Cinema Canada (May 1980)

we didn’t need anyone else. Now we are coming to a point where our assets are different than just being cameraman and editor. We spent last year finding out what it takes to put a feature together, putting packages together, weeding out key people, getting the idea out, getting our profile up. I mean, we know how to doa feature. “It's important that the industry is built here,” reflects Michael. “With the capital cost allowance, the spirit of the law is that an industry be built here, and it’s up to the producers to make that work. There’s an awful lot of work to be done in the writing end, and in the talent end. I think that it is really important to look for Canadian talent in our films ; and when we’ re absolutely convinced there’s no one else, we should look again.” It hasn’t all been a picnic. Personal relationships suffer, because Michael and Peter ‘think film’ twenty-four hours a day. “It’s a real sickness, a real disease — it’s an obsession called Film, and it occupies every moment. “Having a partner is no picnic,” says Michael, wistfully. “It’s like being married. A partnership can be the most wonderful, gratifying, tremendous relationship, and at the same time the most nerve-wracking, terrible, frustrating relationship. It’s worse than marriage, because you're in business, and at the bottom line is money. With us of course, it’s more than that — because we're friends.” Watch for these two friends. If the energy they've put into their projects continues like it has, you'll be hearing a lot more about them in the future. Krystyna Hunt SPOT LABS mary stephen shot silk and sensuality Justocoeur is not the film Mary Stephen wanted to make next. Justocoeur is, in her own words, “the story of a dancer who specializes in African rhythms and who becomes involved in a triangular relationship with two men, one of whom is homosexual.” Shot in 16mm, colour, with French dialogues translated by Eric Rohmer, it apparently has the Stephen trademark of concern for the five textures of human relationships expressed in what the French call the intimiste style. But it isn’t Night Fires (or as it is now called, A Slender Thread of Passion/Un mince fil de passion) — the feature film that this young, expatriate Canadian writer/ director hoped to shoot in Paris with Jeanne Moreau and Kate Nelligan. Shortly after her first feature film, Shades of Silk, was released in 1977, Stephen finished the script for a film to be called Night Fires. Originally, the synopsis referred to it as a“ psychological drama of the games people play when they are face to face with their own... uncertainties.” A year later, after some judicious advice from Paul Almond on “selling” a synopsis, it read “an unusual love story,” and made a slight bow towards soap opera passions. An agent sent the script to Jeanne Moreau who, within two days of reading it, agreed to play the part of a successful stage and screen star, wife of a jealous actor, and mother of two talented daughters. LTD 487 ADELAIDE ST.W., TORONTO, ONT. M5V 1T4 « 366-8001 offers you the experience of 10 years’ service to the industry -35mm negative processing and dailies -16mm negative processing and dailies -16mm contact and reduction prints -35mm and l6mm commercials Extensive experience with European and U.S. features 28/May 1980 That was two years ago. Now, Nicole M. Boisvert of Agora Films is producing the film and the team hopes to begin shooting in the spring. But for Stephen and her partner John Cressey, two frustrating years have already been spentin trying to find the producer and backers. A French investor, who was enthusiastic after seeing Shades of Silk at Cannes, pulled out just before filming was about to begin. One Canadian producer felt the project wasn’t marketable because Jeanne Moreau wasn’t a ‘bankable’ star. One script reader, hired by an independent producer, said Night Fires was the best script he had seen in over a year. Another, with the Canadian Film Development Corporation, sent the script back with, what Stephen called, “incompetent and insulting comments.” It is a commonplace tale among young filmmakers these days. And it takes an indomitable and flexible spirit like Stephen’s to keep making films while waiting for the “big break” of a major feature. Stephen is confident, almost blindly so; and she inspires confidence in some remarkable people — in spite of being, as she says, “young, a woman, and Chinese with an Engish name.” Jeanne Moreau has often phoned her at her flat on Paris’ Boul. St-Michel, to reassure her “about the difficulties women writers and directors have in getting a major film off the ground.” And Stephen counts French filmmaker Eric Rohmer among her friends and enthusiastic patrons. They, at least, are impressed by Mary Stephen. And it was Shades of Silk that first revealed her talent to them. Her early short films include a tenminute documentary on retarded children (Independence ’73) shown at the Sir George Williams’ Film Festival in 1973, and then on Canadian television; a short film on culture shock (Labyrinthe) that was shown twice on Canadian television; a longer documentary on young people travelling across Canada during the summer (The Great Canadian Puberty Rite, 1974); and an experimental film on the experience of death (A Very Easy Death) that was shown in the Hong Kong Film Festival in 1977. Shades of Silk, however, is international in setting, story and cast. It was shot in Paris, premiered at Cinéma Olympique in May 1978, and was shown on the market at both the 1978 and 1979 Cannes Film Festivals. Set in 1935 in the decadent Chinese