A Bear Named Winnie

I am a judge for the Indianapolis-based Heartland Film Festival. This feature film is a Crystal Heart Award Winner and is eligible to be the Grand Prize Winner in October of 2005. The Heartland Film Festival is a non-profit that honors Truly Moving Pictures. A Truly Moving Picture “…explores the human journey by artistically expressing hope and respect for the positive values of life.”

The film centers around a Canadian army veterinarian, who buys a bear cub from a hunter while on a train ride east across Canada with his army comrades. They are going to a training camp, and from there they are going to Europe to fight in World War I. For a while, the bear cub becomes an army mascot. However, the bear becomes too troublesome and the order comes down to get rid of the bear. And that is where the story gets interesting.

The young army men have a boring, uneventful life as they train for war. The bear becomes one of their centers of interest. Their other center of interest is developing relationships among each other as they prepare for the then unkown-to-them horrors of war. It becomes obvious that the real purpose of training is to develop loyalty and friendship among each other so that they can rely on each other in stressful war times.

The film has wonderful art direction and costuming and you are truly placed into the early part of the 20th century.

A.A. Milne learned of this true story and this became the basis for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories.

FYI – There is a Truly Moving Pictures web site where there is a listing of past Crystal Heart winners that are now either at the theater or available on video.