• Within Our Gates by Oscar Micheaux (USA, 1920)

• Black Girl by Ousmane Sembène (Senegal/France, 1966)

• Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One by William Greaves (USA, 1968) *

• The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks (USA, 1969)

• I Am Somebody by Madeline Anderson (USA, 1970)

• Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song by Melvin Van Peebles (USA, 1971)

• Ganja & Hess by Bill Gunn (USA, 1973)

• De Cierta Manera by Sara Gomez (Cuba, 1974)

• El otro Francisco by Sergio Giral (Cuba, 1974)

• Touki Bouki by Djibril Diop Mambéty (Senegal, 1976)

• Baara by Souleymane Cisse (Mali, 1978)

• Killer of Sheep by Charles Burnett (USA, 1978)

• Bush Mama by Halie Gerima (USA, 1979)

• L’éxilé by Oumarou Ganda (Niger/France, 1980)

• Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community by Jennifer Hodge de Silva (Canada, 1983)

• Bless Their Little Hearts by Billy Woodberry (USA, 1983)

• Chameleon Street by Wendell B. Harris Jr (USA, 1989)

• Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash (USA, 1991)

• Malcolm X by Spike Lee (USA, 1992)

• Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. by Leslie Harris (USA, 1992)

• Speak It! From the Heart of Nova Scotia by Claire Prieto (Canada, 1992)

• My Footsteps in Baragua by Gloria Rolando (Cuba, 1995)

• Black is... Black Ain't by Marlon Riggs (USA, 1995)

• Set It Off by F. Gary Grey (USA, 1996)

• The Sheikh’s Blessing by Gadalla Gubara (Sudan, 1998)

• Another Planet by Christene Browne (Canada, 1999)

• Black Soul by Sylvia Hamilton (Canada, 2000)

• Brother to Brother by Rodney Evans (USA, 2004)

• Pariah by Dee Rees (USA, 2011)

• An Oversimplification of Her Beauty by Terence Nance (USA, 2012)

• Fruitvale Station by Ryan Coogler (USA, 2013) 

• Dear White People by Justin Simien (USA, 2014)

• 13th by Ava DuVernay (USA, 2016)

• I Am Not Your Negro by Raoul Peck (USA/Haiti, 2016)

• Black Mother by Khalik Allah (Jamaica/USA, 2018) *

I finished Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance by Alanis Obomawin this week. The film chronicles the historic Oka Crisis of 1990 where community members protested against a housing and golf-course expansion project that would encroach on a pine forest and burial ground on Mohawk territory.

I knew vaguely about the protests, but not the reason why it happened or the details of injustices. After seeing this film, I am really upset that it wasn’t shown in my high school history class. This is Canadian history. Those ignorant of this history need to understand and grapple with it now.

This is the Canada that is seen as kind and open. These racist and horrible acts happened less than 30 years ago. Canadians hung Mohawk replicas and screamed “savage!” Canadians placed barbed wire around protestors, surrounded them with tanks and soldiers. Canadians withheld food supplies to isolated protestors. Canadians threw large rocks at fleeing elders, women and children. Canadians truly believed they were the civilized ones.

Obomsawin cut through the lies that the armed Mohawks were criminals, and revealed the constant injustices these protestors faced. I’ve seen a few of her films before, and I am not surprised that this film struck me just as sharply.

You can stream the film on the National Film Board of Canada’s website here.
And you can read a bit more about the Oka Crisis here.

2) News from Home (Chantal Akerman)

3) The Beaches of Agnès (Agnès Varda)

4) The Piano (Jane Campion)

5) Zama (Lucrecia Martel)

6) Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt)

7) Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)

8) Fruit of Paradise (Vera Chytilová)

9) Ladybird (Greta Gerwig) *

10) The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko)

11) Shoes (Lois Weber)

12) Speedracer (the Wachowskis) *

13) Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair)

14) A New Leaf (Elaine May)

15) The House Is Black (Forough Farrokhzad)

16) Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik)

17) Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley)

18) Forgetting Vietnam (Trinh T. Minh-ha)

19) Pariah (Dee Rees)

20) The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)

21) The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg)

22) The Farewell (Lulu Wang)

23) Water (Deepa Mehta)

