By Adam Carter

Cast into the Atlantic Ocean on Canada’s eastern side, the island of Newfoundland is known for many things: a rugged, worn coastline, battered by high winds and pervasive fog. Salt-strewn streets and even saltier food, coupled with a dialect that is both parts lively and borderline indecipherable. A rich and varied history filled with hardships, entertainers, struggles and storytellers.

The Newfoundland Coastline - courtesy Sandra Elford

St. John’s, the capital, is not a burgeoning metropolitan centre. Though it has a thriving arts community and a plethora of rural live theatre, Newfoundland is much more at ease with being called quaint than it is hip. This is not to discount the depth and scope of the Newfoundland arts community: this little island has produced some of the best art this country has ever seen.

But hip, it isn’t.

That all changed in 2009, when Republic of Doyle started filming for CBC. Suddenly, the arts world exploded. Jobs opened for actors, production staff, culinary services – the world was immediately their oyster. Downtown St. John’s was transformed seemingly overnight into a hubbub of camera crews, lighting trucks, and cordoned off streets. This little town now boasted a hit television series, and its winding streets were jammed full with Canadian stars, film crews, and more people that could stake their claim as a film extra than Newfoundland had ever seen.

With a production this monumental must come change, but how has the arts community shifted? Has Doyle irrevocably transformed the scene in Newfoundland and if so, how?

Doyle’s executive producer John Vatcher lives in Newfoundland, and with his wife Debbie, has raised two kids on the island. His love for Newfoundland is palpable when he speaks, and it quickly becomes evident that he sees the island as an intrinsic part of the show.

“I think that the land actually shapes you, and learning to be a musician or an entertainer is something that you take on here, it’s not given. We have a sense of what is important, what is not, and what we love,” he says.

“If we’re gonna go listen to music, well why not just go play music? If we’re gonna go watch a play, well then why not just act? We love to entertain ourselves, we don’t wait for anyone else to do it.”

He mentions Canadian actors that have called Newfoundland their home, and the names quickly start to pile up: Rick Mercer, Mark Critch, Allan Doyle, Shaun Majumder, Mary Walsh, Gordon Pinsent, the list goes on. “These people become well received in Canadiana because they’re funny, vibrant, and very talented,” he says.

He’s quick to point out while Republic of Doyle has in fact altered the arts community, it has done so in tandem with hordes of talented Newfoundlanders who are getting the chance to showcase their craft. “With Doyle being here we need craftspeople, we need the lighting business, we’ve actually trained piles of people in the last two years as to how to be a background artist,” he says.

“We can expose actors that might otherwise have had to go to Toronto, we can use them as Newfoundlanders and add that flavour to the show, and we can showcase it.” There’s a kind of almost nationalistic pride that comes in using born and bred Newfoundlanders as much as possible, and it speaks to the ideals and sense of togetherness that has been created.

Vatcher believes the arts community as a whole will only get better as Doyle continues. He sees actors getting better as they audition more, and local musicians finding a place on television for their voices. Vatcher and company have already catalogued the songs of hundreds of local musicians for use on the show.

“[Doyle] has everybody bring their ‘A’ game – we get the benefit of that and they get the benefit of us. It’s a true collaboration. I don’t think we could tell the story in any other city, and we’re very happy that the arts community are our best partners.”

That contagious excitement that resonates throughout Newfoundland doesn’t begin and end with the producers. Krystin Pellerin plays Constable Leslie Bennett on set, and she can attest to the lift now found on these shores. “There’s just been this infusion, and everyone has come together suddenly. The whole arts community is coming together in a huge way,” she says. “There’s a great feeling going around, a wonderful energy.”

Allan Hawco on the set of Republic of Doyle - Photo by Ian Vatcher, courtesy Republic of Doyle

Pellerin started acting at the age of 14 with the Shakespeare by the Sea theatre company, performing the Bard’s work on the jagged cliffs of Logy Bay and Cape Spear. She then found herself working with the Beothuk Street Players and MUN Drama, before heading to the mainland for school and work. It was her role in Republic of Doyle that brought her back to the province she loves. “The spirit and the strength of the community has always been here and thrived, and now Doyle has really raised the bar,” she says.

She concedes that one of the biggest things hurting Newfoundland’s arts community presently is funding. “I remember seeing some of the best plays I’ve ever seen here – it’s a very thriving community without the funding behind it, so people would do it just because it needed to be done.”

Having lived here and knowing the community well, Pellerin knows how difficult it is to make a living as an artist in Newfoundland. “You come across a lot of people who are extremely talented at a lot of different things because they have to be, which is pretty unique to St. John’s because of the amount of funding available,” she says. Many people are forced to become a kind of jack of all trades to simply make ends meet.

Now, with Doyle into its second season and looking at a third, the cash influx has helped enable creators to do what they really want: create. “It’s boosted morale for the arts scene big time,” she says. “On lunch breaks people are all talking about the short films they’re making, and their side projects.”

That sentiment is echoed by Melanie O’Brien, who had a short role on Doyle in its first season. O’Brien is a working entertainer in St. John’s, making a living day to day as a musician and actress. She firmly believes the show has radically altered the way the arts community is now running. From one day of work on set with a speaking role, she did so well with pay and an extra ACTRA credit that she didn’t have to search for a nine-to-five summer job as she usually does, which allowed her more time to focus on acting and music – her real passions.

