In the Heart of New Western Cinema

Host: Adora Nwofor 

Starring: Gillian McKercher, Guillaume Carlier, Andrew Young, Adam Keresztes, and Brock Davis Mitchell

Production House: FOREIGNERZ @sansfuccs

Director: CONTRA, Eman Safadi

Producer: Eman Safadi

Cinematographer: Jashan Makan 

Editor: Jashan Makan

Assistant Editor: Eman Safadi, CONTRA

Colourist:  Jashan Makan

Sound Design: Jashan Makan, CONTRA

Location Sound Mixer: Jashan Makan, Eman Safadi, CONTRA

Title Sequence: Cole Edwards 

Music

madlib x noname type beat- prod by brokebwoy

SUNSHINE – prod by HACHI

3am – prod. jboogin

OPERA RATS – prod by underground activities 

Tame Impala x Childish Gambino Type Beat – prod by Introvert

ANITA – prod by 8een

daydreaming – prod by TONI C

PEARLS – prod by 8een 

CALL ON ME – prod by 8een

POTLUCK – prod by Vilan

Additional Footage:

Gillian McKercher 

Kino Sum

Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers (CSIF)

Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF) – Michael Grondin, Jesse Gillett, Blake McLeod, Kristin Breitkreutz

Jevan Bailey

Keep Alberta Rolling

The Jazz Studios 

Gillian McKercher: Filmmaking is a practice of extremes—extreme hours, extreme risks, extreme emotions, extreme highs and lows, all around extreme volatility. Choosing to be a filmmaker is perhaps the most intentional thing I’ve ever done, but at the same time, I don’t think I really had a choice.

Film has been my sole focus for the past nine years. I cannot believe it’s been that long, but at the same time, a lot’s happened, it’s that contrast to taking things day by day, but also visualizing long term what stories I want to tell, both my own and in support of others.

Making a film is a little insane. I guess that tells you something about me.

Adora Nwofor: It’s so good to see you.

Gillian: So this is Kino Sum’s office. We share the space with a number of other artists, it’s through Untitled Art society. We’ve been here on and off for over five years. I love it here, it’s got everything you need.

Adora: Beautiful. Interesting. Oh, where the magic happens.

Where did all of this filmmaking stuff begin?

Gillian: I always wanted to be a filmmaker, but I went into engineering after high school, and when I was in high school, too, I was really focused on math and science and everything technical. I didn’t feel like I could pursue a creative career or just even, like, creative pursuits.

Adora: Like right here in Calgary? Was that a conversation you had with, like, your family?

Gillian: Yes. Look, I was a really sporty person. I was an alpine racer. All of my creative energy and expressing myself was like on the ski hill. But deep down, I always wanted to be a filmmaker, it just felt impossible. Like, I was obsessed with Hollywood gossip, celebrity gossip. I can tell you every single name of, like, Angelina Jolie’s children and their birthdates, it’s not cool, but that was like the closest proximity I had to the creative arts, but I loved movies, I just didn’t know I could do it. So when I was 17, there was an ad in Tubby Dog for the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers’ Summer Media Arts Camp, and I was still 17, I was about to go into university, I was like, I have to do this. I’ll die if I don’t at least try to do film once, so I did this two-week camp, but it was amazing and it changed my life. Once I was exposed to CSIF, the woman who was working there at the time in the programing position, she invited me to write for their newsletter and then I was given assignments, all volunteer work that I took extremely seriously.

Then I started doing workshops, taking those extremely seriously, being like, this workshop that I do every Sunday will change my life, and then I’ll be a big filmmaker. Which was sort of true, because now, many years later, I’m doing it professionally. But at the time I thought it would change my life then, and it was just incrementally.

Andrew Long: I’m Andrew Long, I’m the executive director of the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers, which has been the go-to resource for independent, low budget local productions, occasionally for pieces for larger productions as well, and just trying to keep people making fun stuff.

Founded in 1978 by filmmakers who wanted to provide a resource for other filmmakers, a big part of what we do is kind of informal mentorship, shared experience, and the chance to go out, work on each other’s things. Sometimes we do have things that are also like just public workshops. We run the Artifact Small Format Film Festival once a year, studio space, equipment, workshops, but mostly it’s community.

We’re really here to support filmmakers who want to do something that’s their voice, do something beyond go out and, you know, sit beside a roadside lock up and manage traffic when something bigger is in town. I actually probably first met Gillian years ago, when we were both working for Calgary International Film Festival for a little bit, and it was the same year that her first feature, Circle of Steel, was coming out.

So she was really excited because she got to basically, you know, go from her shift where she’s working the festival and working hard on that front, and then get to walk into the theatre and be there as a filmmaker as well. Since then and since my involvement here, I’ve gotten this year, progressed to larger projects and help out a lot of other filmmakers, so that part’s been really exciting.

