Cecilia: I’m researching the $225 Film Experiment workshop that introduced hand-processing and experimental filmmaking approaches in Winnipeg in the early aughts. Unintentionally, the workshop opened a back door for women into the Winnipeg Film Group, at a level that had never been seen before, and so it also came just in time for the organization. The workshop came on the heels of a major funding cut for failing to open up to women filmmakers over the course of many years and many warnings. It’s not that the Film Group wasn’t trying to work on it, but its efforts failed to gain any material traction. And then the 225 fell from the sky.
I’ll add that I say the workshop “unintentionally” opened the door for women because it wasn’t part of the Film Group’s official women’s programming efforts. It wasn’t designed to bring in more women. Though, I will also add that the 225 was modelled after the Film Farm, and the Farm itself does have a clear feminist legacy. And so perhaps there’s something intrinsic to the design of the underlying program system that lends itself to women in a way that isn’t concretely visible on the outside.
Notably, the 225 was designed so that each participant finished their own individual film by the end of the workshop, and that element might have been new for the Film Group, as it was focused on teaching crew approaches and directing crews at the time. If films were made during workshops, they were group films and not individual ones. There wasn’t a focus on individual filmmakers, but rather the system of filmmaking.
Carole: It is correct that just before 2000, there was maybe a handful of women filmmakers at the Film Group, if that. It was me, Shereen Jerrett and Paula Kelly. But by the late 1990’s, I don’t remember seeing Shereen around as much, nor Paula. So the numbers were low and also dwindling. Tricia Wasney was also around briefly. And there was also Tracy Traeger, who was a producer and not a filmmaker. She worked on a couple of Guy Maddin’s films around that time. It’s certainly possible that there might have been more women around, but these are the ones I remember.
In the early 1990s, when I joined the Film Group, it was clear that they were aware they needed to make more room for women. They started organizing special screenings on International Women’s Day in March. That event inspired some women to show their work. I remember one super-8 film made by an architect that still haunts me to this day.
On the heels of that event, the Film Group decided to initiate a women’s film festival. This was in 1993. They put me in charge of getting that off the ground as a volunteer. We named the festival Re:Visions and hired Laura Michalchyshyn to organize the festival. Laura did an amazing job. The first edition got off the ground in 1994 and it was a week-long event with films made by women from all over. The first edition was so successful that we ran it again in 1995. But after that, the organizers moved onto different things in their lives, and so a third edition didn’t materialize.
And of course, there was Norma Bailey. But by the time I entered into the Film Group, she was already rather famous and wasn’t around. She was somebody you heard about, but she definitely wasn’t around at the Film Group, so I don’t know how closely connected she was to the Film Group or if she emerged from it. You definitely don’t come across a lot of Winnipeg filmmakers who make it big in the industry like Norma – least of all women.
Cecilia: Speaking of Norma, I think it’s worthwhile to note the role of the NFB at the time. Sometimes its intervention is missed because they scaled back so much in Winnipeg since its heyday. I definitely see Norma as being connected to the NFB more than any other organization, at least early in her career. I think she may have had a loose connection to the Film Group in the late 70s or early 80s, but the Film Group wasn’t activity welcoming women at the time whereas the NFB was. And so I imagine it would have been an easy decision on Norma’s part to focus her time on the NFB.
The local NFB office had a great deal of resources back then. This was before the era when the arts councils were funding filmmakers. And so if you were looking for funding in town, the NFB was it. The NFB had a studio, money, equipment and an entire production system. People told me that the early Film Group was a place you “graduated from,” enabling you to move onto the NFB. In that context, Norma graduated into the NFB rather quickly.
The Film Group was trying to get into the space of being a producer, starting with John Paizs and Guy Maddin for sure. But the Film Group’s main funder, the Canada Council for the Arts, was moving quickly in another direction at the time. The Canada Council had triggered the existence of the Film Group through its new funding program for regional film co-operatives in the early 1970s and the organization was and remains fully reliant on it. And so the Film Group wisely abandoned producing and re-structured to take advantage of the Canada Council’s new funding programs, including tapping into new funding that enabled the creation of the Cinematheque.
