Oh, and for the double blogging joy this week…

My interview with Kevin McMahon is up on Magnus’ blog Documentary Field Notes and Flash Points today.

If you’ve linked here from there, congratulations, you are a true clicking Jedi.

If you haven’t checked out Magnus’ blog then I strongly urge you to, not just because I assist him with it, but because it’s got some brilliant topics you’re gonna love.

And this week, you should check it out especially just cuz, well, you know. I interviewed a real, live filmmaker and THAT IS PRETTY COOL.

Peace out.

After a long ride to Loyola, my *beloved* Montreal campus, last fall, I was wet. I took a picture. I may not look so pretty and friendly next time we meet, so I thought you should see this.

So long and thanks for all the fish…

That is the inimitable line from one of Douglas Adam‘s Hitchhiker’s Guide the Galaxy books (I think it’s the fourth in a trilogy of five). My brother Matthew is reading it right now, and it’s a trip down memory lane to pick it up again and dive with childlike delight into one of Adams’ weirdly constructed paragraphs about Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent’s excellent adventures. No one writes like Adams. If you’ve never read it and have any sort of a sense of humour at all, you might consider picking one of his books up for fun. Just leave the custard and sperm whales behind because they tend to get damaged on these trips.

But I digress.

Mist rises from the Niagara Falls high above the constant crowds. We "digressed" with a side trip there so my brother could see the Falls for the first time before heading out West for real.

I feel I’m going back in time because I’m on yet another road trip across the continent. My sixth. One could argue this many trips in ten years is un de trop, but I never get tired of road trips. It’s for a good cause: I need lots of time to think about my reasons for heading back to my native land, British Columbia, after 12 years living and working in Toronto and Montreal, to start my own documentary production company.

Sounds grand doesn’t it? And it is, until you consider the current production climate working directors et al. are suffering though. I believe Canada will fare better than most, although worse than we would have done without Harper at the helm, but still I get the sweats thinking about it.

Why am I starting a production company at this particular time? What am I, a woman of 31 years of age with virtually no field experience, doing, entering this industry at this point in time? When many esteemed directors, producers, sound techs and videographers are grasping for any work they can find? Why?

No one yet knows how to make money from webdocs. No one can figure out distribution figures when everything is being given away for free, and the consumers are now trained to expect everything to be free. No one has figured out how – aside from going to those excellent institutions the NFB/ONF and SODEC and the like – how to get money to make a film. And the only people who are getting THAT kind of money are the already working filmmakers, those who have produced at least two or three decently well-regarded films, and even THEY are having trouble getting the funds together.

I should be running straight back for the hills of Montreal, begging someone for an internship in network TV and moonlighting at McKibbon’s bar, praying there will be a job in 3-5 years when some reporter finally releases their white-knuckled grip on their job and moves on. But I’m heading out West to start editing our first project, a mini-doc about an encounter between Brazil’s orphans and a natural horsewoman.

Why? Because in spectacularly depressing scenarios like this, when everything media-related has been thrown against the wall and all the rules have changed, people can create their own opportunities. I have faith that starting out in the middle of chaos puts everyone on a level field. Chaos even creates an advantage for those who have nothing better to do than grab the tail of opportunity and see what corner they will be whipped around next. I believe that the current climate we’re living through is the most exciting, terrifying, thrilling, open-source, open-ended, adventurous time we’ve seen since New Wave met mullet hairdos. I think that if anyone can tackle this new environment, it’s those people like me, who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by jumping in now.

Tobi has finally found her true function: Amy Minksy holds up the Tobi clothes steamer.

This is a time for the pioneers and time-shapers, the innovators and inventors, the experimenters and the agitators… and the young. I may qualify in only the last category, but that’s good enough for me.

But in the meantime, on the scenic route to the exciting new world of starting a production company in the midst of all this chaos, I’m stuck inside a beige-themed RV, doing nothing much without access to the Internet.

Our trip west is taking the molasses-slow route. With two excellent drivers on board, Matt and my Dad (who never lets me forget that I’ve wrecked 4 cars in a total of 8 accidents) who don’t let me take the wheel for anything, I’m doing a lot of reading. 

Since we left Montreal a week ago I’ve already finished one ENTIRE novel – what a luxury! – Wally Lamb’s The Hour I First Believed, and I’m starting Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s In the First Circle – the first-time-ever-issued uncensored edition. Other pieces of note: the latest issue of Maisonneuve magazine that features some heavy reading (AI, Singularity theory and the end of humanity) and heavy breathing (how one copy writer almost ended up writing excerpts for hard-core porn videos.)

