MOVIES

MOVIES Director’s life inspired cringey bits in Turning Red

by Glenn Sumi

An 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.

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.

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 father 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

by Charlie Smith

Victoria-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 percent 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, forest photographer TJ 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 communicate 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.

MOVIES Snowboarder’s journey makes her a Precious Leader

by Charlie Smith

Sometimes, the subjects of documentaries grow and evolve during the filming process. And that can lead to astonishing revelations.

Vancouver filmmaker Cassie De Colling certainly can attest to this in connection with her emotionally charged film about B.C. snowboarding star Spencer O’Brien. Precious Leader Woman, which is screening at the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival, chronicles O’Brien’s journey reconnecting with her Indigenous heritage.

“She did have epiphanies while we were making this film,” De Colling tells the Straight by phone. “Or if she didn’t have epiphanies, she was unbelievably honest.”

O’Brien, an X Games gold medallist, was born in Alert Bay and is of Kwakwaka’wakw and Haida ancestry on her mother’s side. She concedes in the film that when she was in the midst of her glorious snowboarding career, she didn’t make space or time to learn about her culture. At one point, she candidly describes herself as the “perfect example of colonization”.

“I had no connection and I didn’t want any,” O’Brien reveals.

It was only after experiencing deep disappointment at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi that she began seriously reconnecting with her Indigenous roots. It started in Alert Bay on Cormorant Island off northern Vancouver Island, where she was greeted as a returning hero at a homecoming event at the Big House. It was there that she felt the power of her Kwakwaka’wakw culture.

“It was a turning point for me,” O’Brien says in the film. “There should be more of this in my life.”

De Colling, an immigrant from Australia, learned about O’Brien’s heritage several years later while visiting the U’Mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay. At the time, De Colling was working on a project about protecting wild salmon.

“There’s a wall of fame that has notable people from Alert Bay on it,” De Colling recalls. “And there was this picture of Spencer that I recognized immediately from my background working as a snowboard videographer in Aspen and in Australia and in Japan. Spencer was a poster child of snowboarding in the early 2000s for women.”

De Colling contacted O’Brien over Instagram to see if she might be able to do a short film about her. The first time they met over coffee, they talked about O’Brien’s career, the upcoming snow season, and her well-known battle with rheumatoid arthritis.

Initially, O’Brien gave De Colling a list of about 30 people to speak to, including coaches, team managers, friends, and family who had influenced her. Some of them weren’t even aware of O’Brien’s Indigeneity. Over the course of three long interviews for the film, O’Brien opened up about how she came to embrace this aspect of her identity. Her sister Avis O’Brien (Nalaga/Kaaw Kuuna), a cultural-empowerment facilitator and artist, played a pivotal role in helping her along this path.

“When I started putting all of this together,” De Colling says, “it was this bird’s-eye view of her life.”

O’Brien’s dad, Brian, is an Irish immigrant who moved to Alert Bay in his 20s and introduced his daughters to snowboarding. “He’s competitive by nature, and intense by nature,” De Colling says. “I think he really taught the girls that.”

De Colling hoped to call her film Ku’l Jaad Kuuyaas, which is O’Brien’s Haida name. But she received feedback that this might make it tougher to market, so she used the translation: Precious Leader Woman. The filmmaker sounds pleased when the Straight tells her that the article on her documentary will be published shortly before International Women’s Day, which falls on Tuesday (March 8).

“I have a real drive to push women to the front,” De Colling says.

COVID-19 created some challenges in the production of Precious Leader Woman. Initially, De Colling hoped to film a re-creation of O’Brien’s homecoming ceremony in the Big House in Alert Bay. But that was changed to working with single shots by a fire. On the final day of filming, they heard about the preliminary findings of 215 unmarked graves being discovered on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

“And it was so terribly sad,” De Colling recalled. “I had sort of scripted a bit about residential schools creating the disjointment in Spencer’s lineage.”

But because the residential-schools issue is so raw—and because anyone who was going to watch the film would already know about their existence—there was a collective decision by Indigenous members on the team to focus on the ban on potlaches and the effect that this had on West Coast Indigenous culture.

“When I arrived in Alert Bay to collaborate on the documentary about wild salmon, I worked alongside Chief Ernest Alfred, and he invited us to what was my first potlach in the Big House in Alert Bay, an all-day celebration of speeches, dancing, and food,” De Colling recalls.

De Colling emphasizes that Precious Leader Woman was a team effort. O’Brien and filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (Blackfoot, Sámi) shared the writing credit. It was edited by Dakota Morton, a member of the Métis Nation, and music was created by nêhiyawak band member Matthew Cardinal. According to De Colling, 90 percent of the crew on-set had Indigenous ancestry; matriarchs in Alert Bay and on Haida Gwaii checked the editing. No film can be made without funding—in this case, De Colling was helped by Telus Originals.

The film opens with stunning imagery showing O’Brien gliding down a fairly steep cliff near Pemberton. It’s one of many memorable shots in the film, which features cinematography by Leo Hoorn and Ryan Kenny.

According to De Colling, that near vertical drop was one of the first times that O’Brien had ever done a line like that. It’s part of O’Brien’s new life as a backcountry snowboarder now that she’s ended her career as a competitive athlete.

“She did all the right things and got her avalanche training up to speed,” De Colling says. “Last season was a huge step for her, learning about those conditions.”

It’s clear that O’Brien still has the drive, even though it’s no longer in pursuit of the podium. g

Spencer O’Brien shares her story of transformation from snowboarding icon to Indigenous role model in a documentary directed by Cassie De Colling.

When I [put it] together, it was this bird’s-eye view of her life.

– director Cassie De Colling

The Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival will screen Precious Leader Woman at the Rio Theatre on Thursday (March 3) as part of its Snowsports Show. The film is available online at VIMFF.org until March 27. On March 3, Precious Leader Woman will also be shown at the Eagle Eye Theatre at Howe Sound secondary school in Squamish and on March 5 at the Salt Spring Film Festival.