Canadian pride took Hollywood nod
Lack of media support diminished Sundance debut, filmmaker says
A Toronto film was showcased at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, a high accomplishment for Canada’s film industry, but the director says that no one cared until a Hollywood filmmaker acknowledged it.
“It was very disheartening. In this pandemic, I don’t have any other way to really experience this accomplishment. I don’t get to have a party, I don’t get to celebrate with people. This was supposed to be my celebration, and it was taken away because Canada didn’t care until Ava (DuVernay) tweeted about it,” director Kelly Fyffe-Marshall said.
Fyffe-Marshall’s film “Black Bodies” recently played at Sundance and she tweeted her disappointment in the lack of support from Canadian media.
“It affects your mental health in a debilitating way. I often think, why should I try for a country that doesn’t want to try for me?” Fyffe-Marshall said.
After her tweet went viral, and DuVernay tweeted that Canada should be proud, Fyffe-Marshall started to receive celebration and attention for the film. Multiple Canadian media outlets then aired coverage of Fyffe-Marshall, alluding to DuVernay’s tweet as a badge of honour for the filmmaker and her film, but it was bitter sweet. Why did it take a nod from south of the border for her own country to sit up and notice her hard work?
“But (my tweet wasn’t) just for the media attention. We have to look at our infrastructure and change it, so that we can stop losing Canadians to the U.S. I know I can go to the U.S. tomorrow and my career will be so fruitful,” Fyffe-Marshall said.
“In Canada, many production companies say they want to hire more Black people, but (say) they don’t know where to find them or we don’t have enough experience. I want to be the person who says (that is) garbage.”
“Black Bodies” is a short film about a real-life racist incident involving Fyffe-Marshall and two friends in California. The film features two actors performing spoken word pieces about the trauma of being victimized by anti-Black racism.
“(Making) “Black Bodies” was therapeutic for me. After that traumatic incident, I needed a way to get my emotions out and this was the first time I was able to do this on film in a very direct way.”
When Fyffe-Marshall’s team reached out to media outlets to cover the film being featured at Sundance, it was hit with resistance and disinterest. Though the film did receive some media attention when it premiered at TIFF in 2020, Fyffe-Marshall says the majority of the publicity surrounding “Black Bodies” at that time felt like Canadian media’s way of killing two birds with one stone — reporting on Black Lives Matter and a new film at TIFF.
The pull and push factors for talented creative entrepreneurs in Toronto to pursue their dreams elsewhere weighs heavy on them.
Jordan Oram, cinematographer and director of photography on “Black Bodies,” says it’s a common Canadian rhetoric — focusing on the optics of aligning our accolades with notable talent south of the border.
“We have to look at what we have to our benefit being Canadian and stop relying on someone else to tell us how to do what we do best,” Oram said.
Although Oram has worked with notable international celebrities like Chris Rock, Usher, Coldplay and Miguel, he doesn’t allow those relationships to validate his success.
Oram says he wishes there was someone like him when he was younger that was working to shift the narrative from finding success elsewhere to endless opportunities right at home. Oram makes an effort to be a part of projects that prioritize being filmed in Toronto. His latest projects — “Spiral,” a movie featuring Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson, and a TV series “The Porter” by CBC in collaboration with BET Plus — were filmed in Toronto. To Oram, this instills pride.
In fact, Oram would like to see more production companies go one step further and profile Toronto in their story lines, rather than filming here, but pegging the setting as an American city.
“We have to take pride in our city, or else who will?” Oram said. “That doesn’t start with the conversation. It starts with just showing and doing.”
For singer and songwriter Savannah Ré, the showing and doing Oram mentions is about community development, something she says is fairly new for Toronto.
“America has tons of labels that are pulling resources for their talent. In Canada, we’re still learning to build.”
Building a community has been monumental to Ré’s success. Despite limited access to government funding — she says she has applied for multiple grants over the past seven years and only received one from the Toronto Arts Council — she has been able to build up a solid network working with notable Canadian music producers like Boi-1da and Jordon Manswell.
When Ré went on a North American tour opening for fellow Canadian singer, Jessie Reyez, she says many people in the audience never heard of her music but were “bright and open” to experiencing her sound and voice. To her, this “blind support” is slowly starting to materialize in Toronto. She says she is seeing less of the “crabs in a barrel” mentality Toronto used to be known for.
“I’ve been making music in the city for almost a decade. The energy is just completely different. I feel like we’re really on the cusp of bringing forth the full Toronto movement,” Ré said.
Oram and Fyffe-Marshall may be a part of the movement Ré is speaking about, as they are both determined to redefine pride in their community and create opportunities.
Despite constantly being ignored on film and television sets in the past, and now feeling ignored over one of her biggest accomplishments, Fyffe-Marshall still feels responsible to break a cycle of neglect among BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of colour) creative entrepreneurs in Canada. She makes it a duty to have predominately Black women-identifying staff for her films.
Oram is creating institutional mentorship programs through an organization called Hire Higher, launching in spring 2021.
“(When) I started getting to that level of personal accomplishment that I’ve always wanted to achieve for myself, I started to realize that it wasn’t as fun if I didn’t have a community of people that could share my wealth. So I started to really think about ways to create endless opportunities for other creatives,” Oram said, adding that once we start to normalize successful patterns right at home, the more so many will break through.