So long, and see you on the other side.

How beautiful is Canada, hey?

Rideau Hall and the photojournalist who didn’t save her pictures

Savika Fowsar and I at the Michener Awards gala last May at Rideau Hall.

This is the single photo I have from a Gala dinner at Rideau Hall on May 27, 2010. I was invited, along with another journalism grad to witness the awarding of the Michener prize for public service journalism [Linda Gyulai of The Montreal Gazette won for her coverage of corruption in Montreal's civic politics.]

After taking almost 150 photos of the magnificent Hall, Her Excellency the Governor-General (from a distance), the grounds, the people, the security detail, the food, portraits and rooms, I deleted them from my camera before transferring them to my computer.

I’m sure you can imagine the howl of anguish when I found out. I haven’t posted about the event until now because I was so mad at myself for losing those photos. I know better… I always check… I usually check….

Except this one time. I had thought I had transferred them but evidently didn’t, and in my haste to cover the signing of the Aboriginal Education accord for The Eastern Door, I deleted the pictures. The Accord signing was a great event, but of course the Michener awards dinner was a huge highlight for me. I really regret not having those pictures.

However, what’s done is done. I’ll learn from this and never, ever delete photos without checking my hard drive first.

Stories to come..

I have been extremely remiss in keeping this blog up to date. Not because nothing has been happening, but because… because…

I don’t know.

I guess I’m working on other people’s blogs more than my own! Ha! More on that to come.

I hereby promise to write more regularly and be faithful to my reading public...

In the month+ since the last update I have managed to:

- attend a fancy dinner at Rideau Hall to witness the awarding of the Michener prize for journalism [Linda Gyulai of The Montreal Gazette won for her coverage of corruption in Montreal's civic politics.] Pics to come.

- finish my three year degree at Concordia University, which took a really circutiuous 5 years, and sit through the correspondingly long convocation ceremony. [The President of Concordia managed to fit into her address a justification for the perpetually broken escalators in the 12-storey Hall building. Something to do with, "We built a brand-new building for the business school, c'mon." Which is great for business students but not so much for the poli sci and the rest of the student population stuck walking up those escalator stairs in the Hall building.]

Pomp and Circumstance, which I endured fairly well thanks to texting and Twitter.

- assist documentary filmmaker Magnus Isacsson put together proposals seeking funding for some of his upcoming projects. [Learning the art of pitching, writing one-sheets, and arguing the merits of a story you need to know inside and out before you shoot or write a frame.]

- interview documentary filmmaker Kevin McMahon about interactive online docs vs. traditional longform films. [Managed to insult him mildly by referring to his work-in-progress as having to do with nuclear energy, instead of nuclear weapons. The interview will appear on Magnus' blog Documentary Fieldnotes and Flashpoints.]

- host and entertain three members of my family, visiting Montreal for their first time, from Abbotsford, B.C.

Longtime friends David and Charmaine Hicks on the left, and sibs Sharla Vanderwoude and Matthew Elliott on the right, enjoying a pitcher in the Old Port.

[In which the Elliott family, who possess at least 10 cars between them back on the Ranch, are shocked to learn how far one can go using only public transit and bicycles.]

Here we are in all our Polarized glory: sisters Sharla and Tobi, and my bro Matthew Elliott, together on the metro for first time.

One of the STM's 'green' bus shelters with leafy things growing out of the top.

- pack up 12 years worth of stuff acquired while “out east” and ship it “out west”. [I own 2 articles of furniture: a solid wood coffeetable from Brazil, and a bookshelf, and waaaay more books than I can afford to ship. This is the sum of my valued (non-electronic) goods. Electronic goods and software have a value of approx 10,000 times the rest of the stuff. And my people are worth a million times the value of my electronic goods. Below, Matte Downey, aka Martha, and Charmaine Hicks, two of the people I would like to pack back west with me.]

- and now I’m en route to Quebec City for more wine and dining, more sights and pastoral landscapes, and the beginning of a family bonding road trip that promises to be fairly congenial, perhaps to the point of actually enjoyable.

Matt meets Kim, our escort around Montreal’s Old Port.

So. Many stories to come.

After all, there’s not much else I’ll have to do in an air-conditioned RV for ten hours per day on the 6+ days it will take to reach Vancouver.