“What Doyle is doing is cutting out the joe-job,” she says. “It’s giving artists more time to focus on their craft and what they really want to do, therefore they’re getting more done, therefore there’s more music being released here, there’s more plays happening here, it’s just really enriching the whole scene.”O’Brien says every time she watches Doyle she sees familiar faces from the local arts community. “When I see them, I know that it was a great boost and a great lift for them. Not just for confidence, but financially as well.”

Not only that, O’Brien says the cast and crew are just really fun to work with. Cast dinners and hockey games help foster a sense of community. “It’s one of the nicest casts I’ve ever seen,” she says. “They fed me a lot … I feel like a princess every time I’m on set. Someone’s always knocking on your door and saying ‘Are you hungry, can I get you anything?’ and maybe some actresses don’t take them up on it – but I’m an actress who eats.”

Philip Goodridge, another St. John’s-based actor who had a part on season one of Doyle, knows that his artistic community has always been strong, but says the show is still a boost for the province overall.  “The exterior shots are excellent, because in every movie or television show that I’ve seen about Newfoundland, everything looks so damn foggy and bleak and miserable.” He laughs, adding “at least on Doyle there’s a bit of bloody sunshine, you know?”

“There’s a lot of consistent work on the production side, which is awesome to have. And it’s great for those who have lead roles,” he says.

He believes dedication on all fronts is key. “Everyone that I work with that has auditioned for the show and that has gotten on the show, we try really hard and we make a good effort here. People kill themselves in this town even doing volunteer stuff.” That in itself is the crux of the problem that lies within Newfoundland and the way Doyle is changing it. There are so few venues in which the creators can create, and yet still be paid for it. Doyle is enabling steady work and stability, something performers deserve just as much as any other profession.

Rick Boland has been on both stage and screen in Newfoundland for over four decades, and he knows this all too well. “It’s a very difficult life when you’re self-employed,” he says. “I’ve been at it for 40 years but I have no pension. I don’t have the security of a future that I can retire into.”

Boland’s massive body of work includes CBC’s Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, as well as Newfoundland theatre stalwart Revue, which still sells out houses all over the province after 25 years. Even so, he is far from rolling in revenue generated through acting. “We often sell ourselves short because we want to do the project anyway. You think ‘I love this, so I’ll do it for next to nothing’,” Boland says. “This is not a field that you get into unless you can’t do anything else. I don’t mean that you’re not capable of doing anything else, but that nothing else makes you happy.”

Photo by Ian Vatcher, Courtesy Republic of Doyle

Boland knows Doyle is doing plenty for the Newfoundland arts community, but cautions this is a case of “be careful what you wish for.” There’s a vortex brewing in Newfoundland when it comes to crew, and it’s culminating because of the show. “Crew are all used for Doyle, so other producers just can’t produce anything because they have none,” he says.

Ironically, Newfoundland’s producers would have to bring in their crew from elsewhere, which means hotel bills on top of salary, making the entire venture more expensive. “The fact that the crew that we’ve built here is now doing Doyle is great. It’s fabulous to have a national television show that’s going into its third season out of St. John’s…But we now need to build a new crew.” This isn’t Montreal or Toronto – this city really only has one production crew, essentially.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Boland says cautiously, “For the 10 or 12 regulars on the show it’s utterly fantastic, it’s out of this world. I know people who have bought and paid for houses off of Republic of Doyle, and that’s wonderful – we need more of it. But the thing on everybody’s minds is – if you have your whole crew working on one production, then you pretty soon stagnate. If you don’t start building a second crew so that you’re growing, then, God forbid…” he says, trailing off.

An arts community is only as good as the innovation behind it. Every artist deserves some stability, but comfort is precarious – to rely on a single lucrative production sets the art scene up to fester in mediocrity around that one gem. What happens when it’s gone?

Common sense would then seem to dictate there is an easy fix here: simply hire more crew. More work for everyone should be a great thing, and in some ways, it is. Though the construction of secondary crew has started, it still can be difficult. “When you have to build a crew, that costs money,” Boland says. “You’re talking about training, so you’re talking about doubling up in some instances. In your camera department, instead of an efficient unit, you have a bunch of people who are apprenticing.” Without the proper guidance, who is there to ensure the quality that’s needed for this next generation?

All his technical worries and woes aside, Boland does equate Republic of Doyle with that certain kind of nationalism a place like Newfoundland breeds. “It’s very difficult for artists in Ontario to create things about Ontario,” he says. “Because Ontario doesn’t give a good god damn about itself. It doesn’t have that, so it’s harder to sell. And because they aren’t an island, they’re part of the stream – so they think it’s much more important to emulate an American tradition. Whereas here, it’s very important to us that we celebrate our difference, and in many ways Doyle does that.”

“As much as it is Rockford Files, and as much as it’s American formulaic detective drama, it’s also unmistakeably Newfoundland. Jake Doyle is the son of Gordon Pinsent’s rowdy man – that character is a part of us.”

By Cathleen Finlay

My brother, Charlie Finlay, has less than a week until deadline. A DVD just arrived by courier and now he’s under pressure to compose the music for the latest short film project he’s been hired to work on.

