SAVJ
As a child, Tank Standing Buffalo got a job selling cotton candy at the circus. When the crew packed up and left, he ran away and met them at the next town with plans for a life-long career with the traveling show. The carnies wouldn’t accept him so Tank followed his big top dreams as a young man, designing and building traveling haunted attractions and his own traveling sideshow. A compulsive creator, Tank draws, paints, carves, tattoos, and makes tiki mugs, props, puppets, movies, and more. Tank works relentlessly on his own self-directed film projects as well as many commissions. Ancestors on his mom’s side followed the underground railroad to the Potawatomi of Caldwell First Nation who helped them escape slavery.
Narrated by Corey Feldman (STAND BY ME, THE GOONIES)
CONTENT ADVISORY: Suicide
TITLE SAVJ
RUNNING TIME 6:55
YEAR OF COMPLETION 2022
ORIGINAL PRODUCTION FORMAT HD
DIRECTOR & WRITER Tank Standing Buffalo
PRODUCER Xstine Cook, CAOS
NARRATOR Corey Feldman
ANIMATION & EDITING Tank Standing Buffalo
KIDS VOICES Medina Dennie, Zaiyah Dennie, Dresden Servage, Colton Willier, AJ Willier, Lincoln Murphy, Lucifer Seremetkoski
MUSIC COMPOSE D AND ARRANGED Cara Adu Darko & Brandon Smith
VOICE RECORDING & SOUND ENGINEERING Eric Cinnamon, Gregg Sartiano, Brandon Smith
DRONE FOOTAGE JP Ouimet
FUNDING Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts
KNOWN ASSOCIATES CAOS, Quickdraw Animation, Emmedia, Skies the Limit Drone Works
In Memory of Krissy
Screenings
Calgary international Film Festival
Sunday Sept 25, 2022 – Calgary
https://www.ciffcalgary.ca/
https://livewirecalgary.com/
Edmonton International Film Festival
Friday Sept 30, 2022 – Edmonton
https://edmontonfilmfest.com/
ImagineNative Film Festival
October 18-23, 2022 – Toronto
https://imaginenative.org
Shockfest Film Festival
December 10, 2022 –
https://www.shockfilmfest.com
Screaming Ostrich Film Festival
BEST PICTURE, Animation. The Mick Cusimano Award
https://screamingostrich.wordpress.com/
Director and Writer Tank Standing Buffalo:
SAVJ is a deeply personal project, and is the pre-quel to my first auto-biographical horror fantasy short, RKLSS (2020). I like to hide meaning and personal history behind horror and fantasy, while drawing directly from my own life experience.
The inspiration for SAVJ is my real life, the best time with my 7 siblings. Events in the movie actually happened. That time we all lived in Rondeau Park with no adults. It was the last time we were all together. We were completely free. Before children’s services split us up. After that time, I wound up in juvenile detention, and I never lived with the family again, and a lot of terrible events took place.
SAVJ speaks to deeper issues in Canadian culture and history. I’m sure you’re aware that there’s more Indigenous kids in foster care than there ever were in the country’s shameful residential school system. Apprehending kids is the latest version of the same colonial system of stealing kids when assimilation won’t work.
Making SAVJ was a form of time travel. I was able to travel back in time to heal my younger self, and say, don’t give up, check it out, Corey Feldman voices you in a movie, you’re going to be okay. Corey Feldman was my favourite actor when I was a youth. I identified strongly with the non-conformist characters he played. He always played them with a bit of cool. “Stand By Me” was a page ripped from my own life. It was such an honour he accepted voicing the narrator in SAVJ.