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May 01, 2009

Jackpot! An interview with Filmmaker Alan Black

Posted by Elaisha Stokes at 10:59 AM ET

Back in grade five (oh the good old days) my best friend Cait and I used to spend our lunch hours playing Bingo in the cafeteria. The Scottish lunch lady would call out the numbers and we would patiently scratch them out on our tiny square cards. It was free to play, and prizes included bouncy balls and stickers. Not that it mattered much - even at that tender age of ten I had the worst luck ever. I never won anything.

Still the thrill of the game stuck with me. And it turns out I'm not alone. I caught up with Canadian filmmaker Alan Black to talk about his new film Jackpot! Set against the backdrop of a local Toronto Bingo hall, Jackpot! explores what it means to really win in life.

Your film is about a Bingo hall in Toronto. Where did the idea come from? Do you play a lot of Bingo?

It came from playing Bingo with my grandmother as a kid. Every Christmas we would go down to Florida to visit her and pass the days playing Bingo. It was a great experience, exciting and a great feeling to win. To this day is stands out as a really Important childhood memory. Later on in life I went to play Bingo as an adult and it was so different, people were so serious, it wasn't fun at all. There was this strange sub culture that I don't remember existing when I played as a kid. Then I read an article about a shooting outside a Bingo hall at Jane and Finch over $1500 bucks. Four people beat another person to death. Can you imagine killing someone for $300? It made me realize, playing Bingo is not about the money. I started to wonder "what are these people really after?"

And what are they really after?

I think they are after purpose in life. Some glimmer of hope that their life otherwise doesn’t provide. I have a lovely fiancé, a job, a family and friends. Every morning I wake up and I think about all the good things in my life. I think about this interview, the festival, what’s next. But what do you do if you don’t have anything good on the horizon? If every day is the same and you have nothing to look forward too? All you want is a moment of success, some possibility. I believe Bingo players play for that moment of winning. They play for the feeling of possibility, that moment of success!

So is this film a comedy, a tragedy or a character film?

It’s a bit of all of those things. It’s not a comedy, it’s not for laughs. There is definitely humanity and comedy in the characters. But it’s not a tradegy either. It's a bit of everything, I hope.

The characters in your film love Bingo, but at moments it seems that this love is more of an addiction. In your mind, are these people gambling addicts, or is it more complex?

It’s more complex. The questions is not whether or not they are addicts, but why. What has caused them to meet something like this in their lives? You know, at one point one of the characters points out that playing Bingo isn't much more expensive than a night spent at the movie theater. In the end these people are spending their enterainment dollars on something that brings them joy, and what’s wrong with that?

It’s obvious through the intimacy of your interviews with the characters that you built a strong relationship with these people. What kind of process did you go through to gain their trust?

What you see is about 30 days of shooting. Myself and my producer spent every weekend playing Bingo and hanging out with the characters at the Bingo hall for an entire year before actual filming commenced.

Did you ever worry you might become addicted to Bingo?

I don’t have an addictive personality. I really like Bingo and there is something exciting about winning or coming close. When you're one number away from winning you get this amazing rush. I get that, but I don’t think I need it. There isn’t that void in my life

What do you think your film says money and our current recession?

I think it's funny that the film is being read that way. Jackpot! is in the Lets Make Money program at Hot Docs and I’m on a panel about greed and poverty. But this is not a movie about money. It’s a film about an absence of something. That absence could be financial, but it could also be emotional, social, etc. I suppose in the end this film speaks to overcoming adversity. It speaks to perservearance and finding purpose when things aren’t going well.

Is this a hopeful film?

I think so. I think it’s about not giving up. About finding something to keep you going, even when that thing is very hard to find.

What the one thing your hope the audience takes away from this film?

I hope they get a glimps of a section of Toronto they never get to see. I hope they get exposed to a world they don’t really know about. I hope it helps them better understand peoples motivations in life, however silly they might seem. In the end, you can’t really judge people on what there doing, you can only hope to get a better understanding of why they are doing it.

Jackpot! screens at the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival Friday May 1st at 10 PM at the Royal Cinema, and Sunday May 10th at 6:30PM at the Bloor Cinema.

More entries on: Hot Docs festival

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