V RADHIKA zooms into the career
of the upcoming director in an
exclusive interview
It is a rare occurrence for a
film to win two awards in
successive years at the same
film festival. Dawn Wilkinson
achieved that feat with her film
Devotion that won the audience
award at the recently concluded
Reelworld film festival in
Toronto. The film was awarded
the Tony Stoltz Completion Fund
last year, which is given for a
'work in progress.'
The Reelworld festival showcases
the work by Canadian filmmakers
from visible minority
background. The festival
director, actress Tonya Lee
Williams, says, "Canada is
considered one of the most
multi-cultural countries in the
World and my hope is to draw
strong support from our
audiences to help our emerging
filmmakers create a new diverse
genre of film that the world
could appreciate as being
uniquely Canadian."
And one of the upcoming
directors on Canada's filmscape,
is this young woman with a ready
smile, soft voice and flowing
dreadlocks whose short films
have screened at major
international festivals. She has
made documentaries and music
videos too and Devotion is her
first feature film that revolves
around the personal journey of
an 11-year-old biracial girl
Alice and her challenges of
growing up with a white mother
and a black father. Haunted by
her mother's death (which Alice
believes was the result of her
father's drunk driving), the
film essays the girl's intensely
personal journey and her
identification with her mother
who was white, and reluctant
forgiveness of her father, who
is black.
Issues of race, gender and
identity are of particular
interest to this filmmaker of
biracial origin, who was all set
for an academic career while
pursuing Bachelor of Arts Degree
in Women's Studies and African
Studies at the University of
Toronto where she won The City
of Toronto Women's Studies
Scholarship and the Harry Jerome
Scholarship. She graduated with
distinction but in the meanwhile
she had attended a filmmaking
workshop where she made a short
film, Dandelions that meditated
on her personal journey into her
Canadian identity. The film went
on to achieve international
recognition and in the toss
between academics and film, the
latter won.
She has made four short films,
two documentaries and music
videos under the banner of her
production company After Films
Corp. Here in an interview with
Weekend she talks about her
movies and her career.
Is the theme of
bi-racial identity of particular
interest to you and why?
It is in the sense that I have a
biracial background. My mom is
white and Jewish and father is
Barbados and Christian so I grew
up interested in what it means
to be both black and also to
have biracial or dual multiple
cultural identities, so it is of
interest. But I have made a
number of short films, music
videos and devotion is first
time that I am making biracial
theme as part of story. Part of
the reason is because I needed a
longer form, I needed bigger
story to get into it. My short
films study issues of culture
race and identity but not
specifically on biracial
experience.
Is the film
autobiographical?
I tell people it is a personal
story. For example, I was born
in Montreal and I lived in a
predominantly white town uptil I
was six and then moved to
Brampton (a city near Toronto)
which also predominantly white
until I was 10 and then Brampton
became more multicultural. In
Devotion, Alice and her father
move to a small predominantly
white town so the experience
Alice has in terms of both kids
that bully her and racism that
comes along with that are things
I experienced.
The character of mother is
somehow related to my mother and
her way of life, she practices
and teaches yoga, meditation,
and believes in lot of ideas
that I have related with the
mother in the film. So I was
taken to yoga ashrams as a child
and exposed to that way of
thinking/living/belief, but the
story is fictional. It is a
story about a girl whose mother
passed away and that is not true
for me.
But I use that as a way of
exploring the love she has for
her mother and the relationship
she has for her mother, so the
audience can see a black girl
admiring a white woman. May be
they (audience) have not thought
of that experience before or
relate to that experience where
simultaneously she is facing
racism and also confronting at
the same time that she has an
image of a mother who is almost
like an angel in that film. That
is what I am interested in
showing.
How far are the
experiences of biracial people
different from other people of
colour?
It is hard to generalize because
I think most of time biracial is
almost the way you identify
yourself and not so much how
others will identify you.
Sometimes it is very visibly
apparent that someone has mixed
cultural heritage but a lot of
time you can't see it at first
glance, so it has to do with the
way a person might identify
yourself or develop an identity
and feel it is important to let
people know they are combination
of cultural traditions. So I
think when it comes to racism as
experiencing that it is pretty
similar, you face it but it is a
little more complicated because
you may face that in your family
or might face conflicts.
How did your growing up
shape your ideas?
I am glad that Toronto is such a
diverse city and that is one of
the things I love about it and
am happy to make films here. I
am thrilled that when I look
around I see lots of biracial
kids, from different
traditions/backgrounds. I feel I
wish I could be young again and
have a community like that, not
that I do not have a community
but to have grown up like that.
When I was casting for the film,
and was talking to different
kids, they don't associate being
biracial as much with being
isolated the same way as I think
I did - that I also explore in
the film. At least in the more
urban areas where there are more
biracial kids/families, it is
not as isolated as it used to be
but I still think there is not
much representation of that in
the media. When I started making
films it was always to show
something about my experience
that I did not have a chance to
see on screen. Initially, I
interested in writing and then
when I made my first film I got
interested in the visual medium
and really when it comes to race
and people's perception or
stereotypes visual medium is
very strong.
How did you get
interested in making films?
I attended a workshop with Phil
Hoffman, an experimental
filmmaker. I was in university
studying women's studies and
African studies and was
interested in cultural identity
as an academic idea at that
time. A friend of mine said I
should try filmmaking. I had
made home movies but I never
connected it with the academic
writing that I was doing. So I
went on the retreat with the
intention of learning how to use
and operate a camera. The short
film I made there went on tour
to different film festivals.
I was inspired and I thought I
have been doing all this writing
on my own and not shared my
ideas and just the experience of
screening the film for audiences
and seeing how they responded to
this basically six-minute film
made me think that I should
continue this by not exactly in
the academic path that I am on
but pursue filmmaking. I just
loved the process.
After that I worked on some
musical videos in different
departments because I thought if
I want make films I should see
if I like making it. I was
trying to get experience and I
needed to make sure that that
was the direction I wanted to
head in. I made a short film,
finished university and instead
of going to graduate school in
women's studies which I was
planning to do, I took courses
in media arts.
I did Masters programme at City
College of New York for a short
time and then I made Instant
Dread. After this, I had the
opportunity to work as Norman
Jewinson's apprentice on
Hurricane so now I had a mentor
and I liked a bigger film
production experience. Then I
went to Canadian Film Centre and
I was in their Director's lab
where I made three films.
What is the importance
of festivals like Reelworld?
Reelworld is amazing. It is just
the place to showcase works of
diverse filmmakers and themes
and people come out to theatres.
We get the feedback from
audience and raise awareness
about projects that are out
there and showcase them. I have
had something to screen here
every year. In 2001 my film
Girls Who Say Yes was screened
here and I met Suzie Mukherjee
who produced Devotion. So our
relationship started at
Reelworld. In the following
years my music videos screened
at the festival and last year I
applied for a completion grant
award because I made Devotion on
a shoestring budget I could not
complete the post-production
work. I won an award and now to
have the Canadian premiere is
perfect because it started at
Reelworld when I met Suzie.
What is your next film?
I have a few documentary
projects and am writing
screenplays.
How much is the changing
Canadian landscape reflected in
popular culture and media?
We see diversity in cities and
it is on the part of the
programmers, broadcasters and
distributors to acknowledge the
changing audiences. And people
are working to highlight this.
We have to find stories and
prove that they (audiences) are
interested in watching their
stories and showing that it is
actually commercially viable to
explore diversity themes. I
think a lot of other people
besides me are working on just
showing that what we are doing
has an audience and we have an
interest in seeing stories from
our point of view.
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