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At the Simon Fraser University Film Workshop near Vancouver in British Columbia, one learns filmmaking by making films.
The Film Workshop is non-academic. There are no lectures, no grades, no side-tracking of creative energy to the task of pleasing a professor.
‘‘What the Workshop does,”’ says Workshop graduate Peter Bryant, whose documentary film Noohalk was chosen best film at the Canadian Student Film Festival in 1970, ‘‘is get people involved who are really interested in making films. No courses, nothing. That’s all they want to do.”
Shelah Reljic, now a producer at the Vancouver National Film Board office, conducted the first Simon Fraser Film Workshop from 1967 to 1969. Instead of film lectures, Reljic scheduled regular campus screenings of new Workshop productions. ‘‘The kids had to face their own audience,” says Reljic. ‘‘And the audience cheered, booed, and whatever. And from the idea of having made the most beautiful film in the world they finally realised reality and time and space and distance —and that there were an awful lot of things to be improved.”
Graduates of the Workshops have worked on CBC, NFB, CFDC and Canada Council films, as well as on commercials and independent productions.
Along with Bryant, Reljic’s Workshop included, among others. Tony Westman, George Johnson, Bryan Small, Doug White, Sandy Wilson, Pat Corbett, Zale Dalen, Linda Johnson, Mark Dolgoy, Manuel Busquets, and J. Andrew De Lilio Rymsza.
When Shelah Reljic came to Simon Fraser it was her first exposure to university life. Says Reljic of her initial reaction. ** I couldn’t believe these kids were going out in the world not knowing how to share, not understanding people, and not having something to do.’ It has often been remarked that film-making is a group activity: a particular feature of the Film Workshop from the start was the sharing of skills and knowledge when students made their films. Years after they leave the Workshop, graduates continue to ‘‘work together.’’ Professional Tony Westman, a graduate of Reljic’s Workshop who now has extensive experience on NFB documentaries and on CFDC theatricals (including Bryant’s first feature attempt, The Supreme Kid) remarks that working together is particularly important in his professional work. In contrast to the academic atmosphere of ‘‘every man for himself’, the Workshop promoted
an attitude of working together toward common goals. Act. c ly _ : ‘The crew that has any sense of ego ... if there’s any one | el es ie ee On. a ae re <6
person on the crew who thinks he’s better or sharper than “” DAIL He E |
anybody else on the crew, he’s in trouble,’” says Westman, and YO V A RE
‘‘because in a situation like that you’ re in this mess together, and you have to open yourself to asking the other person for help. I’ve worked in enough tense situations and very easy situations to know the kind of critical sensitive points that break down a film. And I realize that if everybody is willing to communicate, and not afraid of their poor little aesthetic, that’s the way you get films made.”’ Westman also remarks that the Workshop or any film study program is a good start, but that the training néver stops. ‘‘To have spent a year or four years or twenty years
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