More about my Thesis project

It's time for me to shift into filmmaker mode. My thesis project begins this summer and continues for the next year. But in reality preparation and research for my project started long ago with major turning points in my life that have set the path in motion for me to explore "visibility and invisibility in the margins of disappearance".

I'm generally reluctant to speak about my film topics, life experiences and creative process, but here I am in Documentary New Media making a huge leap -- blogging online about all that I am going through at school this semester. I have Professors Alex Bal and Steve Daniels to thank for bringing me out of my shell and into the realm of social networking via the Internet. Equally important I have become friends with students in the program and enjoy the creative process of our shared class projects. School is an enlivened time to open oneself to self expression, creativity, theoretical discoveries, collaboration and shared learning.

Getting back to my thesis, it's been the turns in my life that have provided me with the foundation to make this project about 65 women who went missing in Vancouver. It unfortunately came as no surprise, and remains a total travesty that at least 26 were murdered. There is heartbreak for the families. There are questions about why society looks away from the vulnerable. And there is the construction of news stories to unravel, that can act to depersonalize people, especially disenfranchised women living harsh lifestyles with limited resources. I have been advocating for people in the margins since I began making films more than thirty years ago and I've recently started trying to understand why that is.

A big shift happened in my life when my brother Kevin, 10 months younger than me, was removed from home for being a so called "bad boy". I was about 11 and he was 10. I was too young to understand or do more than visit him in a group home. I didn't think he should have been taken away and eventually placed in training school by the time he was 13.

The next big shift happened when I was 16 and began living away from home through no choice of my own. Kevin had become a ward of the B.C. government and my big brother Barry, a year and a half older than me, left home of his own choice the day he turned 16. Wanting to disown our family he relocated from Vancouver to Toronto. The end of my time at home came while visiting in Chatham ON, and it was easier to join Barry in Toronto than make my way back to Vancouver on my own with the $500 I'd made at field jobs that summer.

I took a wide range of jobs as a teenager and learned very quickly about the pitfalls of life and how to survive. Mom and dad lived in Florida at this time, Kevin never left B.C. and I settled into life near Barry. By the time I turned 18, without family support, I had learned how to enjoy life and support myself. I kept up good relationships with each family member and never wavered in my love for any of them, even dad, who both my brothers strongly resented.

I was fortunate to hit film school when I was 19 or 20, meet up with Holly Dale and focus my energy on building a film career throughout the late 70's and 80's, most notably with films like Thin Line, P4W, Hookers on Davie and Calling the Shots. Finances were a struggle, but I was doing the work that I wanted. Then when I was 35 another huge shift came, I started to lose people close to me, almost twenty friends and family members in ten years, and this is where the preparation for my thesis is really grounded.

I lost friends from my P4W film, most notably Marlene Moore (Shaggie) who I went on to make two films about -- Shaggie and Dangerous Offender -- and Janise Gamble. They both died far too young after living turbulent lives of suffering and grave injustices.

Then Dad died in 1990 when I was 36. He was a tough character in some ways, generous and loyal to a fault in others and a smooth professional gambler who introduced me to the downtown eastside of Vancouver when I was 13 and spent a summer painting the rooms in the Balmoral Hotel with him. I spread dad's ashes at the finish line of the racetrack like I promised I would - (not an easy task, but a different story!)

A month after dad died Barry went from HIV to AIDS and Holly's Dad Basil got cancer. My dad, Holly's dad and then Barry were all suddenly gone in less than a year. This huge time of loss seemed like too much to have happening, and it was happening too early in life, I was still in my thirties.

A few years later Holly's mother Pat got cancer and passed away. And then we lost our three surviving grandparents. And just when I thought the wave of loss was over, my mother got cancer. I cherished every moment of our time as I cared for her, much as I had for Barry when he had AIDS. She steadily deteriorated and died in 1999. That left me orphaned, and Holly too, so we bonded as surrogate siblings. I also lost two cousins in this time, Beverley Cole to suicide and David Cole who was murdered in downtown Toronto - both of whom I had never met. Along with losing Marlene and Janise several other close friends died far too young -- Tim Jocelyn, Eroll Ramsey, Ray Richards, Thomas Gardner, Al Yule and Cathy Bowie. The 1990's had so much loss that it often felt like it was too hard to take, but you have to. Perhaps it made me stronger, and most definitely I believe it's helped prepare me for the monumental task of opening myself to the overwhelming loss I will feel in making my thesis project.

My first film shoot is in Vancouver this July. I'm taking on an important topic and I want to do a good job for everyone in my film project and for all who are connected with my development and production.

Along with the research prep I'm doing and the solid filmmaking background I bring, there are advisors I'm consulting with at Ryerson and students I share my experiences with. I have also become friends with a major contributor to my topic, Wayne Leng. We talk often and he will be part of my thesis project and he'll also contribute to the production.

Have I really said all of this out loud? Wow. I tend to hold my cards close to my chest. I digest things in solitude, not on the Internet. And while I am social and enjoy mixing with people and directing films, I'm most at home alone, writing and editing.

p.s. While writing this post a strange thing happened. I haven't thought about my old friend Janise Gamble who died in 1990 for some time. I found a book about her on the Internet to link in this post and sent the link to Holly, (presently located in L.A. directing TV shows). My phone rang about 10 minutes after I sent the note. She had been having a dream about Janise that woke her and she freaked when she saw Janise's name in the subject line of my note (yes, it's true, the 1st thing Holly does upon waking is reach for her Blackberry!) It was 6:00 a.m. in L.A. but she couldn't get back to sleep. She called twice more. The simultaneous connection to our old friend when neither of us had thought of her in almost a year was the kind of stuff that happens when you open yourself to the creative process. I feel I'm ready to start my film.