Latest posts from National Screen Institute - Canada (NSI)

Haunted by strange nightmares, a man is compelled to travel into his own mind after the delivery of a mysterious black book and confront his demons.

Creative team

Writer/director/producer: Murray Toews

Filmmaker’s statement

10 Years Before Happiness is a personal, subjective journey into my own past and neglected memories, trapped within an underworld city in the 1980s.

This film echoes Dante’s Inferno in that it describes a journey into a limbo world in lucid detail; a personal series of allegorical and subjective experiences, moods, misperceptions, self-imposed delusion and phantasmagorical lusts witnessed by the narrator and guided by the Minstrels of Madness.

The overall narrative follows a path that gradually descends to a lower and darker realm of my tormented, subconscious landscape.

About Murray Toews

Murray’s creative work spans the disciplines and media of drawing, video, film, set-dressing, audio-art and digital/analog hand-drawn animation.

He received a bachelor of fine arts (first class honours) degree from the University of Manitoba with a thesis in advanced drawing.

The years of visual experimentation has led Murray to a process-driven animation technique that creates rapidly animated shorts using audio-art and drawings as a starting point.

In 2005 he curated Animator/Re-Animator festival, a visual exploration and the evolution of the independent animator. The festival represented 18 animated works from Canadian Prairie animators from 1990 to 2004 with screenings in Canada and Japan.

He went on to create and produce a live animation/music performance, in collaboration with musician Jay Taylor, based on a process of errors named Manufacturing Malfunction 3.0 that premiered at the Winnipeg IMAX theatre. Since then, his animated shorts have appeared in festivals throughout Canada and USA.

In 2012, his animated short Thought Camera, Reel One: “Circus of Objects” was an official selection for the NSI Online Short Film Festival.

10 Years Before Happiness is his latest short film where he combines story, process-driven animation, original music and special effects into one hybrid film.

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A woman with a turbulent past confronts the fact that she is the only visible transgender person living in a remote region of the Canadian Rockies.

This meditative short doc explores the courage and bravery it takes to be your true self no matter the cost. The Canadian landscape makes for a scenic backdrop to Anne Gibson’s life in Jasper National Park and the isolation she faces in her small town.

Creative team

Co-directors, co-producers: Steve Adams, Sean Horlor

Filmmakers’ statement

We both grew up in smaller communities in BC. There was a huge pressure for us (as gay men) to move to bigger cities to find a sense of community.

Our goal with Only One was to explore whether trans* and gender-diverse people from small communities felt a similar or even greater pressure to leave their homes.

About Steve Adams and Sean Horlor

Steve Adams and Sean Horlor direct, produce and write together. They are both self-taught filmmakers.

They’re also both from smaller communities in British Columbia and had little exposure to LGBTQ+ stories growing up in the ’80s and ’90s. This has had a profound influence on their creative work and is a huge motivation for them as filmmakers.

They like to create stories where LGBTQ characters are complicated and multifaceted and human instead of, you know, the kinds of LGBTQ characters you usually see in movies and on television.

The post Only One appeared first on National Screen Institute - Canada (NSI).

Follow Canadian photographer Stephanie Simpson as she takes family photos for resettled refugees.

Meet the families, see their photo sessions and find out what new photographs, and a new home in Canada, mean to them.

Creative team

Writer/director/producer: Stephanie Simpson

About Stephanie Simpson

Stephanie Simpson is a photographer and filmmaker from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

This Is Not a Passport Photo is her first documentary short, for which she was awarded the STORYHIVE female director’s edition top award in Alberta.

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