I will add that, for many years, the Cinematheque was actually a screening series run out of the NFB theatre on Main.
Carole: When did you become executive director?
Cecilia: In 2006.
Carole: And when was the 225 workshop?
Cecilia: It started in 2002.
Carole: When I stepped into the Film Group in the early 1990s, I remember that Shereen was shying away from being labeled as a “woman filmmaker,” which I think speaks to how women filmmakers were viewed at the time. Shereen seemed to be aiming for women directors to be equally represented, which is still an issue today.
And well, Shereen left and then at one point it felt like I was the only woman filmmaker around for a while. This would have been before you or Danishka Esterhazy emerged. Despite being alone, I did keep hanging around. I was on the board at the time and volunteered in other aspects of running the organization. I guess I figured that if I hung around long enough, I was bound to get somewhere.
Looking back on that belief now, it was a bit naïve. But the Film Group was the only place at the time to support work in film. I remember some of the men were not exactly receptive to women’s stories, to say the least. I was told that my film The Piano Lesson was maudlin – an emotional work – as a criticism. Even though I knew that the comment came from a masculine worldview, it still did have an effect on me.
The Film Group was a very competitive place. The male filmmakers who were making their way to the top were very skilled at self-promotion, and I am not. I won’t deny that it was difficult to feel left out of that. But, at the same time, the Film Group did have some moments of opportunity and collaboration, and I leaned into those more welcoming aspects. Maybe that’s why I was able to last a bit longer than the women who came before me.
Cecilia: I entered into the Film Group in the late 1990s. It was a very unwelcoming place. I had just met Sean Garrity and he had encouraged me to just go in. But when I did, everyone had their backs to me and I felt like I was interrupting something. So I turned around and walked into Video Pool instead for help with equipment and volunteers.
Like some other filmmakers, the NFB was the place that helped me get started as a filmmaker. I walked into the NFB one day to ask them for help with my film idea. Joe MacDonald was one of the producers there and he agreed to help. He gave me some funding and also put me on payroll for a short period of time. The funding the NFB gave me for that first film enabled me to get additional funding for my project from the Canada Council and Manitoba Film and Music. Those agencies helped me make my first film before I became involved in the Film Group.
It was after I’d finished that first film, or when I was close to finishing it, that I met Larry Desrochers at a community event. He was the new Executive Director at the Film Group and recruited me onto the board. Larry was in a really tough spot. He was trying to save the Film Group from itself – first from the deficits from the 20th anniversary program, and then the cuts for being non responsive to funder demands that they open up to more demographics.
Carole: I definitely remember that specific directive being sent from the funders. And I remember that conversations and ideas about bringing in more women were becoming more commonplace around that time.
Cecilia: I don’t doubt that the Film Group wanted to do better. But whatever it was doing wasn’t working because the organization was still heavily dominated by white men and it was still a very uncomfortable place for women.
The funders were more interventionist back then, as well – for both good and bad. The Canada Council used to fly into town to have periodic private meetings with the staff of organizations, though that’s ancient history now.
As soon as I started working at the Film Group, the Canada Council flew into town and told me that if the Winnipeg Film Group didn’t open up to Indigenous filmmakers, and quickly, that would basically be a quick end to the organization. They told me not to ask for more funding to bring in Indigenous filmmakers, but rather re-budget the organization to do it. That the Film Group would not receive any more funding increases until this problem was resolved.
And, well, re-budgeting an already sinking financial ship was not easy to do.
The Film Group had absolutely no Indigenous filmmakers associated with it at the time. I do know that Victor Enns, my predecessor, had run at least one program targeted to Indigenous folks. I can imagine I must not have been the first person in the organization the Canada Council had spoken to about this. But I can tell you that this subject was not anywhere in the organization’s collective psyche at the time as being the work that needed to be done.
