-Could you tell a bit more about the background of Ghosts and Gravel Roads? I understand that the film is set in the very flatlands of Saskatchewan that you grew up in?
Ghosts and Gravel Roads is a companion piece to a film I completed four years ago entitled still / move. Both films explore the history of my family's homesteads rooted from the family album. In still / move I was shooting family portraits and snapshots in movement - memory passing in time whereas the landscape was still, trapped in the present. With Ghosts and Gravel Roads I was exploring the idea of the photograph as epitaph, commemorating a particular place and time by placing the photographs on decaying buildings in my home province of Saskatchewan.
All photographs used in the film are from my mother's family. The last photo (the only color photo) is the house my mother grew up in when she was young. It was demolished in the late 70s.
-Is the way you worked on this film similar to your earlier works?
There are similarities between this film and still / move primarily using autobiographical themes such as the family photo album, but Ghosts and Gravel Roads has a more visceral connection with the landscape. The images of nature such as the physical environment, endless grasslands and roads that seem to never end are depicted ominously in contrast with the community that was once there. There is perhaps a darker tone with Ghosts and Gravel Roads. During the production, I felt anxious and unsettled because of the isolation from major communities. I also express a visual frustration to a history that I cannot physically connect with but can only document.
-Are there any filmmakers or artists whom inspire you?
Notable Canadian filmmakers such as Jack Chambers, Michael Snow(especially La Région Centrale), Richard Kerr and American filmmaker Stan Brakhage have made lasting impressions on the way I see and compose images. Their films have taught me to develop a formal cinematic
language, trained my visual literacy and encouraged me to construct visual poems. For sound and image relationships, I always tend to watch films by Kubrick and Leighton Pierce.
-Could you tell about some of the more important choices you had to make?
My original intention was to complete the film in 35mm, however I was tight with money so the final master is on HD, which is fine by me. Stephane Calce conceived the sound design for the film. Heavily influenced by composers Bartok and Legeti, Stephane evoked the minimal sounds that exist in this open space. He also wanted to create a musical entity of the wind, a chorus of voices that shift and float from one image to the next. There are also sound cues and metaphors in the film. For example, incorporating the French prayer over the image of the photograph of children praying. This sound serves two purposes – one being a literal auditory cue of the photograph and the other,metaphorical, in which the prayer functions as spiritual blessing, a last rite, to the decaying landscape.
- Is it important for you that your film will be screened in a competition programme at the festival?
It's not necessarily important that my film is in competition but I am deeply honored that it is.
- What was the audience you had in mind?
I never have an audience in mind for my films. My main focus is to complete a film that is to my satisfaction and if people enjoy the final product then I am even more content with the piece.
- Could you tell us something about the next project you will be
working on?
I am currently working on a series of black and white studies of interior / domestic landscapes all shot, with in-camera edits, with a Bolex.