Feature film, shot locally, will screen at Elite Theatre October 15 – 17
Dusk & Dawn, a feature film shot in and around St. Paul, is coming home for a screening.
Billed as a “satirical dramedy,” the film was written and directed by Roseanne Supernault. It was shot over two weeks in St. Paul, Elk Point, Frog Lake Cree Nation, and Fishing Lake Métis Settlement.
The movie will be shown at the Elite Theatre in St. Paul October 16 – 18.
The story centres on the characters Dusk and Dawn, two ex-lovers who rekindle their love on the night of their high school graduation. As they navigate the evening together with friends, they find themselves up against the ghosts of their past, discrimination, a love triangle, and decisions that will affect them for the rest of their lives.
Supernault’s acting career covers more than 20 years and includes two dozen supporting and starring roles on TV and in films. She has an acting role in Dusk & Dawn as well, but the feature is her first major step as writer, producer, and director.
The experience was “a lesson in biting off as much as I can chew,” she said. “Like more than I can chew, and then just chewing nonstop for the better part of five or six years.”
“I actually wrote Dusk & Dawn in early 2021. I went into university early 2022 or late 2021, around the time when Dusk and Dawn was in its infancy and I had to withdraw from university because I got a lead in a project,” Supernault said.
“I thought that I could do both, and it is possible to do both. But that is when you’re working on a specific type of project that is not seriously demanding. At the time I had two seriously demanding projects going — Dusk & Dawn being one, Cold Road being the other. And I had to withdraw. And then I also had [CTV comedy series] Acting Good that same year. So it just all came into this really intense culmination of making a choice.”
She postponed her studies and kept working. Which isn’t to say she didn’t get an education in the process.
“I like to joke to anyone I’ve worked with on Dusk & Dawn that I should get a degree for it once it’s complete, because that’s the level of work that it required,” she said.
One of the people who worked on the project is Michelle Wong, who is originally from St. Paul. Her family owned a Chinese restaurant, the Boston Café, on Main Street. The restaurant burned down in 2020, shortly after Wong’s family sold it.
“I grew up in the restaurant, so I was one of those little Asian kids that ran around that everybody knew and saw when they would come in and have chips and gravy or an egg roll kind of thing,” Wong said.
Wong is now a filmmaker herself, having studied and worked at the National Film Board. In 1992 she made a half-hour documentary, Return Home, about coming back to St. Paul to learn more about her grandparents and their stories as immigrants. She followed that up with Pieces of a Dream: A Story of Gambling, and she continues to work in the industry in various capacities.
It was Wong who suggested St. Paul as a shooting location for Dusk & Dawn.
“I got involved with the project because someone who knew Roseanne also knew me, and my specialty in the industry is business affairs for film and TV,” she said.
“Roseanne talked about her project being an Indigenous story about graduation in a small town, and what happens after graduation and the partying and stuff like that. She talked about wanting to put it in an accurate setting.
“And I said St. Paul is surrounded by three Indigenous communities. And I had done something in St. Paul a year earlier.”
It was during that project that Linda Sallstrom of St Paul/Elk Point Economic Development Alliance told Wong about funding for productions to shoot locally.
“I was excited about that and mentioned it to Roseanne, so Roseanne did a scout,” Wong said. “She came out and she looked at St. Paul and drove around. She was really excited and basically said, ‘this is perfect. This is exactly the place that I can see Dusk & Dawn happening at.’
“So that really started the ball rolling.”
Supernault grew up on East Prairie Métis settlement, west of Slave Lake. “I come from two communities. I’m also, on the other side of my family, from Whitefish Lake Atikameg. So it was very personal for me to represent that, and it was important for me to represent that in Dusk & Dawn,” she said.
The locations at Frog Lake and Fishing Lake matched her vision of the story, and the people in the region made the cast and crew feel welcome.
“Fishing Lake Métis Settlement and Frog Lake First Nation, and St. Paul and Elk Point and anyone else in that area were so welcoming and generous to open their home up to us to allow me to tell this story in an authentic way. And I’m so happy with the result that we got because when I look at the film, it looks like my home,” Supernault said.
Getting that part right was crucial to the project, Supernault says, because she considers the film to be “a love letter to my hometown.”
“And love is complex and deep and wonderful and all these great things. And sometimes you got a bone to pick too. There’s a little bit of a bone to pick there, but it all is with love,” she said.
She’s more than happy with the visual result. Cinematographer and director of photography Ian Seabrook brought his creative eye and his deep experience to the project.
“We got so many lovely cinematic shots that are so beautiful and tremendous,” Supernault said. “We were so happy to have Ian on this project. He’s a wonderful talent and he has such an eye for a scene, and he’s worked on big projects in Hollywood.
“It looks gorgeous, it’s beautiful. And that’s in large part due to our collaboration and to his eye and what he’s able to deduce from a scene. It’s just fantastic. He has a fantastic eye,” she said.
With her own roots in both Métis and Cree cultures, Supernault understands the distinctions that exist between them. At the same time she appreciates the shared experiences that come from their kinship.
That’s why she wanted to film on a First Nations reserve and on a Métis settlement.
“We have our own languages and dialects so it’s important to differentiate and share that there is some uniqueness about each group, but that doesn’t mean we’re like alien to each other,” she said.
Having local people appear as on-screen extras is part of the crew’s tribute to the region.
“There’s a graduation scene, and we kept a lot of local extras who walk the stage to collect their diploma from the principal in the show,” Supernault said. “I’d really love for them to all see themselves walking that stage. That’s my shout-out to those local communities and to the First Nations people and Métis people from there.
“I’m really excited for them to see their faces on the big screen.”
Supernault conceived the project as a dark comedy. As she worked on it, she says it developed more into satire. The film’s publicity refers to it as a “satirical dramedy.” Whatever you call it, Supernault says the idea is to have a good laugh.
“I think sometimes we all take ourselves too seriously,” she said. “One of the reasons I was making a dark comedy is because we were inundated with Indigenous stories in Canada that were dramatic and emotionally intense.
“And I know my people, we’re always laughing. We’re always telling jokes. We’re always sharing stories that create laughter, and I wanted to see that reflected in the grand scheme of things. And I wanted to see that on TV and in the movie theatre.
“And I can’t tell you how, oh man, the audience at Calgary Film Festival was just roaring with laughter and I am so grateful for it.”