There was a common mindset that the Film Group’s door was open to anybody, and so it wasn’t the organization’s fault if women or BIPOC folks chose not to come in. I’d heard that line so many times from different people over the years. The organization was in a pretty self-lauditory place and perceived the funding cuts to be unfair.
With Victor’s workshops – they were run, but then there was no further developmental support for the Indigenous participants beyond that and so they left. It was clear that what was otherwise on offer at the Film Group outside of that one workshop was not interesting to them.
A few years before the 225, Larry had had a somewhat similar experience to me, but with the Manitoba Arts Council. But while the Canada Council gave me time to fix the problem before moving to enact cuts, MAC did not give Larry time. MAC just cut the organization’s funding, and massively. The issue at that time was centred specifically about the organization’s lack of support for women filmmakers.
And so, when the 225 came and attracted so many women without conscious intent, that must have felt like a gift from God. In just a few years, there were more women filmmakers associated with the organization than there had been in the entire three decades prior.
Carole: I definitely remember Larry’s time with the Film Group. He was all business. He had a problem to resolve, and he was trying to solve it.
Cecilia: Both myself and Danishka effectively started at the Film Group with the 225, with some nuance sprinkled in here and there. By that time, Shereen and Paula had already left the organization and were definitely not around. Perhaps you were able to last longer because of the 225? It does seem to mark a strong before and after in your filmmaking career, where you made the shift to experimental film.
Carole: The 225 was definitely a revelation for me. Before that workshop, I hadn’t realized you could work with 16 mm film and develop it by hand. I had a background in photography and a long history of developing photos in the darkroom, but I hadn’t made the connection before the 225 that the same process could be used for film. And so I felt that workshop was the very thing that I’d been looking for to reinvigorate my practice.
The process brought me back to the joy I’d felt in making my own first film, Fishing Story, which was part of the omnibus Exquisite Corpse project. I landed on that project shortly after stepping into the Film Group in 1990. I’d never made a film before, but was convinced that I could merge my background in both playwriting and photography into filmmaking. At the same time, the Naday brothers were producing Exquisite Corpse, which was to be a series of films. They wanted to invite more women to participate, but of course there weren’t many at the Film Group, and so they offered me the chance to make a film very shortly after I arrived. I was thrilled for the opportunity and quickly accepted, despite having had only an inkling then of how a film was made. I was eager to just start with something. It wasn’t something I’d planned, but a rather spur of the moment decision, almost as a lark.
I shot the film myself in an intuitive manner, getting help with the technical aspects along the way. I made the film with the tools I had. It was non linear and poetic. And ultimately, I was very pleased with that little film. I still like it a lot.
So when I took the 225 years later, it was actually a return to the same intuitive poetic approach I used to make Fishing Story. I consider that film to be my first experimental film, and so the 225 brought me back to that.
But after making Fishing Story, I fell into the filmmaking system. At the time, there was really only one way to make films if you wanted to be able to continue working. There was a system that you needed to follow if you wanted to get ahead. It’s the kind of filmmaking where you arrive on set with a one ton truck. Everyone encouraged me to follow that system, and so I did. Certain doors would then open and I would step through them thinking that what was in the next room would appeal to me.
I made a film through the NSI Drama Prize program on that path, and then went to Toronto for a year to do the director program at the Canadian Film Centre.
I’ll always remember the semi-trailer truck that rolled up to my film location in Toronto. It felt like I’d arrived. It was well beyond one ton truck territory and it was a long way from my first short drama, The Piano Lesson, which I’d made through the Film Group’s First Film Fund, which had covered the cost of the film and the developing. But The Piano Lesson was also the one that started opening those system doors for me.