Filmmaker Magnus Isacsson’s take on Hot Docs

Bloor Theatre: glowing in all its gritty glory in the sunshine of a May day in Toronto

I’m interning with documentary filmmaker Magnus Isacsson for a few months. Here’s his take on some screenings he took in at the Hot Docs festival (Toronto, May 2010.)

T

Bloor Theatre Hot Docs Marquee

Birds

It was a blustery day and the water of Lake Ontario was really this green, and the sky really this lowering grey. You felt like you were going to be blown off the pier. Winter’s last blast.

birds on the wharf in some little town west of Ste. Catherines, ON

Favourite wharf view

Bench and water (I know it’s not supposed to be in the middle of the frame but… I think it still works)

Tracey Deer/Mohawk Princess

In a smashing two for two kind of week, I got to meet my second fabulous documentary filmmaker in two days: Tracey Deer of Kahnawake.

My eyes are straining from too much computer already today so I won’t go into everything, but suffice it to say, this woman is going to bend genres and break out into mainstream Canadian television culture with solid Aboriginal-themed stories. It’s going to turn Canadian programming on its ear, and I want to be the first to say: this Mohawk Princess is something.

We talked about the state of Aboriginal filmmaking today, who is doing what, and what it might take for regular Canadian audiences to catch on to some of the innovative work offered by Native filmmakers recently.  Not to mention the downright hilarious.

I also got to watch the pilot episode of what Tracey hopes will be a TV series on APTN. It’s about four young women working through the normal, angsty, sexy issues that every 20-something woman goes through, with the added complications that come from growing up on the Res. Where you might end up sleeping with your second cousin without knowing it.

What’s unique is the way it’s shot and composed. It’s the most un-Res-like treatment you can imagine, meaning it’s not heavy with trauma and issues, but it’s sexy, humorous, treats human dramas with a light touch, and somehow manages to make these Mohawk girls  real and complicated, just like everyone. Kind of like GILMOUR GIRLS, it’s close, intimate, character-driven and riveting. I wanted to watch more, and I’m about as far from a television freak as you can get. It doesn’t hurt though that I’m one of a privileged few outside of the production group that has seen it…

Watch for Tracey Deer. That Mohawk woman is on something….

Yes, there is hope in Kansas, Dorothy

Just saw an amazing doc tonight by Magnus Isacsson: Art in Action featuring Montreal’s own activist artists Annie Roy and Pierre Allard. The founders of ATSA (Socially Acceptable Acts of Terrorism) seem to provoke and promote a life of wonder amid their acts of social engagement/guerrilla warfare in the name of love.

But it wasn’t just the subject that was so moving – the film was wonderfully done and, to me, seemed the strike the right tone throughout.

Following the couple for three years, Magnus managed somehow to both capture intimate scenes in their home with the couple’s two children, as well as a decade of their work, their installations and performance interventions.

This film is all heart, and is also a not-so subtle call for every person watching to find their own mission in life and live by it. Once you’ve seen how these artists live, how could you not want to DO something to change the world? Once you see how they work and perspire and groan and love and create and make hundreds of calls and get their hands dirty and do what no one else is doing – simply because it’s in them to do.

I believe that’s one of the most beautiful things film can ever capture: humans fighting to pour every ounce of their potential and energy into something only they can do for the betterment of society. Magnus has succeeded in capturing that with this film.

Go see it!

PS and I had to slip this in: I was very happy to be able to meet Mr. Isacsson tonight and talk about the possibility of interning with him. Ahem! Yes. Wow. It’s too early to write about how things might look in the future, but I definitely anticipate learning something down the road from him, should that door stay open. For now, I think I’m just very excited. It was great. He’s great. I’m… very… very excited. Very.

And no, that meeting didn’t bias my view of the film at all. I liked it very much before I met him in person!

Squatting no longer Part IV

(continued from previous post: Part III)

Simon* and Michael swap stories in the kitchen.

However, the picture isn’t all rosy: barely four days after moving in, Pinet finds out that Simon is not actually a recovering cocaine addict, but a practicing one.

Coming back to his new place one night, Pinet finds Simon snorting lines off the kitchen table. He apparently borrowed money from his sister and called his dealer minutes later. There are empty beer bottles everywhere, and according to Pinet, Simon is drunk and high all weekend.