24) Harlan County USA (Barbara Kopple)

25) Hurry Hurry (Marie Menken)

26) Frida (Julie Taymor)

27) A Fool and His Money (Alice Guy-Blaché)

28) The Future (Miranda July)

29) The Intern (Nancy Meyers)

30) The Wild Party (Dorothy Arzner)

31) Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash)

32) Clueless (Amy Heckerling)

33) The Decline of Western Civilization II (Penelope Spheeris)

34) The Perfect Candidate (Haifaa al-Mansour)

35) Dyketactics (Barbara Hammer)

36) The Smiling Madame Beudet (Germaine Dulac)

37) Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke)

38) Soft Fiction (Chick Strand)

39) Spook Sport (Mary Ellen Bute)

40) The Fourth Watch (Janie Geiser)

41) Drexciya (Akosua Adoma Owusu)

42) Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (Alanis Obomsawin) *

Being a woman makes me hyper-aware of being watched. People are constantly looking at me, up and down, observing my outfit, how much of my body is visible, how much make-up I am wearing, etc etc. I know other women will deeply understand this experience. Of pretending you aren’t aware someone is looking at you, especially when that person is a man. This is compounded when you are a young queer femme.

Queer women are judged. We are examined. We are checked out. We are scrutinized. We are searched. We are ogled. We are constantly under surveillance.

Stop Watching Me:

“Lesbian” was the number one most search term on the website pornhub in 2018. People apparently love to fantasize about queer women (particularly queer femme women). And this prevalent fantasy often comes in a certain package. Thin, white, feminine, cis, and conventually beautiful women are often depicted in both pornagraphic and other representations of queer women. But it goes deeper than this. The way desire is depicted is broken. It is hard to explain for myself, but when I study “lesbian” porn, I don’t see myself reflected. I see what, I assume, heterosexual men want my sexuality to look like.

As someone who struggled for many years with internalized biphobia, my imagining of my very own sexuality was very much shaped by the predominant hetero male fantasy of queer women. It took me years to break from this limiting image of my own sexuality.

Image-making vs Image-consumping:

My film Watching Us explores these deep rooted fears and feelings in myself. The fear of being watched by men. The internal pain of attempting to accept myself as a bi/pansexual person. The feeling of losing myself from others’ consumption.

Expanding my exploration into reflexive cinema, Watching Us explores not just how media affects the viewer, but how the viewer affects the media. Society’s consumption of queer women’s sexualities changes us. It changes how we act, how we see ourselves, and it is painful.

Watching Us was a difficult film to make for numerous reasons, but the most challenging aspect was definitely the subject matter.

I am so proud of what I achieved with this film, and I am so happy more people will be able to watch it. Watching Us is currently being distributed by VIVO Media Arts Centre and is having it’s first screening at the Victoria Short Film Festival.

Get a sneak peak at the film from this new trailer:

I have a fascination with cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions. You know, those big square TVs that were in most households before the 2000s, but were rapidly replaced by their adversary the flat screen television. 

I don’t know exactly why I am so hooked on CRT TVs … maybe it's the nostalgia associated with them, or possibly the cultural and time specific stamp the TVs evoke. I do know for sure that these old televisions evoke imagery of the all American family huddled around the screen awaiting their nightly dose of media messages.

This is a classic trope that has often been explored in a variety of art forms (many of which have inspired me). It’s also a tool I use to incite the viewer to question their relationship to the very artwork they are viewing. In other words, the trendy trope of “reflexive cinema.” The tool allows for me to explore some very interesting questions. What is the viewer’s role in creating the artwork they are witnessing? How can the viewer affect the artwork? And if an artwork is able to, in a way, wake up a viewer from the common passive state of consumption, what is this new proactive viewer capable of?

Almost all of my films from the last six years touch upon these questions, and similarly, almost all of the films contain imagery of CRT TVs. One such film is titled Static, and directly explores the often toxic relationship viewers can have to the media they consume. I wanted to express the painfully numbing capabilities of screens, and the feeling of being trapped in a vicious cycle.

