Latest posts from National Screen Institute - Canada (NSI)

Lots of NSI grads with films at this year’s Vancouver International Women in Film Festival, starting March 6 at VIFF Vancity Theatre:

• TELUS STORYHIVE digital short Akashi from Mayumi Yoshida

• All About You from Allison Beda (NSI Features First)

• Do We Leave This Here from Alexandra Caulfield (NSI Totally Television)

• NSI IndigiDocs short Nosisim (pictured) from Sonya Ballantyne and Sage (both CBC New Indigenous Voices)

• River of Silence from Petie Chalifoux and Micheal Auger (both NSI IndigiDocs)

• Sharon McGowan (DramaLab) and Mayumi Yoshida  (STORYHIVE Digital Shorts) appear in Owning The Space

The fest runs March 6 to 11. See the full schedule.

The post Films from NSI grads at Vancouver International Women in Film Festival appeared first on National Screen Institute - Canada (NSI).

Faced with an arranged marriage proposal, an Indian woman seeks to thwart her parents’ plans and their so-called traditional values only to meet an unexpected suitor in the process.

Creative team

Writer: Jaskaran Singh
Director: Kimberly Smith
Producer: Sartaj Aulakh

Filmmaker’s statement

Wanting to break free of the constraints put upon us by our parents is a natural part of growing up, but for some, that transition comes much later in life. Rebellion is hard to come to terms with in a culture that actively promotes the importance of one’s elders, and the sometimes blind devotion one is expected to have of them and their traditions. After all, these are the people who have birthed, raised, sheltered, clothed and educated you.

Those factors contribute to a sort of debt you owe payments on, which can come in a variety of forms; from your choice of career to your choice in romantic relationships. It gets to the point that your very identity is split in two, presenting an uncomfortable fork in the road destined to collide.

ReArranged is our attempt to give a voice to a reality that faces many young women in the South Asian community, and we hope it can promote dialogue among audiences of multiple generations.

About Kimberly Smith

Kimberly Smith holds a bachelor of arts in film studies from Brock University and is a graduate of Sheridan College’s Advanced Television and Film program.

While at Brock, she was an integral part of the campus-wide media channel BrockTV. Kim also helped design The Brock Film Group, an initiative to encourage and teach budding young filmmakers.

At Sheridan, Kimberly directed multiple short films, including Duck Duck Goose, a post-apocalyptic tale of survival, and ReArranged which boldly addresses arranged marriages.

In recent years, Kimberly has also assistant directed a variety of other shorts such as Visitor, a unique woodlands sci-fi, and Autopsy, a drama spanning time and technology.

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

In 1961, Sheila Burnford’s first book, The Incredible Journey, became an international bestseller and, eventually, a popular Walt Disney film.

Creative team

Writer: Dianne Brothers
Directors: Kelly Saxberg, Dianne Brothers
Producers: Kelly Saxberg, Ron Harpelle, Dianne Brothers

Filmmakers’ statement

For decades, The Incredible Journey has been a family classic with numerous generations embracing the story of two dogs and a cat lost in the wilderness as they attempted to find their way home. A successful Walt Disney movie (and subsequent remakes) have kept the story in people’s hearts. Less is known about the woman who authored the original book: Sheila Burnford.

Born in Scotland, she was a woman who embraced adventure and found herself in the middle of history during Europe’s most volatile period. After the war, in her new home in Northwestern Ontario, she once again set off in search of adventure. Everything she saw, everything she experienced, would eventually be used in her writings.

Narrated by Sheila’s daughter, Jonquil Burnford Covello and using Sheila’s own words (published works and personal correspondence), family photos and home movies, this film explores the life of an incredible woman who loved adventure, nature and all animals. And in particular her love for a white bull terrier who was with her through the Blitz, life, death and all major family events. Her desire to memorialize him would lead to her greatest triumph.

In researching this film, with the co-operation of Sheila’s daughters, Peronelle, Jonquil and Juliet, we were awed by the life Sheila Burnford lived before and after she arrived in Canada. We feel it is past time for Sheila Burnford to be recognized for the influence she had on Northwestern Ontario and Canadian literature.

About Kelly Saxberg

Kelly Saxberg is a film producer, director, editor and cinematographer who has worked on over 90 films. She works in English, French, Spanish and Finnish.

Most recently she completed Long Walk Home: The Incredible Journey of Sheila Burnford, a short documentary she co-directed with Dianne Brothers.