Pinet finds out from the dealer that Simon owes him over $500. He worries that if he gives Simon cash for rent on Dec. 1, it will go immediately to drugs. Simon keeps offering him liquor and coke but Pinet doesn’t take him up on it. Now that he’s been given a second chance to get on his feet, he says he doesn’t want to blow it.

“I’m going to keep on looking for a job,” says Pinet. “Nothing has changed.”

Pinet isn’t planning to move out just yet and he’s still thankful for Simon’s kindness. “He gave me a roof over my head. We get along. He knows what I did before and he gave me a chance.”

Even if Simon’s choice of lifestyle makes things more difficult for Pinet, it’s still better than squatting in the CN building. He says, still smiling, “I know I’m not alone anymore.”

Squatting no longer Part III

(continued from previous post: Part II)

Michael Pinet is ready to face the challenge of moving out of his CN tower squat and into a real apartment, so he can get a job and start a new life.

Pinet doesn’t regret spending seven months in this squat. “I regret a lot of things, but I don’t regret being on the street the second time. It made me open my eyes, it made me feel life for the first time. My life was shit, but I decided to make something out of it. It’s coming up good now.”

Pinet says his watershed moment came when he invited a 58-year-old homeless man, who has been on the street for almost 30 years, to move into the CN building with him. He asked himself if he still wanted to be homeless at that age. “Looking at him, I thought, ‘Do I want to be that? Collecting bottles in the street? Squatting when I’m 50?’ I have dreams… I want to be married, have kids around me, train for a job…”

Pinet’s last job was working as an industrial cleaner at a chicken farm, where he met his late girlfriend. He worked there about 10 months, staying on even as he moved into his squat, and only quitting mid-August. He managed to put off going on social assistance until three months ago. Now, he gets a cheque for $588.88 on the first of every month. “I know I can get more than that if I ask for it, because I was living on the street and could [claim to] have depression, but I don’t want to.”

Pinet says he’s interested in becoming a policeman, a social worker, or even a paramedic, as long as it’s a profession that helps others. “You know, even though I never had that encouragement in my life, no one gave me the tap on the back to push me forward and see what I can do… I know I have that in me to give to others. I want to give them that push forward that I never got.”

Looking for a job is hard when you’re homeless, says Pinet. “I tried lots of job service [agencies], but honestly they have a lot of work to improve the services. They just say, ‘get your CV together, ok go look for a job here.’ They leave you to yourself.”
He says they don’t really offer much help to the homeless. “Some say, ‘you need an apartment, you need clothes, you need a shower before you can get a job.”

Now that he’s moving into an actual apartment, with an address that he can put on job application forms, Pinet says he’s been given the leg up he needs. He plans to go back to school in January to finish his secondary education.

“I’m starting to really live now, I’m starting to have a life now.”

—–

The ground-floor, one-bedroom apartment in Verdun where Pinet now lives is small and sparse but cozy. Playing on the TV in the corner is the latest James Bond film. Simon (not his real name), a smiley, obviously open-hearted man who welcomed Pinet into his place, jumps up to shake hands. He is a fortysomething year-old francophone truck driver, more out of work than in.

He met Pinet when the latter’s younger brother introduced them just three days earlier. He says he found him “sympathique” and wanted to give him a hand. Without knowing much about Pinet, Simon offered to let him move in immediately, giving up his own bed and sleeping on the couch in the living room.

The two get along well: seeing them together is like watching a French version of Abbott and Costello. Simon likes to cook – Pinet says he’s good at it– and Pinet does his share by cleaning the place. It seems Simon was a bit lonely and having the younger man around has brightened up his days. “It makes it fun, to have someone to talk to.”

“We both laugh, we both make jokes, we get along great. We are ‘un bon match’,” says the older man, beaming. “Even if the fridge is a little bare,” he laughs.

Simon’s own story shows he understands hardship: he takes pills for mild depression and because he has trouble finding work in the trucking industry, he lives off social assistance. He’s also a recovering crack addict who spent six months in the Maison Bonsecours program one year ago, and has since been clean of his crack addiction.

He says if he has the chance to help someone like Pinet, he’s going to “give him a hand.” He’s clearly got a big heart. “If I had the means, I’d open a home for young people like this to help them get a new start,” he says expansively.

Simon’s face is sober as he looks at photographs of Pinet’s squat, taken just four days earlier. “I couldn’t live in a place like that,” he says. He figures he would have taken “the easy way” and chosen to live in a shelter rather than a squat.

Michael shows his new roomie pictures of his old squat