Tag Archives: Mohawk Girls

19-2, This Life, Mohawk Girls among the hundreds of nominees for Canadian Screen Awards

It’s hard to take the Canadian Screen Awards seriously when there are 134 categories, including ones like Best Sound in a Variety or Animated Program or Series, Best Sports Opening/Tease, and Best Biography or Arts Documentary Program or Series. The Oscars, by comparison, have 24 categories. And though the Emmys are a similar mess of too many awards (especially if you include local Emmys), I don’t think that’s necessarily something to look up to.

Anyway, because just about everyone was nominated in the list announced today — the 2016 Canadian Screen Awards got three nominations — there were some accolades for English-language TV series produced in and around Montreal.

  • 19-2, the Bravo cop drama based on a Radio-Canada series by the same name, had nine nominations (most of these categories have equivalents for other types of programs):
    • Best drama
    • Best direction (Louis Choquette)
    • Original score (Nicolas Maranda)
    • Photography (Tobia Marier Robitaille)
    • Picture editing (Arthur Tarnowski)
    • Sound
    • Writing (Bruce M. Smith)
    • Lead actor (Adrian Holmes)
    • Supporting actor (Dan Petronijevic)
  • Mohawk Girls, the APTN comedy based on the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, had three nominations:
    • Best comedy series
    • Best direction (Tracey Deer)
    • Writing (Cynthia Knight)
  • Interrupt This Program, the CBC documentary series based in Montreal, had three nominations:
    • Best direction (Olivier Aghaby)
    • “Best Biography or Arts Documentary Program or Series”
    • Documentary picture editing (Geoff Klein)
  • YidLife Crisis, the online series, had three nominations in digital categories:
    • Actor (Eli Batalion)
    • Actor (Jamie Elman)
    • Original program (fiction)
  • This Life, the CBC drama based on Radio-Canada’s Nouvelle adresse, had two nominations:
    • Best drama
    • Supporting actress (Lauren Lee Smith)

I may have missed other Quebec-based anglo series nominated for awards (if you spot one, let me know), and there are plenty of Quebec films nominated in the film category (including Xavier Dolan’s Juste la fin du monde).

There were no local nominees in the many categories for news (though shout out to former CBC Montreal anchor Andrew Chang, nominated for best local anchor at CBC Vancouver).

A white guy’s review of Mohawk Girls

Tuesday night was the first time most people in the Montreal area got to see the new TV series Mohawk Girls, a “dramedy” produced by Tracey Deer that is set and produced in Kahnawake and airs on OMNI and APTN.

The series has been a long time in the making, and the first season was actually shot two years ago. It got a good deal of attention when it was being produced then, and even more so now that it’s actually on the air.

I watched the first two episodes as they aired on APTN tonight, both as an amateur TV critic and as a regular TV viewer interested in good storytelling. I’m not an expert on Mohawk culture, nor am I an expert on television production, but I’ll offer some thoughts of how I personally see the series so far.

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Mohawk Girls get noticed

Mohawk Girls, a “dramedy” produced jointly by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and Rogers’s OMNI television, wrapped up shooting last week in Kahnawake.

Since Rogers sent out a press release a month ago announcing the series, it’s gotten some decent attention in the local media. Enough that I don’t feel compelled to repeat their work. Here are links to the coverage the series has gotten:

The seven-episode, 30-minute series will air on APTN and OMNI in 2014. You can follow it through social media. It’s on Twitter and Facebook.