Nice to see a blogger with such dedication for the short form! Thanks, Mike Kulasza from Winnipeg!
NFB Hothouse Challenges Animators With 3 Month Apprenticeship
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#VIWFF2015 screening of Kay D. Ray’s Lady Be Good: Instrumental Women in Jazz marks Canadian premiere of jazz doc
My interview with Seattle’s Kay D. Ray, award-winning director of the documentary Lady Be Good: Instrumental Women in Jazz, in early 2014
Women instrumentalists have made major contributions to American jazz, and this film captures many of the lost stories, from the early 1920s to the 1970s, including the development of numerous all-female jazz ensembles. Join Peggy Gilbert, Marian McPartland, Carline Ray, Quincy Jones, Jane Sager and many others in this important remembering of our musical past.
Using historical photos, provocative and often wildly humorous interviews with musicians, big band leaders, jazz authors and historians, this textured film by documentarian Kay D. Ray from Seattle is balanced with rare recordings and forgotten footage, both television and film. Like the stories of those who made it, the music is always engaging, often uplifting, and sometimes heartrending.
Kay recently drove all the way from Seattle to drop off her film copy. We took the chance to ask her a few burning questions:
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Love, a tragicomedy –– Canadian rom-com Relative Happiness to premiere in Vancouver at #VIWIFF2015
I first watched Relative Happiness as part of my research for the Reel West covering of the Whistler Film Festival in December 2014. This is such a charming film about a beautiful girl-with-curves with a kick-ass attitude. I loved the directing and the performances in this film, so I was very happy when the director Deanne Foley took some time to answer my questions. If you like to laugh and if you like romance, I suggest you try to watch this rom-com on a screen near you.
Johnathan Sousa and Melissa Bergland in Relative Happiness
The Nova Scotian rom-com Relative Happiness, directed by Deanne Foley, charmed festival audiences with its fabulous lead (Australian actress Melissa Bergland) and the right mix of humour and emotion. Bergland stars as Lexie, plus-sized and 30 years old, a feisty Bed and Breakfast owner who desperately needs a date to her sister’s wedding. Co-starring as Lexie’s love interests are Aaron Poole (Strange Empire, The Animal Project) and Johnathan Sousa (The Animal Project, Rookie Blue). The film is based on the bestselling novel by Lesley Crewe.
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WIFTV 25th Anniversary Retrospective presents encore screening of Brishkay Ahmed’s daring doc Story of Burqa
I first met Brishkay Ahmed at the media day of the 2012 DOXA Documentary Film Festival. I really admired her courage to go and film a film about the history of the burqa in Afghanistan. Brishkay and I have been loosely in contact with each other since then and I was very happy to see her film will get an encore screening at WIFTV’s 15th anniversary retrospective on January 18, 2015. I hope to see some of you there. Here’s my conversation with Brishkay on behalf of Women in Film.
Afghan-Canadian director Brishkay Ahmed‘s daring tale of the origin and future of the burqa, a garment tied to the image of Afghanistan, was one of 17 films handpicked to celebrate the creativity of BC women filmmakers in a matinee retrospective on January 17 and 18.
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Suzanne Crocker finds happiness in the Yukon wilderness in her doc “All the time in the World”
I met Suzanne Crocker at a Women in Film & Television workshop earlier this year and was intrigued by her story about shooting a doc in the Yukon bush, while living nine months off the grid. I’m happy she let me preview her doc, which screens at VIFF this week. Go and have a look, if you can, it’s worthwhile!
“I always envisioned myself as being one of those moms who would have fresh baked cookies and a glass of milk ready for their kids when they walked in the door after school,” says filmmaker Suzanne Crocker in the opening scene of her new doc All The Time In The World, as she pulls a canoe jam-packed with supplies up a rocky Canadian river. But she always felt there wasn’t enough time for the things that really counted.