The clips are bare with only dialogue and a separate track with temporary music. It’s up to him to create the musical landscape in just six days that will make the scenes come alive.

It can seem sometimes that the people who write music for film and television are in the business of making magic. I’ve always watched my brother’s ability to take a silent clip and come up with many versions, each drawing out different nuances with fascination. But writing music for the screen is not as simple and whimsical as it may seem.

In recent years, there have been big changes in the industry. Increasingly cheaper software has meant that anyone living in their parents’ basement with a MacBook and Logic can call themselves professional musical screen composers. The ever-growing occurrence of undercutting has caused individual profits to continue to slide. Now, more than ever, composers need to nurture a diverse set of skills in a variety of areas while also committing a lot of time and energy to the complex craft of music composition for the screen.

Charlie Finlay - All photos by Cathleen Finlay

“I’m in it for the long haul,” Charlie says, despite all this. “Good musicians and composers will find a way to make a living creating music. I just love doing it.”

Music composition for the screen is a world governed by tight deadlines and low budgets, where beloved work is often left on the cutting room floor. And yet, the number of composers continues to swell. People are finding creative ways to make a living in the industry and support offered by organizations like the Screen Composers Guild of Canada (SCGC) provide composers with education and community.

But more than anything, composers continue to do it because they love it too much not to.

When Charlie composes, it isn’t as simple as dreaming up melodies according to his tastes. “Doing music for film and television is different because it’s for a specific purpose and it’s for something…that already exists,” he says. “Music is a slave to the project that you’re working on.”

Although the composer and the director work in tandem to figure out musical themes, it’s not always easy to communicate these ideas. “It’s best to work with the director and talk in emotional terms, not in musical terms,” Charlie explains. “Because if the director hasn’t gone to school for music, they may have different ideas about what musical things mean.”

Toronto film director Chris Ross agrees: “If you don’t have a common language then they’re trying to understand where I’m coming from and I’m trying to communicate as much as I can with the limited tools that I have.”

It’s up to the composer to translate the emotional core of a scene into musical notation. “I’ve always been quite amazed by how adaptable composers are,” Ross says. “You collaborate and yet they go off and do their thing. It’s almost like a separate art form on top of the film.”

Although the job sounds difficult, changes in the industry over the last several years have made it even harder. Improved software has allowed composers to work with better quality instrumentation, minimizing the need for live musicians while still producing great sounding clips. While instruments on computers are sounding more realistic, the cost of gear and software is going down.

The problem is, the less expensive the tools, the more saturated the business becomes.

“The accessibility through technology really makes it very easy for a lot of people,” SCGC President Marvin Dolgay says. “The challenge is basically that there’s tons of people doing it. How do you make a full time career out of it?”

Composers don’t just have to compete with many other people for jobs, they also have to combat undercutting. Because new composers are trying to build their reel with clips illustrating their work, some will offer their services for free. Although it seems harmless, this devalues the work of everyone else in the business.

Toronto composer and guitarist Brian Seligman says young composers new on the scene usually aren’t aware of the damage they’re doing and undercut unknowingly. “What happens is a lot of people are just making a lot of music from their computer and they feel like ‘Oh it didn’t cost me anything!’” Seligman says.

Part of the problem of undercutting is how it affects attitudes towards the payment of musicians, Seligman says. “Plumbers get paid 60 bucks an hour for their work and nobody even questions it,” he says, “but musicians get paid virtually nothing all the time and nobody questions that. For some reason it’s completely okay to ask a band to play at a venue for free but you would never ask a plumber to come fix your sink for free.”

To compound the problem of saturation and undercutting, most musicians never learned money management skills, Seligman says, which makes negotiating budgets difficult.

“You go to school for music and they said, ‘this is an arts school where the focus of your degree is to learn how to perform that art.’ So making a living off it really wasn’t their concern for us,” he says.

Music composers operate in a crowded industry where their work is often devalued and there is little tangible instruction on how to make a living in the workforce. When the hourly wage is calculated, Charlie says it often works out to be $10 per hour. “The numbers are horrifying,” Seligman says. “The number of composers who are out there who actually make a living off of what they do – it’s virtually non-existent.”
[pullquote]“Music is the most amazing
part of filmmaking…it
influences the entire thing
so deeply and intrinsically.”
- Chris Ross, director[/pullquote]

So how are composers getting by if the numbers are so horrifying? Marvin Dolgay says just like in any other career, “really good people will always do well.” He stresses that people need to put in the time and effort nurturing relationships and learning the complicated art. Composers need to “really dedicate themselves to that medium, get relationships with editors, directors, producers, et cetera, and really continue on that path dedicating yourself and doing it as a career rather than as a hobby.”

But it isn’t as simple as that. “On one hand, I know I’m saying if you want to be successful screen composing you need to dedicate yourself,” Dolgay says, “but on the other hand that’s also a bit of suicide.” He says composers have to do whatever work they can get to make it, including advertising, web-based work or production.

It’s a delicate balance between composing and developing new skills. Composers survive when they’re able to find a variety of avenues for income. “For me it was a matter of work opportunities and being more well-rounded in terms of being multi-media, technical, and creative,” Toronto composer Kevin Fallis says. “If someone wants to come to me with a project that needs music composition, sound design, and editing, I’ll be able to do all those things.”

