Nettie Barry Canada Wild
b. May 18, 1952, New York City, New York


As much an advocate as an activist, Nettie Wild is the quixotic figure behind a series of profound and controversial political documentaries that have earned acclaim around the world. Coming from a background in journalism and theatre, Wild eschews objectivity and takes a very definite ideological and political stance in her films. She runs her own independent production company – Canada Wild Productions – in Vancouver and has pioneered a non-traditional form of distribution that combines commercial theatrical screenings with community based forums. She typically accompanies her films, which play in dozens of cities in both Canada and the United States, to conduct question-and-answer sessions after the screenings.

Wild was born in New York City to a British journalist father and a Canadian opera singer mother, who was so determined that her daughter not stray from her Canadian roots that she gave her ‘Canada’ as a middle name. About a month after her birth her family moved to Vancouver, where she grew up and eventually attended the University of British Columbia, earning a B.F.A. with a major in creative writing and a minor in film and theatre.

As a correspondent for CBC Radio, Wild reported extensively on the Philippine guerrilla war in the seventies. After taking up filmmaking in the eighties, she made her feature debut with A Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution (1988). It won a jury award and the People’s Choice Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, earned a Genie nomination for Best Feature Documentary and received several other international awards. Her next film, Blockade (1993), about efforts by Native groups in the interior of British Columbia to stop commercial logging on their land, shared the Most Popular Canadian Feature award at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

A Place Called Chiapas (1998), probably her best-known film, examines the Zapatista uprising in southern Mexico through the eyes of the Zapatista’s charismatic poet-philosopher Subcomandante Marcos, as well as the right-wing paramilitary and disgruntled landowners. Wild was widely criticized for her biased sympathies for the Zapatistas. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, won the audience award for Best Documentary at the AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival and received the Genie for Best Feature Documentary. Her most recent film, FIX: The Story of an Addicted City (2002) – which tackles the hot-button topic of free-injection sites in her native Vancouver through the eyes of addict/activist Dean Wilson and former Vancouver mayor Phillip Owen – netted Wild her second Genie Award for Best Feature Documentary.

Wild has never been uncomfortable courting controversy. Following the release of A Rustling of Leaves, the RCMP demanded that the NFB and the Canada Council cut off her funding under the unfounded suspicion that she had been funnelling cash to the Philippine New People’s Army (members of which are featured prominently in the film) and therefore constituted a threat to national security. Retrospectives of her work have been held by Cinematheque Ontario and the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival. She has also worked professionally as an actor, producer and writer, and is a founding member of Vancouver’s Headlines Theatre, Touchstone Theatre and Tahmanous Theatre. She is currently working on a script for a fictional drama exploring the illicit economy that supports Vancouver’s drug trade.