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500 days without a shower – Documentary filmmaker Dianne Whelan preps her new adventure
Meeting Dianne Whelan and her dog Lily was so uplifting. I didn’t intend to write such a long article for the Women in Film blog, but then Dianne gave me all this input I couldn’t refuse. Well… here she is, preparing her next adventure.
Dianne Whelan with her 18-year old Jack Russell, Lily, on Granville Street. August 22, 2014. Photo by Katja De Bock
If you’re experiencing the moviemaker blues it’s time to get inspired by local WIFTV member, journalist and photographer-turned-filmmaker Dianne Whelan. If you know Whelan’s former work, you’ll remember her expeditions to the Canadian Arctic and Mount Everest’s base camp, both turning into award-winning films.
“I made 55 days without a shower on Everest, and might break the record on the next project,” says Whelan, whose next expedition may well lead to 500 days in the dirt. “I’m trying to be the first person in history to do the [entire] Trans Canada Trail.”
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Vancouver stunt performer Maja Aro nominated for 2014 Taurus World Stunt Award
A great addition to the series Faces of BC Film. I first met Maja Aro at a grip and lighting seminar at William F. White, organized by Women in Film and I was happy the organization asked me to blog about her L.A. nomination. Way to go, Maja!
When Maja Aro comes over to meet me at the Dominion building the athletic young woman is what I had expected from a stunt performer. However, I am impressed when I see two recent scars in her face and a splinted hand. When I ask her about it, Aro smiles and shrugs. Injuries come with her job and she doesn’t make a big fuss about it.
She obtained the cuts at the set of the sci-fi show The Tomorrow People, where she flew through a tempered glass door and got such a big gap on her face it needed stitches. However, Aro says she didn’t deal with it until the take was over and continuity pictures were shot.
“I have a very high pain threshold, luckily, and I don’t bruise easily,” she laughs,
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The odd realm of Frauke Finsterwalder’s Finsterworld
If you thought Germans can’t laugh, think again. This is a remarkable film made by a remarkable woman in film and it screens here in Vancouver on International Women’s Day, March 8.
Satire, surrealism, fairy tale, allegory, black comedy, and tragicomedy: many genres could describe Frauke Finsterwalder’s first film, Finsterworld. One genre can be ruled out for sure though: vérité.
When the Women in Film Festival committee decided to invite Finsterwalder’s film, our festival judges and volunteers struggled with how to summarize this incredibly complex debut film – you’ll have to see it for yourself to understand.
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Behind the bright façade – an African ménage à trois in Marie Kâ’s L’Autre Femme
Another lovely film, another great addition to the series “Faces of BC Film” – Marie Kâ, a Vancouver director, raised in Senegal.
What strikes one right away in this erotic tale written, directed and produced by Vancouver filmmaker Marie Kâ, are a wide pallet of bright colours and ubiquitous sunshine.
Clothing, interiors and street life really are that colourful in Dakar, the location for the story, said Kâ, who grew up in Senegal and studied film in France and the US. So much so that the set design and wardrobe teams did such a good job of setting up the shop window with some of the costumes that local women were coming onto the set to inquire about the clothes.
The story of Madeleine, who finds unconventional ways to get to terms with her husband’s new, young, second wife, did not strike Kâ as an unusual constellation.
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Remembering the Homelands – Lisa Jackson’s How A People Live
I hadn’t heard about this film before working with Women in Film and guest blogging for wiftv.wordpress.com. It’s a made-in-BC film commissioned by and about First Nations, and would make a great fit for the series Faces of BC Film.
Pristine waters in majestic fjords, lined by evergreen forests and a backdrop of snowcapped mountains. A bald eagle flies over treetops and a harbour seal peeks up from the waves.
To most B.C. citizens, these are not mere postcard pictures, but real memories that many of us, at least the lucky ones living near the coast, have experienced, travelling on one of the ferries.
“Your identity derives from the place where you have roots, where your origin stories are. Everything comes from the land,” says Jessie Hemphill, a young aboriginal woman who joined filmmaker Lisa Jackson and her crew on a boat trip to the homelands of her nation, the Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw.
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