By the early 2000s, though, I had become weary of that way of making films. It seemed to be the only model of filmmaking that the arts councils were funding at the time, or at least that I knew of. I was fortunate to have received those resources, but that way of working also takes a lot of creative resources away from you as well.
When I returned to Winnipeg after the CFC, I made another short fiction film, but by then my approach was changing. That film, En Trois Temps, was definitely more experimental in nature than my other short fiction works. I was trying to play with different time lines and story lines. The end result was uneven and was not what I’d envisioned, despite wanting to take the risk of a more experimental approach. By then, I also knew I wanted to return to the way I’d made Fishing Story. But I didn’t know where those doors were. Experimental film wasn’t something that was happening in Winnipeg at the time.
My vision of filmmaking was always non-linear, and I’ve always tried to play with space and time. Those are the motifs I keep coming back to. And so, when the 225 appeared, I was like… enfin.
I really loved the tactile nature of the process. I liked playing around with the images – removing them, playing around the edges with scratching or using chemicals that would make parts disappear, and adding colour. I just really enjoyed that. I kept saying that I loved getting my hands dirty again – literally. And so, the 225 presented me with something that I had always wanted to do, but had never been able to describe or find before.
Cecilia: Do you remember who was in your cohort? You took the 225 in its second year, correct?
Carole: There are only certain things that I remember about that workshop – mostly about the process and my experience. For the life of me, I can’t remember the other people who were there. It’s almost 25 years ago now. I don’t even remember why I didn’t take the first workshop that was offered the year prior. I’m sure I would have lined up to take it. Maybe the dates didn’t work out for me.
Cecilia: I remember you told me at the time that you had gone to sign up and it was already sold out. It was sold out immediately. And so you were put on the list for the next class.
Carole: You remember that? You have a very good memory.
Cecilia: I do.
Carole: And a couple years after the 225, I remember this woman came into town to do a workshop and she taught us how to make films without cameras, just using a flashlight. And that was another revelation for me. That was also another extremely transformative workshop. I can’t remember her name, though.
Cecilia: Oh, that was actually a WNDX program. We brought Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof in as a visiting artist in the second year.
Carole: Yes, that was her!
Cecilia: If I recall correctly, I think both you and Heidi Philips took that workshop. Sol and I had asked around for people who might want to be in that workshop and you signed up. I’m pretty sure it was a free workshop. Izabella was coming in to present work, so we added the workshop.
Carole: I do remember Heidi was there. I also took a workshop on how to use the optical printer.
Cecilia: The optical printer workshop was one that WNDX held in our first year, with John Kneller.
Carole: That was a lot of fun.
Cecilia: You made your film French Ship through the 225. I’m wondering if you can talk a bit about the process of making that?
Carole: Well, I didn’t really have an idea of what I was going to make. I was more focused on the experience of the workshop itself and making images using what I had at hand. And then I came across this graffiti by the Legislature building and it said French ship, and my mind immediately saw how that graffiti could tie together many of the images I had already created – and then I made a few more to tie it all together.
Cecilia: You’re Francophone. French is your first language.
Carole: Yes – and so when I saw that graffiti, my mind took the words and processed them into something I was able to broder autour – something I was able to knit around. The film came about as I experimented with the process. But the truth is, I don’t consider French Ship to be a finished film. It’s still a work-in-process. I still intend to work on it – or with it – in the future.
Both the 225 and Izabella’s workshop pushed me to embrace something new. I’m not a very strategic person in general. I tend to find my way more à tâtons – by feel or by a process of elimination of what I don’t want, rather than by consciously planning moves in a specific direction. I’m always open to trying things just to see what happens. It was certainly the way I approached my film career.
When I was in the filmmaking system – the machine, as I call it – I just followed the road. But eventually, that came to an end for me. In my mind, the next step was to make a feature film, and I worked through that process for a while. I was still in that mindset when I stumbled upon the 225.