Working from small studios with only a computer for a companion, many composers feel alone. The SCGC helps to bring musicians together through social events and educational seminars. “We have events with each other, just to become part of a community so that people aren’t in isolated studios,” Dolgay says. The events remove the isolation, but also allow musicians to network. “You become friends with these people and you pass around gigs so if somebody gets a gig and it doesn’t work for their timeline then they’ll send it your way and vice versa,” Seligman says.

Talking with other composers about industry rates is helpful for composers as well: “We don’t always talk shop, but when we do, a lot of the conversations are based on budget,” Seligman says. “How to work a budget out, how to speak with directors about budget and things to keep in mind. Because musicians, for whatever reason, have a tendency to undercut themselves as far as budget and money.”

Dolgay made it clear that the guild does not set rates, but it does educate musicians about pay expectations. “We can give composers a range…So if they’re working under that, they can make a value judgment themselves and try to promote the idea that if they’re taking a job, it’s either to create a relationship, create a credit, create a good musical experience, create a pay cheque.  If there’s two or three of those that are good, they should take the job. But the idea is that you should know what the job is.”

He also insists composers don’t need to take whatever they can get. “There’s tons of ways to negotiate,” he says. “There’s rights, territories, exclusivity. There are things, other than dollars that are negotiable.”

The community created by the guild is unique to Canada, Dolgay says. In the U.S. many screen composers are extremely competitive, often creating a less-than-friendly work environment for musicians. “We’re Canadian,” Dolgay says. “I think our guild has really, through the years, nurtured that community spirit and our concept that the rising tide raises all ships. What’s good for one guy is good for everybody. We want everyone to succeed here. If people are saying that you can get a good job done in Canada, that benefits all of us.”

As for the future of the industry, Dolgay is optimistic. He sees that other mediums have yet to figure out how they will fit into a highly advancing technological future. Television “still hasn’t sorted out the Internet so how can we?” he asks. “I think that’s the danger – that it’s all out there and there’s file sharing and it’s hard to track and stuff. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we as creators now have access directly to our consumer – be it a film, a pop tune, a cat playing piano, whatever it is. And that changes the dynamic of the opportunities.”

The music made by musicians like Seligman, Fallis, and my brother is an important part of the media that Canadians have been consuming with an appetite that has been growing all the more voracious.

“Music is the most amazing part of filmmaking,” Ross says. “I’m always so shocked by how much music changes a film, or how much influence it can have on the whole film…it influences the entire thing so deeply and intrinsically.”

Dolgay says rather than being the demise of the industry, this is a profound opportunity. “How it will be monetized is still being worked out,” he says. “The distribution network is wide open, the ability to touch our fans and our consumers is huge – tons of opportunity. We’re just trying to figure out how to make a living through that opportunity.”

[cincopa AABA-l6f6IFo]

By Cooper Evoy

‘A Generation after Genocide’ is an ambitious in-progress project about Rwandan children affected by the genocide of 1994. It examines the healing power of sport, and how these children and survivors have used this soccer field as a means of reconciliation.

Even though the film has been three-years in the making, the finish line is still not in sight. For creators Jon Weiman and Torey Kohara, it has been one long learning experience that continues to this day. What originally began as a small project for a small organization has blossomed into what could potentially be the duo’s first feature-length documentary film.

When approached by the Narrative Therapy Centre of Toronto in 2008 to do a documentary on genocide survivors, Weiman had no idea where the project would lead.

“I did a documentary in 2006 on kids in Rexdale [a suburb of Toronto] who were addicted to drugs, and Narrative Therapy liked the work I did on that. They wanted me to go to Israel for a month, and then go to Rwanda for a month, and basically compare and contrast how Holocaust survivors dealt with grief and how Rwandan genocide survivors dealt with grief.”

Not a small task for a relatively novice filmmaker, still in the midst of completing a film degree at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. Regardless, Weiman set about creating a proposal and formulating ideas while waiting for the necessary funding to come through.

But the funding didn’t come.  That, combined with scheduling issues on both ends, led to the project never growing beyond exchanged emails between the parties. It was at this point the project took on a new direction.

“I had told a friend at Queens about this project in passing, and he says, ‘you know I have a professor, Eugene, who I’ve become friends with who is a survivor of the genocide. You should at least meet him to pick his brain a little bit because if you’re going to do this project with Narrative Therapy you should at least know what you’re talking about.’”

While knowing a great deal about the Holocaust – his grandfather escaped from Auschwitz – Weiman knew relatively little about the Rwandan genocide. He arranged a meeting with Dr. Eugene Nshimiyimana, the formality of which Weiman greatly overestimated.

“I had all these questions written down, and I wanted to get his take, and after five minutes that all went away and it became a casual conversation,” Weiman says.

Dr. Eugene Nshimiyimana, a professor of French language and Francophone literature at McMaster University in Hamilton, had been teaching at Queen’s when first approached by Weiman.

Eugene Nshimiyimana speaks with his soccer players

“Jon came to me just to learn more about what soccer can be on a social level,” says Dr. Nshimiyimana.

During that initial meeting, Dr. Nshimiyimana told Weiman his story of using soccer to help heal the divide created by the genocide. In 1996, he started a soccer team for a group of Rwandan children. Having seen the political and social divide that had led to his country’s genocide, he wanted to play his part to ensure the next generation did not face similar circumstances.

