamble's year-and-a-half labour of love has its world premiere tonight at NACC at 7:30 p.m.

"We had planned to do a test screening, but I guess the media screening ended up being that," said Gamble.

On Monday night, Gamble, along with his brother and co-producer Sam Gamble, expended his nervous energy by watching the audience, not the film. It was the first time members of the public had seen the finished product.

The brothers were attuned to every chuckle, whisper and smile.

"Every time people fidgeted, we noticed," said Gamble.

He actually made a few more tweaks to the film after the preview, adding music where scenes seemed quiet and the audience too fidgety.

The dark comedy follows the journey Ivan takes after his world is turned upside down. The office worker has been receiving lunch boxes of food by mail for six years. When the packages stop coming, he's forced to deal with this and several other absurd things around him.

In the course of a week, Ivan deteriorates from a content, self-absorbed worker to a raving, starving insomniac.

His car and bike are stolen repeatedly, his favourite coffee blend vanishes from the Javaroma menu and he's haunted by an ever-present, yet never-seen, co-worker named Niko.

Most mysteries are solved, some remain unsolved, but ultimately Ivan has to learn to embrace change.

Gamble said the original script had a lot more themes running through it, but as the shooting and editing progressed, certain themes were emphasized and others faded away.

But still, "The journey that Ivan goes through is pretty much how I thought it would go," he said.

The film was shot over 18 days in July, with a cast and crew that Gamble estimates was 90 per cent made up of Yellowknife residents.

"The first week I learned more than in four years of school," said Gamble, who attended the Stage and Screen program at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.

Stars Liam Karry (Ivan) and Tennille Read (Miriya) were actor friends of Chris's from Queen's.

But Gamble maintains that, because of the support he received here, he could only have made Versus Ivan in Yellowknife.

The Yellowknife state of mind almost becomes an extra character and is a big part of the movie's charm.

Sound designer Michael Legedza was so taken with the sound of ravens, that their cawing often underlines Ivan's predicaments. A raven also takes a dump on Ivan's windshield, a scene which proved more difficult to shoot than you'd think.

The crew had to improvise with a sawed-off turkey baster.

They tried shooting the scene with the baster tip intact, only the splat ended up looking like a squiggly cake decoration.

"Actually it looked a lot like The Young and the Restless insignia," said Gamble.

The film's other main attraction is watching the comic turns of your friends and neighbours.

Ken Woodley's psychotic mailman, Hannah Clarke's demon child, Rick Poltaruk as Ivan's bocce ball-obsessed boss and the smiling face of Dave Lovell as the elusive Web Smart Assets employee Niko are a few of the stand-out performances.

Raising the money for the $90,000 budget was the job of Sam Gamble, who has a business degree. Eventually the brothers lined up grants from the NWT Arts Council and RWED's business development fund, as well as eight free Ottawa-Yellowknife airline tickets from Canadian North.

Bromley and Sons donated office space for the shoot and Jivko Engineering loaned the crew a pick-up and a flat bed truck.

Other businesses allowed the crew to shoot on their premises after hours.

Leading lady Read is returning for the premiere, which will be a relatively subdued affair.

No red carpet, no paparazzi, though Gamble said he does expect to dress up.

Versus Ivan timeline