Static is a film I created in 2014, but I have recently re-developed the work into an installation where the film will be screened on a CRT TV. In the film, we see a mountain of old CRT TVs that have mesmerized the viewer within the movie. In the installation, this mountain will be recreated, further provoking this reflexive nature of the piece. Will you sit and watch the film in its entirety, or will you choose to not be trapped like the viewer within Static, and walk away?

I am constantly attempting to push the limits of what filmmaking can look like, which made the premiere of Static well suited to be shown with Cinevolution Media Arts Society. I also deeply care and advocate for accessibility of art, and am striving for new venues and forms of presentation that allow for everyone to access media art.

Thus my love of Cinevolution. Their mandate includes nurturing “the decentralization of art while forging new connections among artists and academics to the community. [...] We aspire to foster media literacy, cultivate creativity, and stimulate critical discourse and new ideas.” Sounds right up my alley!

I am so proud that Static has been selected for Cinevolution’s Digital Carnival 2019. My work will be seen alongside many other wonderful media artists’ pieces, and will be viewable to the public this weekend as part of the Richmond World Festival.

When: Friday August 30th from 4pm - 10pm and on Saturday August 31st from 11am - 10pm

Where: Richmond Cultural Centre Plaza at 7700 Minoru Gate, Richmond BC. 

I have wanted to write a blog post about the topic of balance in life for the last year. Finding balance has been an important topic for me as I have previously found myself caught in a spiral of procrastination due to my tendencies towards perfectionism, and admittedly still occasionally do.

To me, balance means finding ways to manage all the important categories of your life without plunging into one section so deeply that you leave the others high and dry. As an artist, this can be especially challenging as expectations are set very high in the ever narrowing field of professional artists, and because an artist’s work is so often intertwined with their personal self worth.

Trailer from Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams (1982). Listen for the narrator’s description of filmmaker Werner Herzog’s extreme artistic actions.

”I don’t want balance, I want brilliance!”

It can be tempting as an artist to disregard your physical and mental health, to isolate yourself from family and friends, or to ignore your personal responsibilities all in the “name of your art”. We see this caricature of the genius artist in many forms of representations. We often idolize these characters for their singular focus and extreme dedication to their craft. I think about the cult status of film directors such as Orson Welles or Stanley Kubrick, and how their extreme nature was praised as genius and the key to their artistic craftsmanship. I absolutely hate this notion, as it is harmful to the artist and those surrounding them. Welles’ obsessive nature with his filmmaking basically killed him, and Kubrick was notoriously abusive to his actors, pushing them to extremes. I also would note that many of these so called genius artists, especially in filmmaking, are men, and that their often dangerous behaviour towards others is disregarded as unimportant for the sake of making their art. I think most good art about artists tries to subvert this idea in someway, either by problematizing these dangerous actions or the viewer’s ideation of such artists.

We have seen a variety of filmmakers attempting to examine the extreme pressures that can be put on artists, both by others and themselves, such as in Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010) and Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash (2014). Additionally, there have been documentaries that call to question the ethics of artistic extremity, such as Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams (1982), which is about the notoriously outrageous director Werner Herzog and the questionable actions he undertakes in order to complete his epic film Fitzcarraldo.

Do we Value Artists?

I personally struggle with this praising of singular focused artists who will do anything for their art. I recently collaborated with an artist who claimed that our work is different from other forms of work, comparing it to activists’ work, and that we need to dedicate all of ourselves to our art. I deeply disagree with this idea, both for artists and activists. I think they were coming from a place of highly valuing both forms of work, but this sentiment actually devalues our output. This idea says that artists should put everything, literally everything, into their art, regardless of their health, wellbeing or abilities. This undermines our work by monetarily devaluing us, as the insane amount of time, effort and skill is almost always underpaid or not paid at all.

Secondly, this attitude enforces the idea that work related to art isn’t measurable in the same way other work is. As in, artmaking isn’t work per se, but something we are “called to do,” something we would do even without pay, without concern for ourselves, because the work is so important. I disagree with this idea deeply. Though of course I believe art making is extremely important for society, I think that to treat our work differently from other forms hurts artists and thus hurts the art.