“The history of Rwanda, it’s a history of division between Hutus and Tutsis, but kids don’t see life through those categories,” says Dr. Nshimiyimana. “After the genocide, there were a lot of suspicions between people, but among kids that wasn’t an issue. So bringing them together to play was my goal because I know if you don’t save young kids, you are just creating another tragic society.”

Intrigued by Dr. Nshimiyimana’s story, Weiman left the meeting and set out to inform his filmmaking partner, Kohara.

“He had grown up in sports his whole life,” says Weiman. “That wasn’t really my world. He can relate to that world more, the unifying power of sports.

“Eugene’s relationship with soccer and sport prior to, during, and after the genocide was a really, really powerful motivator for us,” says Kohara, also a Queen’s film student at the time. The two agreed they had an incredible story to tell, and decided to pursue the project.

Funding issues did not last long, as their unique idea attracted the interest of several production companies, including Kohara’s employer, Ontario Production Company (OPC). With the majority of funding locked down for an initial trip to Rwanda, the filmmakers prepared for their journey.

Having only done small projects previously, a documentary of this scale was something neither had experienced before and they admit they approached it with potentially overblown expectations.

“We were pretty idealistic,” Kohara says. “We thought there would be something there, and down the road we realized it wasn’t that cut and died. At the root of it all, we had an idea, but not a solid path to get to that idea.”

We went in as cowboys,” adds Weiman. “My thinking, at least, was that if we shot enough footage, a documentary would come from that.”

They travelled to Rwanda in the summer of 2009 with their team, equipment, and a general idea of what their documentary was about. They entered the country searching for stories that would play into their ideal narrative, which was the healing power of sport. Working with Dr. Nshimiyimana, they tried to encompass every side of the story into their film.

“When you talk about soccer and reconciliation, there’s a political side to consider, there’s a social side to consider, and there’s a psychological side to consider,” says Dr. Nshimiyimana. “It took us a lot of energy and collaboration to put all those levels together.”

Having worked so closely developing the project, Dr. Nshimiyimana felt comfortable that Weiman and Kohara would tell his story without portraying him in a way he was uncomfortable with – as a hero. Dr. Nshimiyimana believes that because most people view what happened in Rwanda as a tragedy, whoever does something about it will be portrayed as a hero. He only wants to be seen as part of a larger effort for reconciliation in his country, which the film’s narrative shows.

“We go from what I did, and we look into what other people did,” says Dr. Nshimiyimana. “That doesn’t mean what I did is bigger than what the other people did; it’s part of a general effort in the reconstruction of the country. We are all part of a society, and everybody brings his small stone to this big house.”

Dr. Nshimiyimana’s personal connection to the project gave the filmmakers access to their subjects right away, but he points out that it did not mean there weren’t questions.

“When you go on a project like that you don’t know what you are going to find,” says Dr. Nshimiyimana.
What Weiman and Kohara found was gaining people’s trust can be a difficult proposition for documentary filmmakers, as they are faced with the task of making the subject comfortable while also telling the most truthful story.

“The biggest thing is getting to know your subject, and allowing them to understand you’re not there to misrepresent them,” says Kohara. “But it’s difficult in a country like Rwanda where a) there aren’t so many westerners running around and b) there aren’t so many westerners running around with cameras.”

Despite the unfamiliar circumstances and the difficulties that accompany such an ambitious project, the duo and their team returned home after six weeks of shooting with what they felt was enough footage.

“When we got back, we kind of felt like a million bucks,” says Weiman. “Here we are, these students who made this film, we got on Canada AM, we were published in the Montreal Gazette, we were feeling like big shots.”

“But then we looked at our footage, and we were like, ‘what do we have here?’ It was a very weird thing when we got back and looked at the footage and said, ‘how do we put this together?’”

In hindsight, they agree that their first trip to Rwanda should have been done without cameras. Whether it be because of their inexperience making documentaries, or just getting caught up in their first production, they paid more attention to the aesthetic factors of the film as opposed to the most important part: the subjects.

“From my perspective, because we were trying to get this incredible narrative, we forgot about the human voices,” says Weiman.

In their initial interviews, the filmmakers took a very direct approach. Instead of getting to know the children, and digging deeper to explore each child’s approach to reconciliation, they asked the most straightforward questions possible.  “Asking a kid directly, ‘how did soccer help bring the two sides together after the conflict?’ is a fine question to ask, but we never really asked, ‘who are you?’” Weiman says. “We never really got to their souls, as it were.”

Weiman acknowledges that these are things that a filmmaker can only learn through experience. “I don’t think we could have learned anything if we hadn’t gone and had these two years to process it.”

As both mature as filmmakers, they are also learning new things about their project and discovering the necessary steps needed to create the film they both imagined it would be.

They know their mistakes and  know how to fix them, but the duo has made no return trips to Rwanda since their initial one in the summer of 2009. They both are up-and-coming commercial directors, operating under the production company Family-Style, and are bogged down with busy schedules.

Finding time for personal projects is difficult. However, the commercials that are preventing them from focusing on their documentary provide the means to pursue such personal ventures. “It’s the commercials that allow us to do stuff like this,” explains Kohara. “They are our livelihood, and you owe a certain amount of time to the people who are paying you.”

