48th WEEKLY FEATURE WOMEN in the ARTS

[Jenina MacGillivray]

Women in the Arts: Canadian Dancer

Sara Joy Stoker, St. John's Newfoundland

Born and raised in St. John's Newfoundland, Sarah began dancing there as a child. She trained with Gail Innes, Sandra Blackmore and Kittiwake Dance Theatre, with whom she performed for five years. She went on to graduate from the School of Toronto Dance Theatre in 1996. Since that time she has danced for David Pressault Dance, Pigeons International, Lynda Gaudreau's compagnie de Brune, The Randy Glynn Dance Project, Micheal Menegon, among others.

Striving to base herself out of her beloved island, Sarah's own creative process is one that explores the human condition. How we affect ourselves, others and our environments. Growing up in such a unique environment as Newfoundland Sarah developed a strong sense of humility and awe for her physical surroundings that inspires her artistic expression and life. She began experimenting with creation in 1996 after that asshole in Toronto hit her while on her bike with his SUV at Parliament and Carlton and she couldn't finish the contracts she was hired for. She passed that summer in St. John's with a broken elbow and created Menow, her first solo.

Since her return to St. John's two years ago , sarah has formed Collective Gutsink, an interdisciplinary group of local artists with a focus on improvisation, her company gutsink productions has become an incorporated not for profit organization, she is the newest curator for The Festival of New Dance as well as dance advisor for Sound Symposium and dance advisory committee member for the Canada Council for the Arts."

Gutsink

Women in the Arts: Canadian Documentary Filmmakers

Three Canadian Documentary Filmmakers: Jennifer Baichwal, Nettie Wild, Tracey Deer


Jennifer Baichwal

Jennifer Baichwal may have been born in born in Montreal, but she grew up in Victoria, B.C., and now makes her home in Toronto. Her first film, Looking You In the Back of the Head, asked thirteen women to try to describe themselves, and was first broadcast, to critical acclaim, on TVOntario's From the Heart. It subsequently sold for broadcast across Canada. Read More at northernstars.ca

DocuramaFilms: Filmmaker's Page: Jennifer Baichwal

"My whole point in doing this," says Baichwal, "was to try to do a definitive film biography about someone with whom you could not do anything traditional, who escaped all the categories with which you would usually approach the problem of biography." Jennifer Baichwal on her film Let it Come Down
Read more: Playback

Bright Lights Film Journal: Interview with Jennifer Baichwal

Manufactured Landscapes by Jennifer Baichwal (2006)

This Genie and Toronto International Film Festival award winner explores the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky, who shoots gorgeous pictures of industrial wastelands and exploited workers. Refusing to be overtly political, Burtynsky relentlessly pursues a working methodology that allows him access to restricted, often devastated areas: quarries, factories, dumping grounds and mines. By making his photographs huge and beautiful, he mollifies authorities that can limit where he shoots while confronting rich art aficionados with the decayed fruit of society's labours. Baichwal and cinematographer Peter Mettler accompanied Burtynsky on a trip to the Three Gorges Dam, which is forcing the relocation of millions of Chinese from their ancestral homes, and Shanghai, where urban renewal is ripping apart the fabric that bound a city together for generations. Thoughtful and provocative, Baichwal's film captures the complexity of Burtynsky's artistic practice. Manufactured Landscapes is "an extraordinarily haunting, beautiful, insightful and thought-provoking film," says Al Gore.


Nettie Wild

As much an advocate as an activist, Nettie Wild is the quixotic figure behind a series of profound and controversial political documentaries that have earned acclaim around the world. Coming from a background in journalism and theatre, Wild eschews objectivity and takes a very definite ideological and political stance in her films. She runs her own independent production company – Canada Wild Productions – in Vancouver and has pioneered a non-traditional form of distribution that combines commercial theatrical screenings with community based forums. She typically accompanies her films, which play in dozens of cities in both Canada and the United States, to conduct question-and-answer sessions after the screenings.

Wild was born in New York City to a British journalist father and a Canadian opera singer mother, who was so determined that her daughter not stray from her Canadian roots that she gave her ‘Canada’ as a middle name. About a month after her birth her family moved to Vancouver, where she grew up and eventually attended the University of British Columbia, earning a B.F.A. with a major in creative writing and a minor in film and theatre. Read more at the Film Reference Library: Nettie Barry Canada Wild


Film Freak Central gets a fix of Nettie Wild

A passion for social justice: the activist films of Nettie Wild - C...

Bevel Up; Drugs, Users and Outreach Nursing by Nettie Wild (2008)

Bevel Up is a compelling documentary that follows outreach nurses through their day-to-day work as they bring healthcare directly to youth, sex workers, addicts and street people in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. As they work with people in alleys and seedy hotels, the nurses reflect on why they do this work, and about the respectful and nonjudgmental relationship so crucial in developing trust. That they, and the filmmakers, have earned this trust is apparent in the honest, wry and painful observations from both nurses and street people. Nettie Wild's award-winning documentaries have shown her to be one of Canada's most socially committed and skilled directors, a filmmaker who embeds her belief that "behind the politics in our communities lie human dramas that deeply affect our lives" into her films. While Bevel Up stands alone as a powerful vérité documentary, Wild has designed it to be the heart of a groundbreaking interactive DVD.


Tracey Deer


Work hard and belive in yourself, because the industry demands it. - Tracey Deer

Tracey Deer decided to become a filmmaker at the age of 12. She saved up pocket money to rent video cameras and made little movies with her friends. One Christmas, she was given a camera of her own. A filmmaker was born! Since then, she never stopped writing screenplays and directing her friends in her films about teenage life. She loved Hollywood and making movies was her dream. In college, she took a course on documentary filmmaking and realised that it was her favourite form of expression. Documentaries are so much a part of human reality. Read More at: LandInSights: Three Filmmakers


Montreal Mirror: Aboriginal Evolution. Filmmaker Tracey Deer explores progress and a...


Interview with Tracey Deer

Native Networks: National Museum of the American Indian (Focus on T...

Club Native, by Tracey Deer (2008)

Falling in love with the wrong person can have devastating repercussions for Mohawks on the Kahnawake reserve in Quebec. Award-winning director Tracey Deer takes a courageous look at her home community, raising questions of identity, history and tradition through the lives of four inspiring Mohawk women. With warmth, depth and humour, stories unfold about the heartbreaking costs of "marrying out" of their Mohawk Nation, the challenges faced by kids of mixed backgrounds, and the conflict between love and preserving the fabric of their community. Having children with the men they love can mean forfeiting their offspring's legal native status, including the right to live with their families on the reserve. The film doesn't flinch from the history of Canada's racist and sexist government policy, including the brutal force used against them during the Oka Crisis in 1990. A groundbreaking film and a powerful story of the triumph of love and the human spirit.


All film reviews by Lynne Fernie. HotDocs