Gillian: I feel like I’m basically a product of CSIF. It was the first place to really nurture my creative desires. I met the two founders of Kino Sum there, there’s three of us total, it was myself, Nicola Waugh and Guillaume Carlier, all of them I met at CSIF, and Guillaume is now my husband, so I kind of owe CSIF like my family, and I still go there all the time for like workshops and screenings and equipment support and just general community building.

I think it’s critical, like if you’re coming as an outsider, and I really feel that I was an outsider into art, you need places that are sort of accessible to the lowest common denominator. Like, I didn’t have a built-in community, I had to find CSIF to then ask to be part of it as a public space. And I think that’s really important.

Right now, we are at a dance rehearsal for a music video that I’m directing for Rebecca Bruton’s band Swanherds. Rebecca and I have worked together a lot, she’s scored almost all of my work, which is amazing, and we actually went to high school together at Queen Elizabeth, and she had already been connected with Heather Ware, who’s the choreographer and one of the dancers of this piece. At this stage, we’re just jamming. I have an idea about what the concept is, but I’m not exactly sure what I want to do, which is why I’m here at the rehearsal to see what the performers are putting together, get inspired, and then use this material to start crafting what the finished project is going to look like. We’re going to shoot that in about three weeks.

This is our second time doing a session like this. Here’s one thing I’m learning about being a professional artist is that lots of the people we’re working with are very, very busy. So actually coordinating everyone’s schedules is very challenging. One of the aspects of being a professional is just being available when you have the time and being totally present.

I don’t do a lot of dance videos, so for me, I actually need this prep work seeing everyone dance. You can’t be the best at everything. I feel like being a director is a little bit like being a jack of all trades. I actually did used to dance when I was younger. I was a Highland dancer, but I’m not by any means like a good dancer.

I had to lean on that past experience and lean on Heather’s expertise as a choreographer and dancer to bring the best from her part, and then I’m just here to sort of bring it all together and make sure we have a really, really amazing music video to go along with Rebecca’s amazing song. That’s what I think being a director really is, is just tying it all together cohesively with a point of view that’s different than if just the dancer and the musician came together and were like, let’s make something. I’m here to sort of offer that other unifying perspective.

Adora: Why did you create Kino Sum, and where do you see it going in the future?

Gillian: So Kino Sum was created with two other people, and I think mutually, we just wanted a banner to create audacious, independent, cool stuff. And then I think we all liked each other a lot, like Nicola, Guillaume and I had really complementary but different tastes, and so we thought together we could create something that was unified. So rather than just like going at it alone, which I think we all start at it going at it alone, but that doesn’t last for very long. It’s unsustainable. You burn out, you need other people to lift you up and get through the hard times and vice versa, it feels really good to help other people through hard times and then celebrate and create together. It was like, ok we have all these ideas. How do we keep things going and really reach as far as we can go from a potential perspective? So not just doing things with like no budget. We just knew that together we were stronger to build something.

Now things have changed a lot. Like we started really working on Kino Sum in 2017, so that’s like eight years. I just want it to get bigger work with different voices. The vision is still the same, like audacious voices, original voices coming from more centred in Western Canada. We call ourselves part of the new Western cinema, or in the heart of New Western cinema. I shouldn’t say the new Western, in the heart of New Western cinema.

Guillaume Carlier: Okay, a big thing about being an artist and an entrepreneur in Calgary, and entrepreneur is like Calgary’s favorite word.

Adora: Yeah. Yes, yes it is.

Guillaume: The reason why people do things in Calgary is because you see that there’s a hole and that you could probably fill that, and you can be the thing that you want to be in Calgary, and there are much less barriers than like cities like Montreal and Toronto and Vancouver. I’m originally from Montreal. When I was growing up in Calgary, I was always thinking like, oh, it’s not Montreal. And then and then at some point that invisible line was crossed. I was like, it’s not Montreal, like, I like that it’s not Montreal. So we made it because we just felt like Calgary needed one.

Adora: So there’s no other production houses like yourselves or what you create is different from other people are creating.

Guillaume: I think that’s the idea actually, is that Calgary in the film sense, is mostly known for service production. So people are often coming here, Americans are often and coming here, or Toronto agencies, Vancouver agencies are here and they use our landscape and they use our people, but the stories are not from here. So that’s where we were like, all right, if we’re going to be here, let’s do our own.

Adam Keresztes: My name is Adam Keresztes. I am one of the programmers at the Calgary International Film Festival, and I’ve been working there for about seven years. Gillian McKercher is a staple in the film community in Calgary, we’ve played many of her films in the festival and her feature films, her short films, she’s just someone who is always pushing boundaries in terms of what films can be made in the city. We’re always excited to see what Gillian’s doing, whether it’s behind the camera as a director or she’s putting on for other voices as a producer with Kino Sum, every year, we’re always excited whenever there’s a new Gillian McKercher or Kino Sum film that comes through the pipeline.