But that does not mean “out of sight”, out of mind. Both remain focused on completing their work, no matter how long it takes.

“I’m from the school of belief that there’s one way to make a film, and that is the right way,” says Kohara. “It’s completely separate from timelines, and budgets. You will know when your film is done.”

[cincopa AYHADmK55cir]

By Jeffrey Doner

The majestic Canadian territory of Nunavut is rarely associated with video cameras, films, and actors – but a recent program created by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the Nunavut Film Development Corporation (NFDC) has created a buzz in Canada’s Far North.

Stories from Our Land is a workshop designed to teach aspiring Inuit filmmakers about the filmmaking process.  David Christensen, executive producer for the North West Centre, was one of the driving forces behind the development of the workshop.

Christensen hopes the Stories from Our Land program will be a factor in encouraging Canada’s Inuit to get behind the camera and tell their tales.

“The NFB is really interested in helping to develop filmmaker and creator voices from the North to tell their own stories, ” says Christensen.  “For the longest time it was southerners going up and telling stories from the North.”

The workshop, which took place in Iqaluit last November, gathered 28 participants from all over Canada’s territories. The NFB and the NFDC recruited editors, cameramen, directors, and filmmakers from across Canada with backgrounds in a variety of fields.

Christensen elaborated on the importance and hard work of the mentors.  “[The filmmakers] have somebody there who they can mount ideas off of, they can get help operating the camera, help them edit, help them really know the craft of storytelling and editing and help them pull out a really interesting story.”

[pullquote]“They are sort of off to the races … their survival skills are going to be just fine.”
- Carrie Haber, filmmaker[/pullquote]

Under the guidance of the mentors, the participants were put to task, making a six to seven minute mini-film project.  On the final night of the workshop, the films were screened for all in the community, Christensen says.  The next part of the program was to get the new filmmakers to send in a proposal to make a film.  “The caveat (was) they had to propose a film where they didn’t use interviews and they didn’t use narration,” says Christensen.  It was about telling their stories visually.

The NFB has chosen four films from the group to produce.   “We will fully finance them, work with the directors, and support them as we always do with emerging directors,” Christensen says. Montreal-based filmmaker and editor, Carrie Haber, was one of the mentors in Iqaluit.  Those who participated were “people with anything from a passing interest to really dedicated documentary filmmakers that are coming up into their first professional productions.”

Haber says the whole community was there to talk about filmmaking and their experiences.  “Some of them have made films before, but there are certain skills that you just don’t get from working in a vacuum.”

It’s not just about going up north and teaching people how to edit and use cameras, says Haber – it’s about the bigger picture.  “The goal is to release the responsibility of people from the North to have to come down to the South to edit their films and produce their films, and get lighting people,” Haber says.  “We’re trying to create a self-sufficiency of knowledge and skill level up there that is on par with Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, and Vancouver so that there can be a filmmaking community with a strong skill set.  That’s the real goal.”

Christensen says that Canada’s North will be a significant place for the world in the long term.  “On so many levels; politically, geo-politically, culturally, environmentally, there’s going to be a lot that happens in the North that will determine what Canada does over the next century,” he says.   “If we can be a part of helping to tell some stories and providing a point of view and perspective on this place for other Canadians, I think that’s a great thing.”

Much of what is conveyed to the public of late deals with boundary disputes and global warming. Even so, Christensen says filmmakers have been mostly telling stories about culture and identity.

Nyla Innuksuk, a filmmaker from Iqaluit who participated in Stories from Our Land, was chosen to produce her film in association with the NFB and NFDC.  She says the workshop has helped her make new relationships for future projects.

“It was a really great opportunity to meet all these other people up North who are interested in film and I’m definitely sure I’m going to be working with other people who took part in the workshops in the future on other projects,” Innuksuk says.

Innuksuk is shooting in the small hamlet of Pangnirtung on the northeast coast of Baffin Island, Nunavut which is inhabited by about 1,300 people.  Her film, Inngiruti, is centered around a button accordion player named Simeonie Keenainak.

What makes this story unique is the history behind how the button accordion got to Pangnirtung in the first place. “In the 1800s when whalers were coming from Europe they would stop into these small communities and they’d bring musical instruments with them and play traditional Irish music,” Innuksuk says.  “They brought over the button accordion and some other instruments and they actually also brought over their square dancing.”

Nunavut - Photo courtesy of Carrie Haber

Innuksuk says that because the music and dancing has been in the town for so long, it has become part of the local culture in some small Inuit hamlets and communities.  “This accordion player, Simeonie, he’s one of the last people that are doing this and the town often gets together in the town hall and has square dances where Simeonie and his band play,” she says.

The film will be completely shot in Nunavut over a period of just a few days, which is exactly what the NFB and NFDC hoped would come from the Stories from Our Land program.

Allen Auksaq, a filmmaker from Nunavut, made a five-minute documentary about the cultural significance of the formation and construction of an igloo.   In If You Want to Get Married, You Have to Learn How to Build an Igloo, Auksaq uses the natural sounds and landscape of Sylvia Grinnell Park in Iqaluit to capture the essence of igloo-building. “I grew up knowing that if I wanted to get married, I had to learn how to build an igloo.  That was taught to me at an early age.  I built my first igloo when I was 16,” Auksaq says.