Mental Health and Artistic Balance

Another important point against the idea of basically killing yourself for your art is that this isn’t possible for so many types of people. The standards of living off next to nothing, putting in 12+ hour days constantly, or not allowing yourself to have pleasures in life — these attitudes hurts almost all types of humans, but especially marginalized people. I personally can speak to how harmful this attitude can be for someone with chronic physical and mental struggles, and how these attitudes can hurt extra as a woman.

A great book that touches on these ideas is Ellen Forney’s graphic novel Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: A Graphic Memoir. In this autobiography, Forney reveals how she felt when she discovered her diagnosis of bipolar disorder. She explains: “even as the weight of this news sank in, the sense of heaviness was alleviated by a back-handed sense of cred.” She depicts herself holding up a “Club van Gogh” card that states, “The true artist is a crazy artist.”

I read this book for the first time when I was around 18 years old. It really spoke to me as an aspiring artist who was yet to discover her own diagnosis of major depressive disorder. The idea that my mental illness was inherently connected to my ability to produce good art was a toxic idea that I needed to see reflected back from another artist. In Forney’s case, she associated her manic episodes with bursts of creativity and dreamt of preparing for her depressive phases with preplanned ideas that just needed completion. This plan, unsurprisingly, did not work. Throughout the book, as she discovers more about herself, how she views artists, and her own mental health, she comes to realize that bipolar disorder is not the source of her creativity, but instead something that actually made it a lot harder for her to work. She even so blatantly states before this realization, “I don’t want balance, I want brilliance!”

Reading books like Marbles, or watching films like Black Swan, Whiplash, or Burden of Dreams, were helpful in evaluating my own personal expectations of myself and my art. I don’t want to push myself to extremes to create art, and I refuse to tolerate anyone that expects that of me. I value my art, and thus must value myself. I deserve to have a stable and balanced life. All artists deserve this balance.

I will finish this post with a lovely quote from the painter Jackson Pollock. Somehow, I feel his attitude towards his work mirrors what I hope to enact myself":

”Sometimes I lose a painting. But I have no fear of changes, of destroying the image, because a painting has a life of its own. I try to let it live.” — Jackson Pollock

Simone Rapisarda Casanova’s third feature film, Zanj Hegal la, (Haitian for Hegel’s Angel), mirrors his previous works’ hybrid nature of documentary and narrative as it explores the mundane yet mystical world of a young boy named Widley. Coated with imagery of the local Haitian practices of Vodou and Kanaval, this reflexive narrative was created through direct collaboration between Casanova and his film students from the Ciné Institute of Jacme. The film simultaneously questions the ethics of its ethnographic filmmaking, while also exploring the aftermath of colonialism in Haiti.

Zanj Hegal la  begins with epic choir music over striking shots of people climbing off small boats towards the land. We see a young black man carry a white woman on his shoulders as he hikes through the ocean waters to the nearby sandy beach. Just as you begin to accept this bombastic opening, the rug is pulled out from under you as the editor of this film within a film is seen discussing his work with his young friend Widley. Here, we are quickly introduced into the film’s constant reflexive nature. Casanova describes this style as when a filmmaker “makes the spectator aware that he is watching a film,” a tool he  uses to great advantage to both explore the boundaries of the medium, and to call to question the ethics of a white Western filmmaker documenting the lives of people of colour from developing nations.

Both of Casanova’s previous two films are ethnographic works centered on the lives of small communities in foreign countries. He explains that when shooting his debut feature The Strawberry Tree in Cuba, he approached it with the mindset that “every person that goes to a foreign country, especially a Westerner going to a third world country with a camera, is an idiot. So I wanted to create a record of this with this film. I put myself behind the camera, and played the role of the idiot.” This directorial performance of idiocy can be seen throughout Zanj Hegal la, both directly as characters refer to a mysterious film director as a “funny weirdo,” and indirectly through scenes with clumsy craftsmanship during the mise en abymes.

