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Konelīne: our land beautiful
Nettie Wild
Vancouver: Canada Wild Productions, 2016. 96 mins.
WINNER OF the Best Canadian Feature at the 2016 Hot Docs Festival, Nettie Wild's Koneline: our land beautiful weaves together stories of humanity's relationships with industry, the wilderness, and nature in northwestern British Columbia. Telling the story of a group of miners that wants to work with the locals, as well as Tahltan and other residents who are resistant to the mine's presence, the film begins with every sign of a text that offers argumentative pushes and empathetic shoves. Ultimately, Wild uses this persuasive mode of documentary to show that some matters are simply too large to be understood through binary formulations. The film does not judge what is right and what is wrong, does not privilege either the enterprise of industry or the conservation of the hinterland, and does not take sides between preservation and progress. In the process, Koneline opens up the structures on each side of these supposed conflicts and reveals their own layers of...