Chris Hampton

U of T producers set to make their Cannes debut with two films

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 14 May 2024 13:19:49 +0000

U of T producers set to make their Cannes debut with two films

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 05/14/2024 - 09:19

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Weijie Lai, left, and Elizabeth Wijaya, right, have two films premiering at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Chris Hampton

Topic

City & Culture

Film

U of T Mississauga

Subheadline

Weijie Lai and Elizabeth Wijaya are co-founders of the development and production company E&W Films and teach in U of T Mississauga's department of visual studies

The ��Ƶ’s Elizabeth Wijaya and Weijie Lai are headed to the French Riviera to see not one, but two films debut at Cannes.

The two scholars – Wijaya is an assistant professor in U of T Mississauga’s department of visual studies, Lai is a Cinema Studies instructor – co-founded the company, E&W Films, that led the production of Mongrel, which is set to premiere as part of the Director’s Fortnight, an independent section that runs in parallel to theCannes Film Festival and is organized by the French Directors’ Guild.

The film, which marks the feature debut of co-directors Chiang Wei Liang and You Qiao Yin, tells the story of Oom, an undocumented migrant who works as a caregiver in the mountains of rural Taiwan.

Meanwhile, director Trương Minh Quý’s Việt and Nam will compete in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard category, which is dedicated to non-traditional stories and styles. The film, also produced by E&W, follows two lovers, one from the north and the other from the south, on a mission that explores the dreams and trauma of the southeast Asian country’s children.

“I would say both films this year are heavy, but they have very distinct artistic visions,” Wijaya says. “With everything we work on under E&W Films, we look out for that sense of directorial vision or artistic voice.”

A still from the movie Mongrel (Image courtesy E&W Films)

Wijaya and Lai met in an undergraduate philosophy and film course at the National University of Singapore. They launched E&W Films for practical reasons: they needed somewhere to hold funds while raising money to make Lai’s thesis film project. Later, E&W Films produced a short project for an undergraduate schoolmate: director Kirsten Tan. Next, the pair moved on to produce Tan’s debut feature Pop Aye, which won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Fast forward to today and E&W Films now has more than a dozen productions under its belt.

Wijaya generally defines her roles as development, strategy and co-ordination while Lai is more hands-on, helping facilitate everything from ideation and scripting to fundraising, production, sales and distribution.

A still from the film Việt and Nam (image courtesy Epicmedia Productions Inc.)

The couple’s dedication to film media, as well as their teaching and scholarship, has enriched U of T Mississauga’s department of visual studies, where they’ve built the UTM Asian Short Film Collection (accessible to anyone with a U of T library account) and organized the UTM DVS filmmaker-in-residence program, which has welcomed international talents such as Davy Chou, Pimpaka Towira and Anocha Suwichakornpong to campus for workshops, lectures and screenings.

Two projects currently in development by E&W Films have also received U of T Mississauga funding: an eco-horror project directed by Gogularaajan Rajendran was awarded the Black, Indigenous, and/or Racialized Scholar Research Grant, and The Sea is Calm Tonight by filmmaker Lê Bảo was given seed support by the Research and Scholarly Activity Fund.

The opportunity presented by the Cannes’ platform is enormous, the producers say.

“It's the biggest international market in terms of the number of attendees,” Lai says. “The most number of critics internationally are there. The most number of distributors are there and sales agents and things like that … So if you're there, in theory, more people will watch your film.”

While E&W Films has had a presence at the festival for years, this is the first time its work is set to be screened at Cannes.

“I think I’m excited just to see the first reactions,” Wijaya says.

Lai, too, says he’s looking forward to the experience.

“By the time we get to the world première, you've seen the film so many times that you’re actually bored stiff,” he says. “But for some reason, when you're sitting there with a fresh audience during the world première … the feeling is always different. You feel the energy of the audience, and fingers crossed the energy is good.”

Richie Mehta, a U of T alumnus, finds validation in International Emmy win for Delhi Crime

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 16:10:52 +0000

Richie Mehta, a U of T alumnus, finds validation in International Emmy win for Delhi Crime

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 12/14/2020 - 11:10

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Richie Mehta's Delhi Crime tells the story of the police investigation that led to the apprehension of the six perpetrators of the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student – a crime that shocked India and the world (image courtesy of Netflix)

Topic

Filmmaker Richie Mehta was finishing a project in Delhi when the Nirbhaya (Hindi for “fearless) case broke out. The 2012 gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in the national capital territory shook India to its core, making headlines around the world.

As details emerged "over the course of several days your whole understanding of what a human being could do to another human being was altered,” says Mehta, an alumnus of the ��Ƶ Mississauga, who recalled the protests, riots and re-writing of laws.

“The crime changed the country’s psyche forever. I was there. I was a part of it, experiencing the same frustration and sadness.”

Mehta, who is now based in London, won the International Emmy Award for best drama series last month for Delhi Crime, which he wrote and directed. The Netflix series tells the story of the Delhi police investigation that led to the apprehension of the six perpetrators of the gang rape and murder.

“The investigation was led by women,” Mehta says, “so essentially, it’s about the women who are trying to solve this incredibly vast problem of violence against women in the most heinous sense.”

Mehta began work on the project in 2013. A family friend connected him to a former police commissioner who introduced the filmmaker to the investigation team and to the woman who led it. Mehta got to know the officers over the course of several years.

“They were real-life superheroes,” he says. “I thought it just turned the whole story about India on its head. People have this perception of the dangers that women face, which is not unfounded, but at the same time, it’s an environment where you come face-to-face with a kind of courage you’ve never seen before.”