Casanova acknowledges that this reflexive filmmaking and recognition of cultural ignorance does not clear him of all ethical questions. He proclaims that even if the medium of film itself is exploitative, that he tries “to counteract that with action.” He states, “I try to make films where everyone involved in their making somehow would benefit. The only way to counteract the [exploitation] is for me as a filmmaker to not accept the limitations of the medium, and do something personally to counteract that.” He listed many actions he takes outside of the filmmaking processes to attempt to bring balance back to his subjects, such as giving them final approval of edits and returning any money he may receive from screening fees back to them. Aside from the ethical reasonings behind these choices, Casanova also stated, “I take care to make films with people I think I can fall in love with [...] I don’t think I could ever make films like other filmmakers do with subjects they despise or don’t feel a connection with. I think because I am a shy person, I make films with people I would like to befriend.”

Aside from these ethical qualms, Zanj Hegal la documents a community left stranded as they continue their existence in a world that one character jokingly calls “post-colonial.” The feature includes strings of many different stories, including an  unfinished short about a stereotypically malicious white priest, and scenes which seem to call to traditions and understandings based upon Haitian Vodou. One of the best moment of the film is a scene featuring a Vodou dance ceremony; a red glow washes over a Haitian woman performing a mesmerizing dance as she stares into the camera’s lens.

The element that ties the film together is Widley. We see him as he watches over his friend’s editing work, and when he goes about his regular days, and these everyday moments are where the heart of the film lies. These scene are neither epic nor heartbreaking, but portray a banal or playful tone. Casanova explained, “having grown up in the countryside [of Italy], normal people always laugh at everything. The serious people are somewhere else. I can not make a film about the people that I love and am comfortable with—these situations they are in, they are dire—it would be betraying them if I wasn’t able to capture them and their humanity.”

Zanj Hegal la attempts to present a new imagining of contemporary Haiti that embodies both its histories of colonialism and varied cosmological understandings. The film succeed in raising questions about how one might portray a culture that is not their own, and in presenting a lead whose life we are able to fall into. However, though the film attempts to embed stories of Vodou and Kanaval with the written collaboration of the Casanova’s Haitian students, it falls short in producing a clear vision of these moments and how they may connect to the remaining strings of the work. In the end, the film allows its viewers to rethink stereotypes about Haiti and its peoples while pushing the boundaries of documentary filmmaking.

This review was originally written for SAD MAG and be read here.

I am a huge supporter of volunteer work. I volunteered weekly at The Cinematheque for three years while in film school. I have and continue to volunteer on friend’s film sets, donating my time and expertise. And I continue to search for new volunteer opportunities to give back to communities I support.

However, I am also a strong advocate for fair working conditions and just wages.

The problem with filmmaking culture here in Vancouver (and I suspect worldwide) is that often the standard is to take advantage of the eager and naive, expect 12+ hour days, and be exclusive to workers with different abilities. I have been on countless sets where often young folks, who are volunteering on one of their first film sets, are taught that the standard is no pay, extremely long days, and a work culture that can often be unwelcoming.

For example, I volunteered on a old colleague’s film set last year as an background actor. They put out a call for young people who could pass as high school students. I had the day free, and respected the colleague, so I signed up for the set. It was a decently large set for a Vancouver-style independent film, and had a large crew + cast. Overall, the set was fine -- decent crafty and friendly crew, but there was a large problem with the lack of respect for the background actors. Lunch breaks were cut short, communication and direction were lacking, and extra long hours were expected after the estimated end time.

Now, if you work or volunteer on film sets, you have probably experienced something similar. You have had your rushed lunches, you have worked with difficult people, and you definitely have stayed late on set. The element that really irked me about this set was that, aside from myself, almost all the background actors were literal highschool students. They were children. They didn’t know they could say no to staying late, or stand up against anything else that wasn’t okay on that set. They were learning that this is the norm on film sets -- that unfair working conditions is the standards and that you shouldn’t say anything against it.

I tried my best to stand up for these kids, but ultimately it was me against a crew that was just trying to make their day. I have so many worse horror stories, but this particular story really exemplifies the norms of film set culture.

It’s wrong to manipulate volunteers, especially child volunteers. It’s wrong to expect people to be on their feet, often working quickly, mentally pushing themselves for  12 - 15 hours a day. It’s wrong to take advantage of film crews and artists who are passionate about the craft and work them to the bone as volunteers.

Artists and others working on film sets deserve fair pay. As I mentioned above, I am a huge advocate for volunteer work. However, there is a big difference between volunteer work and paid work. When someone volunteers their time and skills, they should be treated not just fairly, but be shown extra gratitude. They are working for free after all!

