Northern lights will shine in Vancouver tonight (April 17) with two screenings of shorts by Yukon filmmakers. The Yukon Film Society is releasing a new DVD, Picturing the Yukon—9 Short Films, which it’s distributing in Geist magazine’s spring issue. The launch features two programs of shorts at 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. at the Vancity Theatre (tickets cost $10).

“It’s a celebration of everything that’s been created here,” film society technical director Andrew Connors said by phone from Whitehorse. The films are highlights from the past five years of the Picturing the Yukon summer series. This is “the first time where we’ve presented a whole evening of them outside the territory”, Connors said.

Styles range from animation to live-action drama, video art, and personal storytelling. “There are some very contemporary pieces and more historical and legend-based pieces,” Connors said. A number of filmmakers, including Jay White—whose modern, hand-painted animation fable “Boar Attack” screens at 7 p.m.—will be present for a post-show question-and-answer period.

The 9:15 p.m. screening includes Carol Geddes’s “Picturing a People: George Johnston, Tlingit Photographer”. This 1997 documentary focuses on the Tlingit man who photographed the changes in Teslin resulting from the construction of the Alaska Highway in 1942. It’s considered a landmark production for Yukon filmmakers because “up until that point, all the film production in the territory was made by people who didn’t live here,” Connors explained.