Crowds visit the Austin Convention Center during the South by Southwest Conference and Festival on March 8, in Austin, Tex.Jack Plunkett/The Associated Press
Typically, the annual SXSW Conference and Festival in Austin, Tex., offers Canadian filmmakers, musicians and tech innovators a bright and sunny platform to showcase their work south of the border. But this year’s edition of SXSW kicked off under the dark clouds of a North American trade war, with calls growing inside Canada to minimize any relations with Americans.
Instead of staying home, though, Canadians were everywhere across SXSW this past weekend, from crowding Austin’s trendy South Congress Avenue to milling inside the many theatres, hotel lobbies and conference centres constituting the festival’s downtown hub.
For some, boycotting the event made little financial sense – deposits had been paid, reservations were already booked. Absorbing the costs would not exactly teach U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration any lessons. But for attendees like Ana Serrano, president and vice-chancellor of Toronto’s Ontario College of Art & Design University, attending SXSW was a symbolic act all its own. After all, she made her way through the conference on the weekend wearing a ballcap emblazoned with the words “CANADA IS NOT FOR SALE.”
“It’s a complicated topic, but I think it’s important to note that as a country, we have a ton of innovators in the digital-media space, and they’re here because they’re proud of showcasing the work that they’ve built,” said Serrano, who has been attending SXSW on and off since the early 2000s. “We’ve invested so much in the digital space, and being here doesn’t mean that we aren’t also thinking through the diversification of global markets for the types of innovations that we’re showcasing this week.”
Canada’s presence was slightly diminished this year. Last month, the federal funding agency Telefilm announced it was cancelling its annual SXSW “Canada House” event, a meeting hub for artists and industry players looking to connect with colleagues both domestic and international. Representatives for Telefilm did not cite trade tensions for the cancellation, but said that the move was due to the “withdrawal of key financial partners.”
Still, Telefilm launched its three-day “Canadian Innovation Lounge” at the festival, with the smaller space showcasing the latest in extended-reality, gaming and virtual-production projects, with healthy attendance.
“The way that people talk on the news is not how they talk at SXSW,” said Evan Jones, a producer at the London, Ont.-based Games By Stitch, who was at SXSW to launch a new VR game called Elsewhere Electric.
While none of the half-dozen or so Canadian filmmaking teams invited to attend SXSW this year altered their travel plans, there was a mild sense of unease in the air for some. Quebecois director Annie St-Pierre, whose new documentary, Your Higher Self, made its international premiere at the festival Saturday, said that it took careful thought to ultimately accept SXSW’s invitation.
The documentary Your Higher Self made its international premiere at SXSW on March 8.Maison 4:3
“I sincerely believe in the importance of maintaining spaces for dialogue with the people of the United States, many of whom are also affected by Trump’s policies,” said the filmmaker, who noted that her doc reflects themes that directly speak to the current political landscape. “SXSW, a true progressive bubble, provides a valuable opportunity for meaningful exchange with the audience.”
Indeed, it was difficult to spot a single red MAGA hat or hear even a whisper of anti-Canadian rhetoric among the SXSW crowds. Instead, the historically liberal-leaning Austin played host to such progressive voices as Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, journalist and podcasting mogul Kara Swisher and Democratic Minnesota Governor, and former Kamala Harris running-mate, Tim Walz.
“I didn’t feel anxious about it – the whole point of art is to pull you into a different perspective for a hot minute and give you something that makes you see we’re all not wildly different from one another,” says Canadian filmmaker Emma Higgins, who brought her feature directorial debut, the North Bay-shot thriller Sweetness, to the festival Friday. “We all like to watch cool movies with good songs.”
For many Canadian participants, abandoning the platform that SXSW offers felt akin to cutting off your nose to spite your face. Without their attendance, there would be fewer cultural exchanges with audiences outside Canada – not just Americans, but attendees from across the globe who spill into Austin every spring.
“Despite the cultural tensions, it’s a big deal to be here,” Reza Dahya, director of the Toronto-set hip-hop thriller Boxcutter, said following the international premiere of his film Saturday. “In the process of pitching this movie, we got a lot of cliched responses from the powers-that-be that our film is ‘too Toronto’ or ‘too Canadian.’ So when we got into SXSW, it was yeah, someone from outside the country likes this, and they can now see Toronto in a different way.”
