Interview with James Burke
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The day we shot the title sequence for
Aurora Borealis, outside, overlooking the Mississippi river, it was 25
degrees below zero with a wind chill factor of 60 below zero. I felt
great, that is whatever parts of my body I could still feel, because I
knew that we needed to capture this kind of detail, and because one of
the remarkable facets of this challenging script was its specificity of
place. The small bits of behavior, the language, culture, and
environment of the upper mid-west really set apart this coming-of-age
story from the many others I had read.
I was also attracted to the unique, trans-generational nature of the
story. Both main characters face major life transitions. A young man,
Duncan, must move past his arrested adolescence into adulthood. An old
man, his grandfather Ronald, must come to grips with the physical
deterioration caused by illness and age and find meaning for the end of
his days. Both lack the same person, Duncan’s father (Ronald’s son),
who would normally play the transitional guide’s role in their journey.
So they must reach out to form what becomes a complex and unique
relationship that I had never seen played out in film before.
The title describes the Northern Lights, an atmospheric phenomenon
common to the Upper Northern hemisphere, especially Canada and the
Arctic Circle, where bright bands of red, green and yellow light shine
in the winter sky. But it also describes a kind of strong belief. In
the film, Ronald claims to see the lights from the balcony of his
apartment in Minneapolis, a nearly unimaginable occurrence. Most of the
extended family believes he is hallucinating. Only Duncan comes to his
defense. Making an independent film is much the same experience,
a belief that you can see something that most people assume will never
be seen. This past December, a few months after finishing the film, it
was reported that for the first time in anyone’s memory, the Aurora
Borealis were seen over the city of Minneapolis, shining brightly in
the night sky.
--James Burke
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