The Gaze

It only seems appropriate to close our third season with one of our all-time favourite guests, the talented filmmaker Jasmin Mozaffari. Her recent film Firecrackers generated at lot of buzz at TIFF this past year, where it screened to sold-out audiences. Firecrackers tells the story of redhead Lou and her best friend Chantal as they try to make their dreams of escaping their small Ontario town a reality. Since premiering at TIFF, the film has screened at festivals worldwide and won Best Film at the Stockholm Film Festival. Recently, it was featured in Canada’s Top Ten screening program and was nominated for four Canadian Screen Awards, including Achievement in Direction. In this episode, we sit down with Jasmin and her producing partner-in-crime, Caitlin Grabham. Together they discuss the struggles and joys of turning their successful short into a feature film, and establishing their production company Prowler Film.

Last time anyone did the stats in Canada, only about 17% of scripted television shows were directed by women. What does it take for a woman to break into the lucrative and exciting world of TV directing? From making indie short films to directing episodes of Murdoch Myteries, Sherren Lee has done it successfully. In this episode, we talk to Sherren and Rina Fratecelli, director of Women in View, about the transition to TV and WIV’s initiative 2XMore, a program that aims to double the number of women directing scripted shows.

We’re back for a third season! If you’ve been listening to us, you’ve heard us discuss all kinds of issues: the lack of women in the director’s chair, the white saviour complex in film, #OscarsSoWhite and telling indigenous stories from non-indigenous perspectives. This season we want to turn the boat around. We’re focusing on solutions to the glaring gender and race parity issues in Canadian film and TV. We’re asking how can we address some of these serious representation problems in Canadian media? Who’s working to introduce proactive initiatives? What are some of the success stories so far? In the first episode, we speak to three Canadians tackling the issue of gender and race parity in their own distinct ways. We begin our conversation with Cameron Bailey (TIFF’s Artistic Director) and his view on what kinds of Canadian films could help shift the fiction film landscape. Rina Fraticelli (Executive Director of Women in View) talks to us about the launch of her organization’s new diversity toolkit called “Media Plus” and Rad Simonpillai (Film Critic for Now Magazine) speaks candidly about being a writer and ally with an ongoing interest in gender parity.

In the second episode of our spotlight on Indigenous female filmmakers, we discuss the work of renown Canadian auteur, Alanis Obomsawin. At 85 years of age, Alanis has made 49 films with the National Film Board of Canada, including her most recent documentary "We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice." We had the honour to sit down and chat with Alanis about her filmmaking process, her longstanding relationship with the NFB, and her unrelenting efforts to document the fight for Indigenous rights in Canada.

This episode, we kick off our season with Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, director of the critically acclaimed documentary, Angry Inuk. A controversial piece about the rights of Inuit seal hunters in Canada’s North, Angry Inuk premiered at Hot Docs last year and subsequently won the festival's Audience Choice Award. In this episode, we chat candidly with Alethea about the making of her first feature film and the courage it took to tackle a subject matter that many industry professionals cautioned against.