When it comes to the growth of the Nunavut film industry, there is some cautious optimism.  Haber said there is a lot of work to do in a competitive industry.  “I see it as kind of a microcosm of what is happening all over the world,” Haber muses.  Here, as elsewhere, it’s difficult to find funding for independent films.

“Because they are starting from scratch and coming into this model right away, I think that they’re not going to go in with the expectation that they’re going to be selling to these big distributors right away.  It’s just get the things made and seen,” Haber says.

For now, Haber is optimistic about the industry.  “They are sort of off to the races now,” she says. “I think their survival skills are going to be just fine.”

As an Inuit filmmaker herself, Innuksuk says programs like Stories from Our Land are crucial for the younger generation.  “I definitely see programs like this really helping to invigorate this film industry that’s just starting to emerge in the North.”

“I think it was really great for some of these younger people up North that they got a chance to work with these really amazing mentors,” she says.

Auksaq says the growth of the film industry in Nunavut is very important for people to learn more about Inuit culture and identity.  “Film and television is a medium that is being used by everybody in the territory.  There has to be a way for us to influence what they watch and learn through television,” he says.

Christensen concurs.  “You could tell they were just sort of bursting at the seams because they’re just so interested in not only letting southerners know about their story, but actually talking about themselves.”

By Andrea Lawson

Remy Couture - Photo courtesy Kelso Rebel

On a wintry night in east Montreal, I stand on a porch waiting for Rémy Couture to answer his door. When it swings open, I am greeted by a pleasant, spiky-haired guy with a full sleeve of tattoos.

There’s a coffin in the living room. The downstairs workshop is unfinished, with cement floors and a low ceiling. There are limbs sticking out of buckets on the floor, and masks and pictures of bloodied people cover one of the walls.

Couture is a special effects artist based in Montreal. He has been in the industry for several years and has worked on indie projects and Hollywood blockbusters including The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and Death Race.

For Couture, the past two years have been a time he describes as a “nightmare.” The nightmare is far from over.

In October 2009, Couture received an email from a couple wanting him to do makeup and take pictures for a Halloween party they were hosting. On the date and time they were to meet, he got a call from the couple saying they couldn’t find his place. The male on the line asked Couture to step out of his house to meet them on the street. He did so and soon found himself face-to-face with the gentleman on the line.

“He grabbed me and told me I was under arrest,” says Couture. “I thought it was a joke.” The couple who had contacted Couture were actually police officers sent to arrest him. The female officer showed him her gun to assure him it was no joke. He was shocked.

“They trapped me like a pedophile.”

For five years, he had been working on and off on a side project, a website: Inner Depravity. The website featured photos and two short films of a serial killer, played by Couture, committing fictitious, often gruesome murders. “It’s a trip in the mind of a serial killer,” he says. Some of the titles for the photo sessions on the site include burn, enslaved, sacrifice and necrophilia. He describes Inner Depravity as dark and disturbing – but it drew people in. “People are attracted to horror,” he says. “I think it’s inside us.”

The website had been viewed by about 30,000 people, many of whom wrote back to Couture. “A lot of people hate what I do. I got a lot of hate mail,” he says. “But a lot of people liked it too.” People told him his work was very realistic, which is exactly what he was hoping for. “The goal was to create the most realistic psychopath.”

One year after his arrest, Couture was charged under Canada’s obscenity laws, specifically section 163 of the Criminal Code. If convicted, Couture could face up to two years in jail.

According to the Montreal police, information received from Interpol initially got them investigating Couture. “It was a notification of child molestation,” says Sgt. Ian Lafrenière, media relations supervisor for the Montreal police. Someone from Germany viewed the website; saw a child on the site and alerted the police. “We did investigate and found no indication the child was molested,” says Lafrenière. The police investigation report was submitted to the crown attorney, who decided to pursue the case, he says.

Kirsten Kramar, a criminology professor at the University of Winnipeg and co-author of the book, Sex and the Supreme Court: Obscenity and Indecency Law in Canada, says according to the obscenity laws, creators are not allowed to couple horror with anything that is sexually suggestive.

“My stuff is not real,” Couture says.  “I represent a sad reality but there’s no sad reality behind it.” He says he’s not the only one doing this. “There’s a lot of disturbing stuff on the Internet,” he says. “I’m not a revolutionary of horror.”

But still, Sgt. Lafrenière  counters with “We’re not talking about a site where people go just to see horror. We’re talking about a mix of that and sexually explicit images also.” He argues that just because other people do it, doesn’t mean it’s okay. “There are a lot of people speeding; it’s still not okay to speed.”

The Internet can be extremely useful but it can facilitate a lot of criminal activity, Lafrenière says. More laws could be helpful in getting this criminal activity in check and this may be one way to get them, he says. “We believe at the end of this, we might get some ground rules as to whether or not it was okay for Rémy to [create the site].”
[pullquote]“There’s a lot of disturbing stuff on the Internet. I’m not a revolutionary of horror.”
- Rémy Couture[/pullquote]

After the arrest, the Montreal police searched his home. What they were looking for is a mystery to Couture. “Maybe they were hoping to find corpses or something like that,” he says, joking that the officers didn’t brave a look inside the coffin. They seized his credit cards, computers and his passport. To Couture’s knowledge, they didn’t find anything illegal but prosecutors have pressed forward with the charge.

