Two more brand-new films for you in this week’s NSI Online Short Film Festival.
I’d seen Brendon Sawatzky’s comedy North American Perspective a while ago and was super excited that he submitted it to our film fest and the selection committee accepted it.
Because of Brendon’s film I’ve developed something of an odd infatuation with the glorious actor Ross McMillan who delivers a perfect performance as Lionel’s boss, Bill.
In the film Bill doesn’t want Lionel to end up like him, trapped in a lifeless job, so he fires him.
Brendon says, ‘When Jay [Booth, the writer] asked me to read the script for North American Perspective, he wanted my feedback before he submitted it as a writing assignment. After reading it, I not only told him that it was well done but that I wanted to direct and produce it.
It offered the chance to hone my skills as a director: two actors going back and forth, each wanting something different.’
The documentary All ah We directed by Karen Chapman is an interesting take on cultural identity. I still question how Canadian I am because I was born and raised in England but hold a Canadian passport. But I still think of England as ‘home.’
In the film second-generation Canadian Karen Chapman undergoes a cultural metamorphosis into a carnival masquerader at Toronto’s Caribana Parade.
On this colourful journey, she discovers her Afro and Indo-Caribbean heritage while asking, ‘Can you call a place home if you have never been there?’
Karen says, ‘The notion of home can be a very confusing question to a Canadian. A foreigner to my parents’ birthplace, Guyana, I began this journey in search of my cultural identity as a second-generation immigrant in Canada.
What I found was a rich understanding of home and a newfound appreciation of culture as a citizen of the world.’
