Cormier feted at festival

Lively City column by Dan Hilborn
Published June 4, 2005


Burnaby's own Susan Cormier was treated like a guest of honour when she arrived at the Herland Feminist Film and Video Festival in Calgary last month to screen her five-minute short flick, This Bleeding Place.

And the special treatment was especially well deserved after the many trials and tribulations the young producer went through just to attend the event.

Cormier, who works in the retail sales industry, was turned down for a Canada Council travel grant to attend the festival and very nearly missed the event. But after cramming the $400 airfare cost onto a credit card that was already bulging from a student loan debt, she arrived in Calgary for three days and two nights of gala receptions and speaking engagements.

"During every screening in the festival, I was introduced to the crowd as a guest of honour," said Cormier, who also had one of her original drawings used as the official logo for the festival.

"I was even asked to give a speech after the night of aboriginal films was shown and I wasn't prepared for that at all. I was told it would be a question-and-answer session," she said. "So I spoke about following your dreams and how so many people have these great ideas, but they just don't follow through."

And Cormier's 5.5-minute video is indeed following its dream. This Bleeding Place has already been shown at the Montreal World Film Festival, the First People's Presence Autochtone Festival and at last fall's Video Poetry Festival at Pacific Cinematheque in Vancouver.

It is the bleak but honest story of a battered young woman who returns to the apartment where her former boyfriend's abuse took place so that she can clean the walls and reclaim the damage deposit.

"It was a love story I originally shot for the Take Back the Night women's march," said Cormier. Paid for out of her own pocket, Cormier eventually received a $700 B.C. Arts Council completion grant to recoup her costs on the production.

Today, Cormier is working with a $5,000 Canada Council grant to produce her second short video, Turtleheart, which she hopes to screen at the major film festivals in Canada. She expects to complete the new video by the end of summer and eventually hopes to see it air on some of the cable TV channels such as Bravo or the Aboriginal People's TV Network.

CRAZY8S IS HERE

A trio of young men with roots in Burnaby will be in the limelight this weekend when the Crazy8s film festival returns to the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver.

The festival gives budding young producers, director and actors an opportunity to show their stuff in front of some of the biggest names in the industry, and even being selected is a big honour.

Of the 65 teams that sent in entry forms, only five were chosen.

The Burnaby connection comes with the film All In, which features current or former Burnaby residents director Guy Judge, producer and actor D.J. Parmar and co-writer and actor Ian Ronningen.

The festival, which gives participants just eight days to write, film and then edit and release a short film, is sponsored by Directors Guild of Canada, B.C. division, and does a good job of testing how well these budding young film types work under pressure.

"It's really insane," Parmar said Thursday, just 12 hours before his final deadline on the project. "The name for this festival is really justified."

The film relates the story of four Indo-Canadian guys who get together for a night of poker, when they realize that one of the group is about to enter an arranged marriage with the sister of another guy in the group.

"What happens is this intense debate, and the friends soon discover they don't really know each other that well," Parmar said.

Once the Crazy8s festival is over, All In may be seen at other film festivals across the country.

The five films in the Crazy 8s festival will be screened at the Vogue Theatre at 7 p.m. tonight, June 4.

CAMILLE'S CD

I recently had the chance to hear Camille Miller's new CD, Carnarvon Street, and was thoroughly impressed by her incredible voice and fine music-writing abilities. Produced by the British- based Sugar Shack Records, the 10-song CD shows great potential for this young singer/songwriter. She's been getting repeated airplay and many accolades on the influential Radio Bandcouver program on Co- op radio, 102.7 FM at 9 p.m. Friday nights, and she's clearly one of the best up-and-coming musicians in the Lower Mainland scene.

You can hear this redheaded songstress perform live on most Wednesday nights in The Orange Room, 620 Sixth St., New Westminster.

And I'll bet she'll even have a few of her CDs available for sale, too.

SHANNON'S STAR

A talented young ballet dancer who calls Burnaby home was one of the featured performers when the Arts Umbrella Dance Company presented its season finale at the Vancouver Playhouse last month.

Shannon Ferguson, a 19-year-old who grew up in Merritt, spent four years studying with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet before moving to Burnaby to participate in the Arts Umbrella program.

She performed in four dances over the weekend, including a collaborative piece she learned when she studied in Japan earlier this spring.

Ferguson is currently enrolled in the combined sports/arts program at Magee secondary in Vancouver, and intends to spend another year with Arts Umbrella before heading out into the world of professional dance.