Newfoundland and Labrador documentary filmmaker Jamie Miller is helping bring a unique part of her province’s popular culture to the screen.
“In our generation, we grew up turning on our news station in the middle of the night and seeing just bonkers psychedelia content,” she said of her upbringing in St. John’s watching NTV, the local television network co-founded by media mogul Geoffrey Stirling.
“Interviews with eastern spirituality leaders, live feeds of fish tanks, UFO footage, Captain Newfoundland green screened on top of classic music videos, all kinds of stuff.”
The station bills itself on its website as having become the first 24-hour TV station in the world in the 1970s and is still owned by the Stirling family today.
The story of Stirling, who died in 2013, and the Captain Newfoundland character he created with his son, are set to be told in a documentary co-directed by Miller, 34 and Mike Feehan, 36, who live down the street from each other in St. John’s.
The project was one of a number of Canadian documentaries to get a funding boost this week, as Telefilm announced investments in 21 projects Thursday, totalling $4.9 million.
Fighting bad guys with meditation
Captain Newfoundland, the blue-cloaked “spirit of Newfoundland” with a face in the shape of the island, started appearing as a comic strip in print media such as the St. John’s Sunday Herald in 1979, as well as in segments on NTV.
According to the comic’s lore, the superhero’s ancestors came to Earth from another part of the cosmos and settled on Atlantis, of which Newfoundland is the last remaining tip.
“He’s a superhero that fought bad guys through the power of meditation and believed that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians could save the world through elevating their consciousness,” said Miller.
The documentary will explore not just the character and the comics but also Stirling and NTV.
“Every place has their own local TV news station or local network, but no one has an NTV,” said Feehan.
He pointed to one night in 2009 when he was watching an Elvis concert on NTV, and it was suddenly interrupted by footage of Captain Newfoundland in front of a green screen.
“I was like, ‘What the hell is this?’ I called NTV, I emailed them multiple times being like, ‘Please put this up on YouTube. Please make this accessible because this is the wildest thing I’ve ever seen, and I would hate for it to just be kind of lost as something that aired once.'”
Watch | Captain Newfoundland footage:
‘A psychedelic Forrest Gump life’
Feehan says after around a year of persistently emailing asking for the footage, Stirling called him out of the blue.
“I still don’t know how he got my phone number,” Feehan said.
Stirling talked to him about meditating in the pyramids, hiring Hollywood designers to create costumes, and about how he wanted to find the best comic book artists to bring his creations to life.
“There’s so many stories. It is like a psychedelic Forrest Gump life,” said Feehan.
Miller says the two directors are hoping to shoot their documentary next spring, with a release maybe a year down the road from that. She says the funding from Telefilm is what will allow the filmmakers to secure additional money and get he documentary off the ground.
“People have been trying to make the Geoff Stirling story locally for years, and no one’s gotten this far with it,” Miller said.
“It’s a really big deal. And everyone we talked to, especially Newfoundlanders, as soon as we tell them about it, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t wait.'”
Other projects to receive funding announced this week include Cut Print Thank You Bye, a documentary about the life of Dallas Buyers Club director Jean-Marc Vallée, Your Tomorrow, a documentary about the recent history of Ontario Place, that’s set to premiere at TIFF next month, and a new project called Finding Jodi from Satan Wants You directors Steve Adams and Sean Horlor.
Telefilm says that 122 projects were assessed, representing over $27.1 million in funding requests.