Gillian really has a voice and a style that really pushes outside of what a typical Calgary, Alberta film can and should be. She’s always willing to go outside of the city and the province to learn and then bring a lot of things back to the city that can then elevate what is made in this area.

Andrew: The new generation of Calgary directors has been really good at starting to challenge each other a little bit, build each other up, support each other in a more active way. It’s a really exciting wave of people that are starting to move into budgets that are beyond what we start to consider the grassroots budget. Calgary, and to a large extent, Alberta in general, does a really good job of supporting a lot of things at the grassroots level, so individual artist grants or smaller projects. Obviously, you know, we’ve had major, major motion pictures and large series come through as well. There’s a lot of work on the industry side where we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in the budgets for some of these projects. But the middle ground where we have local voices, we’re able to do stuff at scale, that’s a little bit more rare. We spend a lot of time trying to build that up, but in the case of Gillian and her cohort at Kino Sum in particular, I mean, they’re already doing it.

Adora: Why are we at this specific restaurant?

Gillian: So we’re in Central Grand, which I have been coming to since I was a kid. So it’s figured largely in my life, but also because it’s a major set in my feature film Lucky Star, which I wrote and directed.

Adora: Oh, tell us a little bit about Lucky Star.

Gillian: Lucky Star is a dramatic feature film about a father who gets scammed and then returns to gambling in secret from his family. I started writing this in, like 2019, we actually world premiered at the Calgary International Film Festival and now we’re available on Crave after doing a theatrical release across Canada.

Adora: Okay, why was it important to film here in the place that you have like made memories, celebrated memories, etc. etc.?

Gillian: I knew that the only way I could tell the film was to set in the Chinese-Canadian community, so I’m biracial, half Chinese, and I knew the only way to make the story authentic and real, and also we had a very small budget, so I wanted to increase our production value, and I knew that I could rely on my community to really be there for me.

I just wanted to show what I need to be true, which is going for a dim sum, going for dinner, having family dinners. You’re gossiping you’re talking, for me in my life, it happens here. I asked the staff if I could come here and they were very, very supportive and generous. Oh, baby’s here!

Adora: Just the bustle of a restaurant that’s thriving families.

Gillian: Well, hello! It’s my baby.

Brock Davis Mitchell: My name is Brock Davis Mitchell, and I’m a director and cinematographer here in Calgary, Alberta. Gillian, to me, is like this enigma, the whole Kino Sum circle of filmmakers to me is this enigma where I don’t really see them too often until it’s awards season time or a festival, and they just like winning.

Everything they do is of value to themselves and the audience. Everyone really attaches to all their stories. And what I’ve noticed in Gillian’s work in particular is without knowing her so well and only seeing her once a year at the awards or festivals, I feel like I know her really well because of her work. Like it’s very personal. her heart is truly on the screen in every moment with every character. Lucky Star was such a triumph of a film  I feel in terms of local filmmaking, both in Canada but in Alberta, all the talent that they utilized. To me, I really understood who Gillian was.

Gillian really creates art with her heart, and I can tell that the crews in mind, the stories in mind, like really intentional filmmaking.

Adam:  At CIFF just last year we had Lucky Star,which was her latest feature film. That was an amazing film. We played it as our closing night film for the festival. It was such an interesting perspective. It didn’t feel like a very typical Calgary film, it had a really great crowd and actors from all over some local, amazing actors like Andrew Phung, and then bringing in actors from BC and Toronto and other places really kind of elevated it, and I think that her viewpoint of the style and the subject matter of filming is something that really makes it stand out.

Adora: How did it feel to premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival? Because I’m sure there will be many more international film festivals.

Gillian: Premiering at CIFF is amazing. It’s really the first festival that recognized me as an artist. They’ve been supporting me since 2014, when I had my very first short film show at the festival. You know, as artists, we say that we don’t look for validation, but we need a little bit of it. We do share our work for audiences, and it means a lot to have people say, yeah, your work is worth sharing for other people, and for me, that’s major. And I’m from Calgary. That means a lot too, to be able to share the work with the people who inspired the story.

I think that the festival is an amazing place to meet other filmmakers. CIFF is where I really got access to other Canadian filmmakers and then more broadly, international filmmakers. I love Calgary like I’m making my life here, but it’s really important to branch out and at least have a network that’s bigger than here to understand what else is going on in the world and CIFF is a really good gateway for that. It’s kind of like summer camp. Everyone comes together and we’re all, like, excited about each other’s work. It’s a lot of networking and partying, right? It’s great. And that’s something that I value a lot.