In 2016, she produced, shot and edited A.K.A. a feature documentary directed by Ron Harpelle about a serial imposter. In 2015, she was the cinematographer and producer of Guardians of Eternity, a documentary directed by France Benoit about the toxic legacy of the Giant Mine in Yellowknife.

In 2014, she produced, shot and edited Pulp Friction, directed by Ron Harpelle, about globalization and the forestry communities Terrace Bay, Ontario, Kemijärvi, Finland and Fray Bentos, Uruguay.

Seeking Bimaadiziiwin was her debut as a fiction director on a 30-minute drama that looks at depression and suicide among First Nations youth. It won best short film at the American Indian Film Festival and several other awards.

Her other films include Dorothea Mitchell: A Reel Pioneer, Voyageur’s Legacy: Our Story / Le printemps des voyageurs: La Genèse, the award-winning Banana Split and the NFB production Rosies of the North.

She also edited The Fatal Flower – a silent film shot originally in 1930 and finished by members of the film and video co-op Flash Frame Film and Video Network of which she is past chair and founding member.

About Dianne Brothers

Dianne Brothers is fairly new to filmmaking, following a career with the Canadian Federal Public Service. Most recently, she was the lead writer and co-director of Long Walk Home: The Incredible Journey of Sheila Burnford.

In 2013 she completed her first film as writer/director, Silence Invader. The film debuted at the Bay Street Film Festival and won a People’s Choice award. It has since been selected by numerous international film festivals and was recently selected as one of the ‘Best Shorts’ at the Faux Film Festival in Portland Oregon.

Her first film experience was working as a script supervisor for Under the Red Star (directed by Kelly Saxberg), a feature-length film shot on film with dozens of actors and over 200 extras. As script supervisor she worked in close proximity with the director and first A.D. and was introduced to how to break down and shoot a scene.

After that initial experience, she worked on two independent films, Chopsticks which she wrote and co-directed, and Sticky Money which she produced and also acted as script supervisor. With Chopsticks, which was made for a 48-hour film challenge, she was involved in all aspects of the film from its initial inception to its post-production and editing.

With Sticky Money, which was made in collaboration with the Thunder Bay film collective Flash Frame, she was responsible, as producer, with scheduling and organizing the shoot which had a complicated set of locations and a fairly large cast for a small film.

She was a writer for the dramatizations for A.K.A. a film about serial imposter Ronald Ivan Macdonald.

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Looking at the stricken faces of other women waiting at an abortion clinic, Melissa must consider whether to stay or run.

Creative team

Writer/director: Kim Nelson
Producer: Tony Lau

Filmmaker’s statement

On Girls is a film about the other side of sex.

It is about women’s solitary struggles with their own bodies, identities, self-worth and with each other. It is about the aftermath of an unplanned pregnancy, a situation that many women face. For women when a pregnancy is not planned, dealing with it in one way or another, and being irrevocably altered as a result, is not optional.

I named the story to represent the weight of biology, morality and judgment on girls. In the film there are light and funny moments in the middle of this predicament, but most of all I wanted the audience to experience the struggles of a young woman alone in the aftermath of this personal tragedy. I hope the film is meaningful to those who see it and shared widely.

We had a solid, majority female cast and crew, including director of photography Svjetlana Oppen, editor Maria Cusumano and starring Monica Sanborn. Filming was a joy.

Support for the film from the community of Windsor, Ontario included being allowed to film in the operating wing of the maternity ward at the Windsor Regional Hospital, where delight and tragedy unfolded in the hallways around us.

About Kim Nelson

Kim is the director of the Humanities Research Group, and an associate professor of Cinema Arts in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Windsor. She has taught film at the University of Windsor since 2007.

Her work has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Ontario Arts Council and she has received awards from The Windsor Endowment for the Arts and Research and Creative Activity at the University of Windsor.

Her feature length documentaries have screened at international film festivals and on university campuses in Canada, the US and Europe, as well as online with KCET in the US, one of the US’ largest public broadcasters.

Her recent film, 130 Year Road Trip Live, is an experiment with live cinema that merges documentary, history and live performance. It was the keynote presentation at the Film & History Conference in Milwaukee, WI, and the Pluralities Conference at San Francisco State University, both in November 2017.

She has held fellowships with DAAD (German Federal Grant) at the Filmuniversität Babelsberg in Potsdam, Germany, The Humanities Research Group at the University of Windsor, and the Cinema Research Institute at NYU.

More info about her live documentary work can be found at livedocproject.com.

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