MOVIES
Director’s life inspired cringey bits in Turning Red
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by Glenn Sumi
n American viewer had a strange question for Canadian director Domee Shi at a recent screening of footage from Turning Red. “He wanted to know why there was a sign about bags of milk at a Daisy Mart store,” Shi says. “And I had to explain to him that in [much of] Canada, milk comes in bags. All the Americans were like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing! That’s so cool.’ ” Bagged milk, Daisy Mart—those are just two of the dozens of details that Toronto audiences will lap up when they watch Shi’s debut feature, which hits Disney+ on March 11. Just like her Oscar-winning Pixar short “Bao”, Turning Red is clearly situated in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), where Shi grew up. “I miss the Asian food in Toronto,” Shi says during a Zoom call from Oakland, California. “A lot of the Asian spots in the GTA can’t be beat: dim sum, and all those places my parents took me.” Turning Red tells the story of Meilin Lee, a sharp, confident tween in the early 2000s who is obsessed with anime and boy bands and trying to escape the shadow of her overprotective mother. When she gets excited, she transforms into a giant, awkward red panda—a clever metaphor for going through adolescence. “It’s semiautobiographical—I didn’t
Turning Red director Domee Shi lives in California now but misses Toronto’s dim sum.
actually turn into a red panda,” Shi says, laughing. “But many of the cringiest, most awkward moments in the movie are drawn directly from my own life. Like Mei, I had a secret sketchbook under my bed [which my mother found]. And on my first day of middle school, I also had the experience
of catching my mom hiding behind a tree with sunglasses on to watch me. She was worried about me. I think those moments are what make the movie connect with audiences and make it feel real and funny.” A mother also figured prominently in “Bao”, so the mother-child dynamic is obviously a subject that’s close to Shi’s heart. With her father often away for work, Shi— an only child—spent a lot of time with her mom, commuting together from East York to work and school in downtown Toronto and going on mother/daughter bus trips. The fact that Mei’s mother, Ming, is voiced by Canada’s own Sandra “It’s an Honour Just to Be Asian” Oh is something Shi wanted from the start. “She’s the queen—she is our unofficial Queen,” Shi says. “We should put her on the quarter. I felt like there was no other actor who could portray Ming. She just has such an incredible range. I’ve loved her ever since Sideways and The Princess Diaries and every single small role she’s been in. She’s always so funny but really nails those emotional moments, too, and that’s what we needed: someone who could switch from being sharp and domineering and intense to loving and sincere. Sandra can do all of that.” Pursuing a career in the arts can be tough for those from Asian backgrounds, but Shi was helped by the fact that her fath-
er is also an artist. He was an art professor in China and is a painter in Canada. “I was always exposed to art, but it took him a long time to establish himself as an artist and he didn’t want me to go through that same struggle,” Shi says. “I had to convince my parents that animation would be a good way to be an artist and also have a nine-to-five job. I had to pitch them on it. I don’t think they were convinced until I finally got a job at Pixar. And now they’re cool with it. Now they just want grandkids.” Shi, a Sheridan College animation grad, won a three-month internship at Pixar back in 2011. She eventually worked as a storyboard artist on Inside Out, Toy Story 4, and The Incredibles 2 before making “Bao”. How did she manage to get her voice heard in the big company? “I had to figure out early on what my superpower was,” she says. “I knew I wasn’t going to be the greatest draftsman. I didn’t know the most about films—I had only started [seriously] watching films when I began at Pixar; before that, I was more into comics, manga, and anime. But I knew I had a quirky, offbeat sense of humour. I could always approach story problems with an offbeat solution that not everybody in the room could think of. And that’s how I developed my voice—and my confidence.” g
Indigenous artist shifts to old-growth substitute
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by Charlie Smith
ictoria-based Kwakwaka’wakw artist Rande Cook enjoys sharing stories about the “tree of life” in his culture. Also known as the cedar tree, it was the focus of his master’s thesis at the University of Victoria. “The tree of life has given us everything from our big houses to canoes to masks to bark we pull and harvest to making baskets and regalia—all of that,” Cook tells the Straight by phone. “So I started to ask a really big question: who are we as a living culture without the old growth? Without cedar trees?” It wasn’t just a question for his First Nation. It was also deeply personal. “Who am I as an artist—as an Indigenous artist from the Northwest Coast—if there’s no more old growth to carve from?” Cook continues. And how can he continue to be a storyteller without old-growth cedar trees as his partner in this endeavour? It’s something that isn’t generally discussed in connection with the destruction of ancient forests across the land now known as British Columbia. The B.C. government states on its website that 15 per18
THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
The documentary Before They Fall, which is playing at the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival, details the dire plight of the few remaining stands of old-growth forest in B.C.
cent of the timber-harvesting land base in the province is old-growth forests. According to Sierra Club B.C., only three percent of old-growth forests “with huge, old trees are still standing—and most are on the chopping block”. That’s the subject of a film, Before They Fall, which is screening at this year’s Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival. Directed by Cam William MacArthur, it brings forth the voices of Cook, Finding the Mother Tree author Suzanne Simard,
MARCH 3 – 10 / 2022
forest photographer T J Watt, and the land defenders at Fairy Creek to bring forth their perspectives. While researching his master’s thesis, Cook was struck by Simard’s scientific research into how trees communicate with one another—and how that mirrored what he was taught growing up in Alert Bay off northern Vancouver Island. “There are stories that talk about tree communication—and our relationship with the trees—where we would communi-
cate and ask for gifts,” Cook says, “and, essentially, we would be granted those gifts through ceremony and ritual. But we knew it was a living organism. We knew that it would bless us in many different ways.” He finds it heartbreaking to see the demise of old-growth forests, noting that it happens very quickly with today’s modern machinery. And he says that MacArthur’s film is very raw and direct. “It leaves the questioning out in the open: what are we actually doing to this planet? And what are we doing to each other?” Cook says. As for his own art, he’s shifted to working with materials other than cedar as a way of making a statement on the world. “We can evolve as artists to help bring awareness,” Cook says. “For me, it’s, ‘Let’s leave the trees standing and adapt to move forward.’ I’ve been heavily focused on that in my own work.” g The Vancouver International Mountain Film Fest is screening Before They Fall as part of its Canadian Environmental Show at 7:30 p.m. on March 2 at the Kay Meek Arts Centre in West Vancouver. The film is also available online at VIMFF.org until March 27.