Kramar is doubtful about the possibility of a conviction sticking. “Maybe he’ll be convicted by a lower court but if it went to the Supreme Court of Canada, I don’t see there being a conviction,” she says. “It’s bizarre to me that they’re proceeding in that way. I can’t see there ever being a conviction because there is an artistic defence written into the obscenity law.”

Art is hard to define and apply the law to, Couture says. There are certain scenarios where the law can clearly be applied. Pictures of naked children, for example, are illegal, he says. His case is not so clear. “What I do is art,” Couture says. “It’s done in an artistic way.”

Lafrenière is not so sure. “Necrophilia, masturbating while touching cadavers….is this art?” Lafrenière points out there are probably different points of view on that. “For each person that will tell you this website is okay and that it is art, you will find the same number of people who will tell you the opposite,” he says. “I think it’s an important debate.”

Couture specializes in the gruesome and grotesque – Photo by Andrea Lawson

Whether the obscenity laws violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been considered in the past. Ultimately, the laws have been found to be constitutional, says Peter Rosenthal, a lawyer for Roach, Schwartz and Associates and mathematics professor at the University of Toronto.

Still, the Crown has some work ahead. “The Supreme Court made it clear that a conviction for obscenity requires proof of harm,” Rosenthal says. “That might be the most difficult aspect of the charge for the Crown to prove in the case against Mr. Couture.”

In Kramar’s book, Sex and the Supreme Court, she and her co-author chart the changes in the tests the courts have used to determine whether or not material or sexual content is criminal or harmful to political values. Courts have put into practice a more abstract test for what counts as obscenity, she says. “It used to be courts at least were provisionally required to weigh evidence from the community.” Now, because the test has become more abstract, courts really don’t have to consider that information. “They can just make the decisions all by themselves,” she says. This is something that may not be well known but should be considered. “We’re flagging that as something that ought to be paid attention to.”

But the consequences of a conviction could be much more far reaching than jail time for Couture. “It will put a chill on the arts community when you have to think about whether or not the state is going to interfere with your artistic expression,” Kramar says. Some people Couture knows in the arts community have been watching his case closely. “People freak out because they don’t know what it will mean if I am found guilty.”

Always a little distrustful of prosecutors, Couture is now more suspicious. They’re trying to make an example out of him, he says. He is also stunned by the amount of time and energy that has been put towards his case. “It’s incredible to see all the time and the number of people working on this,” Couture says. “It’s the time and people they’re not spending on real cases.”

Filmmaker Frédérick Maheux is working on a documentary about what happened to Couture, the website Inner Depravity and the people behind it. Maheux, who has worked with Couture previously, knew about the hate mail Couture received in response to the website. Still, he was surprised by the arrest. “He had disclaimers and everything. It was really sudden,” he says. “I would have expected that he would have received a warning or something prior to this heavy sledgehammer-type judgment being given.”

He is unsure of the consequence beyond Couture. “If he is condemned, we don’t know how far the law will extend,” said Maheux. “Individuals who create artistic materials and show their skills on the web will be affected by the decision.”

Mélisa Dionne-Michaud helped with the writing of the script for the films and was one of Couture’s models. A big fan of horror movies and special effects, she was just as surprised about the arrest when Couture relayed what had happened. “He told me all the details and I thought it was a joke,” she says. “It was not possible that someone could be arrested for making too realistic special effects.”
[pullquote]“It’s not personal. We don’t make the laws, we are applying the laws.”
-Sgt. Ian Lafrenière[/pullquote]

In the documentary, Maheux hopes to get to the heart of why people got involved in the website. “I was trying to understand what the motivation was for the people who were behind the project, be it the models, Rémy himself and the people who took the pictures.” He has conducted interviews and asked people what it was like to work on the set and with Couture. “From what I have thus far, I think it was really a positive experience,” he says. “The working environment when the pictures were taken and the movie was done was really funny and happy-go-lucky.”

Dionne-Michaud, who has done special effects and makeup for films in the past really enjoyed the work environment. “On the set, the atmosphere was relaxed, funny and family-like,” she says. “If he asked me to participate again in a new project, I immediately would say, ‘yes!’”

In the art community, the reaction has been unanimous. “He is the victim of overzealous authorities,” says Dionne-Michaud. “His art can shock and is not appropriate for a certain audience, but to treat him like a murderer or a rapist is overwhelming.”

Couture is happy to have the opportunity to tell his story. “The best thing I can do to show people the reality of Inner Depravity is to show the people behind it.” The police and others are quick to judge him based on his look and his work, he says. “But I speak well and I defend my art. It surprises them.” The ordeal has affected his life but his resolve remains tough. “It’s poisoned my world,” he says. “But I will fight to the end. It’s kind of personal now.” Lafrenière disagrees. “It’s not personal,” he says. “We don’t make the laws, we are applying the laws.”

Couture’s trial will be in October, two years after his initial arrest. “I really hope that the jury will see how ridiculous this is,” says Dionne-Michaud. “Rémy is not a criminal. He is a professional trapped in the middle of a masquerade.”