The lonely house of a universal language is for sale

The last house on rue Fort, in downtown Winnipeg, is for sale. The little bungalow that does not look like played a striking role in the recent film A universal language And hosted Winnipeg punks for ten years.

In the shade of the few towers of Winnipeg, on a street 1 kilometer long, is only one house, bordered by stocky buildings and parking lots. The 130, rue Fort, built in 1902, made 107 square meters and is for sale for $ 379,000.

It is certainly a unique and surprising find to see a house between offices and shops. This has an excellent opportunity for a person who can recognize the potential of the placesays Paul Evans, real estate agent of Royal Lepage Dynamic Real Estate, who sells the building.

It was the surprising loneliness of the building that arrested the filmmaker of Winnipois origin Matthew Rankin, who made it one of the decorations of his recent feature film A universal language.

A Winnipégian poetry

First, the small house is perfectly written in the rigorous aesthetics of the film, which represents Winnipeg under a very special light. A significant part of its evolution, especially the evolution of its city center, it is parking lots and also beige buildingsexplains Matthew Rankin.

It’s part of our way of representing Winnipeg. It is filled with beige buildings and parking and we wanted to film these artefacts with a lot of love, a lot of beauty, a lot of poetrycontinues the filmmaker. The house on Fort Street is perfect for us because it is next to a beige building and a parking lot, it is between the two, literally.

For the director, the isolation of the house also reflects the species of coexistence of solitude and universality that the feature film seeks to examine.

So what is happening in the film is that we see this house that embodies this loneliness. However, we find inside this house an extremely warm family, where it has the impression that there is a very strong community which exists inside this house and, therefore, it is a way for us to precisely connect these two elements, to go from solitude to the communityadds Matthew Rankin.

The oldest punk house The Winnipeg

Built between 1902 and 1903, the house had as first inhabitants a certain William Squire, and his family. They moved the following year, and the house changed hands several times.

Chris Walter, writer and historian of punk culture, explains that it was in the 1980s, of the punk house of Winnipeg of a long time. The independent music promoter of Winnipeg Mike Lambert was the main tenant.

The house was near the nightclubs Punk Wellington’s and Royal Albert Arms, and also the VJS Hamburger counter. Punks lived practically of fatboys and friesspecifies Chris Walter.

We simply called it ” rue Fort ”, but the official name was “Death House” (Notehouse of death), because the group Sudden Death was among the many groups who repeated therehe recalls, believing that the house was in the hands of tenants of the punk world for ten years.

There were often parties after the shows. The place was crowded and extremely noisy, with groups that were constantly repeated in the basement. Chris Walter remembers that, during one of these parties, he had his leather jacket stolen – at the time, his most precious good.

I lost my head, I was running everywhere to ask the world if they had seen my jacket. And then someone said to me: “Yes, I saw a girl go with it.” I continued it on the street and a little more than a pâté de houses, I caught it, she had hidden it in a bush. I took it back. If it had been a guy, I would have broken her mouthrecalls Chris Walter.

He notes that punk houses like these were particularly important for this culture in Winnipeg.

It was hard for one or two people to rent accommodation. But at five or six, you could rent almost any Winnipeg house at the time, and if you were able to maintain it, it became not only a place where people lived, but also a place of rehearsal and for celebrationshe explains.

Flexible zoning

On an unknown date, the house was designated as a historic place in Winnipeg, according to the Historical Company of Manitoba, but it was removed from this list in 2010.

Today, the house is rented for $ 2095 per month, but it has zoning multiple usewhich means that the land could be transformed into many residential or commercial purposes.

The announcement is clearly intended for promoters rather than individuals looking for accommodation. This did not prevent Matthew Rankin from thinking of buying it. I admit that I thought about ithe said, with a little laugh.

With a history training, the filmmaker is delighted to have helped to immortalize this fragment of the past.

I think that, every time we film Winnipeg, it feels like [ce qu’on filme] will not exist in a few yearshe said. There are small places that are still precious, which embody a certain poetry of this city, which embody a certain spirit of this city. And I, as an artist, is sure that I love them, that I have relations with these places.