When I volunteered at The Cinematheque, the management ensured we all felt appreciated. There was annual volunteer parties, free perks, encouraging management and more. Sadly, these sorts of standards are often not upheld on certain film sets.

On my friend’s sets, the vibe is consciously very different from the problematic sets we have all volunteered on before. We don’t kill ourselves with extra long hours. We respect each other on set. And we volunteer because we truly care about the project and artists behind the film.

A piece of advice to new filmmakers looking to gain experience on sets:

1. Know you can always say no, or walk away. Never risk your safety for anything.

2. You are VOLUNTEERING. You are not obligated to do anything. If someone tries to cut your lunch short, don’t be afraid to let them know you are not okay with that.

3. Make sure it is clear whether you are volunteering or working. If it is a working gig, then ensure you are being paid at least minimum wage (in B.C. currently $12.65, set to rise annually on June 1st).

In general, I would advise against volunteering on sets you don’t know much about. You shouldn’t waste your time on projects or people you don’t actually care about.

Zvyagintsev’s 2003 film takes place over the course of a single week, and explores the the reuniting of two young sons with their estranged father as the three embark on a vacation turned cryptic road trip. The youngest son Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) is the most skeptical of this new paternal figure, while teenaged Andrey (Vladimir Garin) idealizes his father (Konstantin Lavronenko).

The film opens with the brothers amongst a group of boys as they compel each other to jump from a tower into a deep blue ocean below. Ivan, or “Shorty” as the boys call him, is too afraid to plunge into the water, and is left uptop the tower for hours until his mother comes to save him. This character of a young boy on the cusp of teenagehood struggling to fit the mold of masculinity is clearly carved out by this scene and further solidified throughout the film with his outbursts towards his classical macho father. In his debut performance, Dobronravov showcases both the fragile heart and intuitive intelligence of children. His co-stars stand strong as well, with particular success seen in Lavronenko performance as the father, who constantly keeps the audiences wondering his true intentions.

The audience takes the perspective of sensitive yet stubborn Ivan as he attempts to resolve the mystery of who his father truly is. We first see the father after the children are shocked to hear the news of his return after 15 years away. They peer into his bedroom to find his sleeping body draped in cloth. The shot’s foreshortened perspective calls back to Andrea Mantegna’s famous painting of the Lamentation of Christ. This violent perspective and referencing presents the father as an otherworldly being that, even as he returns, seems to already be dead.

The art direction and cinematography are stunning throughout The Return, both having a strong cohesion to each other. The framing often focuses on landscapes as it engulfs the brothers. Subtle camera movements and blocking often reveal the characters surrounding by broad scenery such as endless oceans, seemingly infinite fields, and never ending roads. Similarly, the art direction often emphasis the loneliness of the characters while simultaneously representing the unsaid emotions of different characters. In terms of costuming, the father is often seen in a deep maroon through either his clothing or vehicle, will the boys are often seen in faded blues or greys. In a pivotal moment where Ivan declares his disdain for his father and decides to no longer tolerate their questionable actions, Ivan is seen surrounded by similar maroon coloured flower-patterned bedding. This cohesion continues till the final scene, and as the film skirts around revealing its mysteries narratively, its through both the cinematography and art direction that the true pay off is felt by the audience.

As his debut feature, Zvyagintsev absolutely deserves the praise and accolades it received during its initial release. The Return is an absolutely devastating rendition of childhood trauma and the isolation young boys can experience from rigid imaginings of masculinity.

Aside from directing my own films, I also work as a cinematographer for my filmmaking colleagues. As a cinematographer, I help to create the director’s vision for the film through camera and lighting choices. I am knowledgeable about the craft and good at my job. I also personally know many other skillful women cinematographers both at the local and international scales.

Yet, we still don’t see women cinematographers gaining the same recognition and opportunities of their men counter-parts. When I was in film school, I saw all too often the struggles women students faced gaining access into the “boys club” of cinematography where most of the knowledge, connections and privileges lie. Men had their hands on the cameras, they shared with each other insider knowledge, and they boosted each other up.