And so, yes – back to your original point – the 225 did move me away from scripted drama. So I guess there is a distinct “before and after,” as you note, but I’d say it’s more of a fragmented line.
Cecilia: I see a number of women filmmakers who either emerged through the 225, or who re-emerged through it. There’s me and there’s you. In both of our cases, the 225 created a very specific through-line in our filmmaking careers. There is a before and and after that is noticeably apparent, at least to me.
Carole: Who are the other filmmakers that you’re thinking of?
Cecilia: Danishka Esterhazy, Heidi Phillips, Jenny Bisch, Allison Bile and Victoria Prince, definitely. And further along in the 225 family tree, you find somebody like Rhayne Vermette, as she emerged from the environment and foundation that had been laid out by the 225.
For me, I feel that the 225 has a very clear feminist legacy, but until I started talking about this with others, there were not a lot of people who had thought about it as much as I have.
I’d been thinking about all of the prominent historical narrations that come out of the Film Group – they’re always undertaken by white men and centre the perspectives of white men. In many ways, that’s patriarchy’s last stand there. I wondered if I could write about the Film Group, about something that only the women had really registered – and immediately the 225 jumped into my mind. It came to me rather quickly.
I also knew that if I didn’t put a more accurate framing of the 225 into the historical record as having a clear feminist legacy, that this history could be lost, because it pre-dates the digital era and has no digital footprint other than the works that were made through the workshop and digitized.
This is not to say that male filmmakers did not also come out of the 225. Certainly, Mike Maryniuk is also a very notable part of the 225 movement. But, the Film Group producing male filmmakers was not and is not a novel activity. Producing white male filmmakers, in particular, has always been the one thing that the Film Group does exceptionally well within its context. But it did that by making resources functionally unavailable to other demographics, and that was the problem.
But both you and Heidi have noted that there was no place else to go to at the time other than the Film Group, even if it was clearly an inequitable place.
Carole: I do see the 225 as being a more feminine or feminist approach to filmmaking. Though, admittedly, it might be more about how women are socialized by society, knowing you will not have the same resources, so you make do with the means at hand.
The process was slow and thoughtful and personal, and it didn’t require you to come in and take a lot of space in order to be able to make a film. There was always a certain amount of jockeying for attention at the Film Group. Well, among the young men in particular. The space created by the 225 was the very opposite of what was happening at the Film Group at the time. So it makes sense to me that women would have been more comfortable in that space in comparison to what was up on offer in the rest of the Film Group.
As a woman, you definitely grow up with full knowledge that the world is not made for you. Everything in the world is made to accommodate men. I’ve always been very aware of that. And so the process being more quiet and personal than the big machinery of conventional cinema, was something that certainly lent itself to where I was at.
Of course, there was a period when I also left the Film Group, for over ten years now, I think. I moved on to do a master’s degree outside of the film world. I was focused on doing Indigenous community research with inner city groups. Well, I’m not sure that it’s fully correct to say that I left the Film Group, but it’s true that I haven’t been around so much since making Going Going Gone, which was part of the Silverscope commission for the Cinematheque’s 25th anniversary. I used all of the techniques I learned through the 225 and Izabella’s workshop in that film. And it did well.
At that point, I felt I needed to try to stabilize myself financially, and the life of an independent filmmaker does not really allow for that. It’s precarious at the best of times. And so, a few years after finishing my masters and doing work related to it, I moved to Ottawa.
But I am hoping to pick up where I left off very soon.
Cecilia: Do you see the 225 as having a legacy in Winnipeg?
Carole: I honestly haven’t really thought much about it at that level. When you contacted me about the 225, I definitely knew exactly what you were talking about even though it was 25 years ago. I do know that it was an ah-ha moment for me, and so it doesn’t surprise me to hear it had a big impact on others as well. Whether that is a legacy, I can’t speak to that.
I’ve really enjoyed having this discussion and thinking about these things again. I hope to be able to do that more and return back to filmmaking again very soon.