Adam: Calgary has been growing a lot and expanding and shifting since I started at the festival, and even before that. I think Calgary and Alberta have been really known for sort of rural landscape films and horror movies, and that was kind of pretty much it. But I think it’s been shifting a lot, and that is due to new people coming into the film scene, differing perspectives, all these things that have come together to build more of, like an urban perspective to film, I think, where, yes, we have landscapes and we have like Brokeback Mountain was shot here in Unforgiven or shot here, and they go to the mountains and they go to the prairies. Well, we have a city that can stand on its own, and that can be in place for many big cities. Or you can set movies in Calgary that are a city movie that are like a downtown movie. And we’re seeing a lot of that kind of coming through, and I think it’s shifting the landscape of what cinema kind of can be coming out of Calgary.

Brock: What I love about being an artist in Alberta in general is because it’s not the norm, it’s quite easy to get a lot of people to support it, and that’s not a place of exploiting anybody, it’s more that we have the ability to empower and bring people to be involved. I think in any other place, any other epicentre of creative expression, whether it’s Vancouver, New York, the usual places, when you’re making something in Alberta, people just want to have their voices be heard as well, they want to contribute and be a part of something.

Our film industry is quite new still and new in the sense of we don’t have the steady flow of work like those are their epicentres. So when something comes around, you have people saying, I want to be involved. How can I give you my shirt off my back? Do you want to shoot at my house? You want to use my car? Like people want to see stories be made. and I think that’s different than anywhere else, and that’s what’s really exciting, is everyone wants to get on board to just see each other thrive. And collaboration is growing because of that.

Guillaume: The idea, I think, is sometimes in Calgary is like, okay, let’s raise the bar. Sometimes it’s very hard to do that because people are like, well, the bar is over in Toronto. You know, like if I’m going to be good at what I do, I have to go to Toronto.

Adora: Right? Exactly.

Guillaume: So for us, we didn’t have that option, you know, we didn’t really want to. And the roots of Calgary took hold and, you know, and I felt like we had to honour that in a way. Calgary has given us a lot. It’s given us some friends, it’s given us business, it’s given us our lives in many ways, I don’t know, I recently heard a quote that, like, everybody wants to be part of a village, but nobody wants to be a villager. And part of being involved in Calgary is you gotta contribute a little bit, you know? And sometimes that means making up stories.

Adora: Guillaume, what do you want the world to know about Gillian?

Guillaume: To me, Gillian truly represents a new voice that’s coming from Western Canada, from this region, from this land, that nobody has seen before. As much as she’s like a warm, inviting, lovely person, there’s a brutality to her work that needs to be seen.

Gillian: Here’s what I’ll say. If you want to be a filmmaker and you want to do the festival route, you want your film to get into cinemas, you want people to see it, it’s freaking hard. It’s a long road. The highs are high, the lows are low, and there’s a lot of lows, a lot of rejection, of course it’s political, like who you know, but also the work has to be good too, so there are a lot of things to balance. So I think you just really have to love it. And if you love it, then everything will be manageable. And so yeah, that’s what I would say. There’s no secret sauce except work hard and you gotta love it.

So I have two kids. I think that my kids will be proud of me really trying to do both, trying to be an artist, not trying, being an artist…

Adora: Yes! Sorry…

Gillian: …and being a mom. I’m trying to do things holistically. It’s messy and it’s not always the cleanest, but I’m trying to do both as best as I can. That’s what I’m proud of. It’s like I’m not trying to half-ass anything. If I was only doing art stuff, maybe I’d be going further, but I also really wanted a family and to be a mom. And so my reality is both and I’m trying to do it both together as best I can.

Guillaume: Do you know what I do? I make movies.

Gillian: Leonard, what do you do for work?

Leonard: Make movies.

Brock: For me, it’s incredible to have people like Gillian in our circle, in our community to look up to. I would say that I would kind of quantify myself as like, similar tier a filmmaker as a Gillian and Kino Sum, like we make kind of same level, budget-wise of productions, but I look up to them in a big, big way. I really admire what Gillian, what Guillaume and the Kino Sum team do in all of their work from their documentary side to their narrative filmmaking side, I can tell that they cultivate culture and community around them on anything that they’re making, and that’s success.

They can make cool work all day long, but you see people flock and want to be a part of what they’re doing more than just what the story is. They want to be with them. And I think that says so much about Gillian’s character and the type of work that she’s known for, but more so the reputation that she’s building for herself of an incredible person to be around. And when you’re around incredible people, you’re going to make incredible art.

Adora: Thank you for being on my show, Leonard.

Leonard: I’m going now, bye!

Adora: Bye!