So we know there are a few problems: less women being able to work and be recognized as cinematographers, and the lack of spaces for women to learn the trade. These problems suck, and I want to try to fix them!

Thus why I created a Cinematography Workshop for Women with VIVO Media Arts Centre here in Vancouver. I wasn’t seeing a space for women to come together to learn about cinematography, so I created one!

That “boys club” vibe makes it hard to feel comfortable asking technical questions as a women because you might be seen as unintelligent. With my workshop, all forms of questions will be encouraged and no one will be shamed. I want to introduce to the attendees about the fundamentals of cinematography so they can walk on to set with confidence.

The workshop will also explain the historical reasoning behind sexism within the industry and with our cinematography choices. Did you know that from the dawn of filmmaking we have been lighting women in very different ways then men? And that those techniques still crop up in contemporary films? Crazy, I know.

This workshop is my way of trying to combat sexism within the industry, and is open to all self-identified women and non-binary folks. Basically, anyone whose gender made it harder for them to learn about cinematography.

I am really proud about this workshop, and I hope the attendees gain a lot of useful knowledge, exiting with a sense of confidence and community. If you want to learn more about the workshop, go on ahead to the VIVO Event page for more information.

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]]>The Lack of Women Cinematographers and My SolutionVIFF 2018Paige SmithWed, 26 Sep 2018 20:32:29 +0000https://www.paigesmithfilm.com/blog/2018/9/19/how-to-prepare-for-viff5b87280f7106993f1a9aaf1b:5b99cbcb0ebbe8e9409c35c6:5ba2c36d2b6a282ecaa69ff7

Vancouver’s largest film festival has almost arrived, and we all must prepare for the tsunami of contemporary films that will soon wash across our eyes. It might seem like an overwhelming task, as there is almost 500 films screening at the Vancouver International Film Festival this year, but you can prepare yourself!

First, you have to find yourself a hard-copy of the 2018 guide. The digital version is wonderful for keeping you updated on last minute changes, but the hard-copy is a must for optimal festival planning. You can find copies of the guide all around the city, and there is even a list of some of the locations on VIFF’s website. I got my copy at Vancity Theatre.

Now that you have your hands on your own guide, you got to start using it! Rifle through the pages and find what interests you. Trust your gut. This is your first pass, and you should be noting what stands out to you personally. I suggest getting some sticky notes and fixing them onto the pages of your picks.

As there are a lot of films, you probably don’t have the time to read every film’s description. Thus, I suggest you instead narrow your search — look at the streams that interest you, then stills that capture your attention, and then read the descriptions. My favourite streams based on previous programming are True North (with special interest on Future//Present section), Gateway, and ALT.

At this point, I had over forty films that I wanted to see, and only sixteen days to see them all. If you are anything like me, you would still be overwhelmed by these numbers.

The next step is to listen for the buzz. Listen to your favourite film critics and fellow cinephiles for what they are planning on checking out. And listen broadly. Don’t underestimate the power of a mother’s intuition on which films seem cool this year. This step allows for us to finalize our personal top picks for the festival.

And now you know what you want to see, it’s time to figure out when you are going to see them. The guide has a very useful pull-out schedule you can use to figure out when all the films are screening. I personally like to note in my day planner which films interest me that day.

For example, on October 10th there is three films that interest me: Bojan Bodružić’s The Museum of Forgotten Triumphs, Lars von Trier’s The House that Jack Built, and Joaquín Cociña & Cristóbal León’s The Wolf House. The problem is that the last two start times overlap. However, instead of trying to choose which one I want to see now, I leave both in my planner so I can decide on the day of which I want to see. I can ask myself on the day: "do I feel like some heavy horror, or am I in the mood for some experimental animation from Chile?

We have the what and the when are prepared for VIFF, the final step is the who! Who do you want to see these wonderful movies with? Talk to your friends and make plans together; introduce your less film-centric friends to some potentially great movies. Seeing films with others on the big screen can create wonderful memories. At the same time, don’t forget to go out and see some films on your own too! Some of my favourite movie-going experiences came from solo movie adventures.

Whether you are planning on seeing three movies a day, or just want to catch the highlights, I hope these tips have helped you prepare for VIFF 2018.

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]]>How to Prepare for VIFF