Filmmakers Brittney Gavin and Amy Mielke’s documentary, “Apex: The Black Masters” features interviews with 44 people. But Gavin says the main character of the film does not have a speaking role.
It’s the community itself.
The Apex Invitational Golf Tournament was the first Black golf tournament in Nova Scotia and began as a small affair in Truro. It’s grown considerably, having celebrated its 50th anniversary last summer after starting with just 10 participants.
Gavin and Mielke and a camera crew were along for the ride.
“I’m happy it came through that we wanted to make the community the main character. So many people have added their little piece, and that’s the reason why (the tournament) has been able to exist for 50 years,” Gavin says.
In Truro, there are three Black communities that are geographically different but socially intertwined – the Island, the Hill, and the Marsh. The film focuses on the Island, as the golf course is in the backyard of the people who live there. The district got its nickname, the Island (not to be confused with Prince Edward Island, as was affirmed and re-affirmed in the film) because it was often isolated by flooding during periods of heavy rain.
“Golf is intertwined into their lives and the community and in the film there are shots that will show (that). The film is about that relationship between the golf course and the community that has evolved quite a bit over time,” Gavin says.
Gavin has a personal connection to the two-day event, having known about it for her entire life. Her birthday is Aug. 9, and says her mother was, at nine months pregnant, at the golf tournament the weekend before Gavin’s birth – since it’s always the first weekend of August. Filming the documentary Gavin was eight months pregnant herself, she said in a recent interview with the CBC, so it was a full circle moment for her.
Gavin, a Halifax-based filmmaker, doesn’t golf. And while the documentary’s main thread is about the golf tournament itself – and it even weaves in results from the 50th playing of the event – the focus is really on the people involved.
With a laugh, Gavin says she “for sure” thought there would be plenty of conversations with golf enthusiasts. But one of the first people she spoke with, Jude Clyke (who is one of the tournament committee members) said – and it is repeated on camera – that he doesn’t “give a damn” about golf.
“That had to make the film, of course,” Gavin says, smiling. “There are people who go to the tournament who have never played golf, don’t care about golf. But for them, and the folks that attend year after year, it really is about that community homecoming.”
Over five decades the tournament itself has evolved, of course, and now includes a very important scholarship portion to the weekend’s festivities. Local community members have raised $113,000 for students in the area to help with post-secondary education. More than 140 scholarships have been given out.
“If nothing else, knowing that your community backs you in your future endeavors is just so important. The committee is very proud of the scholarship fund. It’s very much a priority of the tournament now and has become a piece (that has made it) more than about golf.”
The film intertwines stories of the past with a lookahead to the future. But, perhaps, the most poignant of all is a full-circle moment when the club – founded in 1905 – holds a reconciliation ceremony with the community and makes Darrell Maxwell, the founder of the tournament and who is now 74, just the 16th honorary member in its history.
The Black community was originally barred from playing the course. That could have held them back, but Maxwell – and so many others – would, for example, just go to the course and play as many holes as they could starting at 5 a.m. before it opened officially. Even now, Gavin says, some of the older-generation golfers drive right-handed but putt left-handed – because a left-handed putter was all that was available to them to use.
“I can’t even imagine how long overdue that must have felt. Just from my perspective as a filmmaker we weren’t sure if the golf course would be interested in telling the story as it happened. It was obviously unflattering. The president had to take accountability for policies he obviously wasn’t a part of. I was just happy that the golf course wanted to tell the same story as us, and the golf course wanted to tell the history as it happened,” Gavin says. “With the Black community, we’re often used to those topics being skirted around. For someone to affirm it, that was incredibly positive.
“For a lot of folks from the Island, it felt long overdue.”
The documentary, which is now streaming on CBC Gem, was both a passion project and an important piece of history for Gavin. And she’s so thrilled that the main character, the community, got its most-deserving spotlight.
“We did those 44 interviews […] I’ve never experienced that in the film world and people who were able to speak so naturally to the camera,” Gavin says. “But when you really care about something and you’re passionate about something it just comes easy.”