HWY 99: creating a Canadian cinematic realism in the place of industrial transformation

The Sea to Sky Corridor, a seventy-kilometre stretch of highway north of Vancouver, is changing irrevocably. Globalization is in the process of transforming an industrial resource economy into a recreational profit-centre. Three projects were undertaken to examine this transformation: Woodfibre, an installation about a recently decommissioned pulp mill in Howe Sound; Haiphong, a series of photographs addressing the transformation of Canadian raw materials in Vietnam; and HWY 99, my graduating film, which examines a transitional moment in the life of a paramedic employed by a multinational highway construction firm currently developing the Corridor. Each of these artworks is a response to the human cost of globalization in a small British Columbia community far from corporate boardrooms. Viewed as a triptych, these works address the question of how to represent the ubiquity of globalization in relation to personal experience.