Mehta says it was initially tough to find supporters for the project, but that he ultimately found a group of producers and financiers in the U.S. and India – including women – who “took a real stand” (photo by Arsh Sayed/Netflix)

The majority of the six years Mehta spent making Delhi Crime was devoted to research. Accuracy was crucial to the project – an extremely sensitive subject, still raw in the mind of the nation – so he worked closely with police, interviewing detectives and reviewing their files. “This is not stuff I was going to make up,” he says. “It’s about a real case; real people were affected and there were real victims.”

He proceeded slowly and with trepidation. The horrific detail of the police reports was, of course, disturbing. He was living between Toronto and Delhi then. “I’d spend time with the cops for two or three months, gathering research, go home to Toronto and just sit in a room and cry,” he says. “Then, I’d have to sort everything out.”

At times, he doubted the project’s worth. He also worried about the toll it was taking on him. He says it took a few years to finally realize that “something productive could come out of this.”

Initial conversations with the film industry were difficult. No one was eager to do a film or a series about gang rape in India, Mehta says. After he’d written the script, however, he found a group of supporters in L.A. and India – including women – who would become Delhi Crime’s producers and financiers. “They took a real stand,” the filmmaker says. “They thought it was relevant, meaningful and that it should be made.”

Mehta calls the International Emmy win “a validation.”

“I was trying to do something that would not only address deep issues for Indians within the justice system,” he says, “but also patriarchal misogyny, violence against women, class, the caste systems – all these issues swirling together.”

At the same time, Mehta says he wanted to show global audiences how this crime, which happened in a country where sexual violence is endemic, was absolutely devastating to India. “Ninety-nine point nine per cent of people there were as hurt and as shocked as we are. They are as ethical as we are and they are trying their best to fix this thing. It is important that people see that.”

Delhi Crime will continue as an anthology series, following different crimes set in India’s capital territory in Season 2, though Mehta will not be at the helm. The city makes a compelling backdrop for such a series, he says.

“Delhi is a very dark place in a certain manner of speaking. It has the reputation in India of being the hardest city with the hardest type of people … But it’s also the place where you find the most humanity – sometimes it’s just hiding well.”

Students at U of T Mississauga gallery publish collection exploring time and place during COVID-19

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 19:18:45 +0000

Students at U of T Mississauga gallery publish collection exploring time and place during COVID-19

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 08/26/2020 - 15:18

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Emily Roe, Electrical Gardens, mixed media triptych, 20 cm x 20 cm, 2020 (image supplied)

Topic

Undergraduate Students

Work-study students at the ��Ƶ Mississauga’s Blackwood Gallery have created a digital publication called Time Out that explores our relationship with time since the COVID-19 pandemic first struck.

The students typically work as gallery attendants, supporting the centre’s offsite programming and conducting outreach and research for upcoming Blackwood programs. But with the physical gallery closed, their work went digital over the summer.

With support from Blackwood staff, the work-study participants – James Legaspi, Jessica Velasco, Kaitlin Simpson, Nancy Hamdy and Camilla Peng – sought to collect the perspective of fellow students during a strange time. They put out a call for art and writing that reflects upon the current moment and received submissions from across Canada. Time Out features 13 contributors working in media and methods that range from painting and mechanical installation to reportage.

Karina Garcia Casanova, Under the High Chair - April 6, 2020 - Breakfast, digital photography, 2020

“We wanted to engage with how unsatisfactory the ending of the spring semester was,” says Legaspi, who is entering his fifth year in the U of T Mississauga art and art history program and served as one of two curatorial research assistants on the work-study team.

“Things like studio spaces, final critique sessions, gallery spaces and scheduled exhibitions, as well as exhibition opportunities themselves and networking opportunities – access to these were all cut or postponed indefinitely, so we wanted to make a space for emerging voices and to amplify these student voices. We wanted to provide an opportunity for peers to see how peers are thinking.”

Emily Roe, Electrical Gardens, mixed media triptych, 20 cm x 20 cm each, 2020 (image supplied)

In a photo series, for instance, Concordia University student Karina Garcia Casanova documents the mess left beneath her 18-month-old’s high chair after each meal – the purple splats and saucey smears like abstract expressionism paintings.

“When COVID-19 hit and daycares closed for nearly four months, I struggled with finding ways to work on my artistic projects while taking care of my two young children,” Casanova writes, adding that she cleans the floor three times a day – a regular gesture of care that goes mostly unnoticed. The photographs, she says, make that work visible.

Another project, a digital painting by Toronto artist Troy A. Lawrence, depicts time spent in quarantine and the awesome power of imagination. There is also a list, drafted in the early days of lockdown, counting the activities that its author, Sabryna R. Ekstein, missed: “Having a reason to wear jeans, reading at bars, museum visits, baseball, making out.”

Katy Poirier, At home, yourself, collaged paper on MDF board, 10 cm x 10 cm, 2020 (image supplied)

The topics broached are numerous: health care, the environment, racism, gentrification, family, identity, capitalism and colonialism. And though accounts may seem isolated and disparate, Time Out illuminates the joints and corners, exposing the larger systems at work. It elegantly maps these many connections.

Simpson, a master’s student in U of T’s Faculty of Information and one of the work-study group’s new media assistants, says that’s precisely what she learned focusing so closely on this peculiar suspended period, with all its good and bad.

“Everyone is going through something different right now and that’s OK,” Simpson says. “We still have connection and we have community.”