COLOUR-BLIND TIES THAT BIND
Ottawa film’s comic look at race turns heads in U.S.
A short film shot in Lanark County about two colour-blind brothers has won Best Comedy Film at the Lady Filmmakers Festival in Beverly Hills, Calif.
In this case, though, colour refers to skin: the premise of The Buckley Brothers, co-written by Ottawabased Rachelle Casseus and her fiancé Charlie Ebbs, is that Sam and Seb Buckley — a couple of grown-up farm lads — believe they are identical twins despite the fact that Sam is black while Seb is white.
Turns out their parents, with whom they live, just never figured it was important enough to point out the improbability of their being twins, let alone of the identical variety. Now that the boys are grown men, their parents aren’t so sure about the wisdom of their decision.
The film by Mistletoe Pictures, in association with Bowman Productions, features an Ottawa-area cast including Seamus Patterson as Seb, Kelley Oliver as Sam, and Teri Loretto and Robert Reynolds as their parents. It was shot earlier this year at a variety of Lanark-area locations including the farm that’s been in Ebbs’ family for almost 190 years and the old-timey Ashton General Store. The California festival marked the self-funded film’s premiere. No Ottawa screenings of The Buckley Brothers have been scheduled yet, but it should show up here later this year or early in 2015.
Two other Ottawa films won at the festival: The Depths, by Say Ten Productions (artistic director’s award), and Minerva’s War, by Jennifer Mulligan (script).
The Buckley Brothers started life as a comedy sketch, says Casseus who’s also making her directorial debut with the short.
“Charlie and I co-write a lot of sketches, but we thought, ‘Hey, we could tell a more meaningful story with this about race and identity,’ ” she says.
Race and identity are close to home for Casseus, whom Ottawa theatre audiences will know from her past work in the NAC English Theatre acting company and other live performances.
“My father’s black and my mother’s white, so I have struggled with my own sense of identity and belonging throughout my life. All my friends in school were white, and I saw myself as the same, but there were little indicators that others saw me differently than I saw myself. So it’s a very personal theme to me.”
Casseus says she and Ebbs decided to make a comedy because laughter is a good hook for a film that does have a more serious element, especially toward the end.
Ebbs, an Ottawa-based photographer, writer and actor, says there’s also a deliberate vein of ambiguity coursing through the film.
“The ambiguity lets you, the viewer, make up your own mind: How much these do these boys really believe they’re identical twins? Are they really dumb or really smart?”
He adds that setting the film on a farm and in small towns not only distinguishes it from the usual urban locale of shorts but it also gives it “reality and a poignancy that even we didn’t expect.”
Casseus, who’s collaborated with Ebbs on other projects including an earlier short film and a web series called Locker Lives, says winning the award for The Buckley Brothers “felt amazing. I’ve never won an award for acting or filmmaking before.”
She says that, despite the suc-
My father’s black and my mother’s white, so I have struggled with my own sense of identity and belonging throughout my life. … It’s a very personal theme to me.
RACHELLE CASSEUS , OTTAWA- BASED FILM MAKER
cess of women like Kathryn Bigelow, who directed the 2008 blockbuster The Hurt Locker, there’s a relative paucity of female film directors, producers (Casseus was a co-producer with Ebbs and others of The Buckley Brothers) and the like.
Although she’s uncertain as to why that is, Casseus is unhesitating when she says, “More women’s voices and stories need to come out into the forefront.”
Unfortunately for Ottawa, Casseus is moving to Toronto.
“There are just more opportunities there for film and live theatre. I’ll also continue writing.”