Lulu Keating - Film making, community size and co-ops
Where do artists produce, thrive, and build community? Filmmaker Lulu Keating takes us on a journey from Nova Scotia, Toronto, Vancouver, to Dawson City, exploring the threads of filmmaker co-operatives, through to big city production. Lulu revisits the places and relationships that shaped her path, and reflects on how we can support each other fiercely today.
References & links
Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative
Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society:
Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto:
Klondike Institute of Art and Culture
The Moody Brood (a film by Lulu Keating)
Explore more conversations at nakaitheater.com/podcast. Thanks to the Government of Canada through the Department of Heritage for funding this cycle of the podcast.
Transcript
Lulu Keating: I've been a filmmaker since 1980, when I made my first film. But prior to that, I was going to school and whether were scenes, some good, some bad, but for all of those 42 years of being a filmmaker, I've made every kind of film - features and shorts and documentary, animated and drama, and worked in various communities doing that: Halifax most prominently, Vancouver for a bit. Did some time in Toronto and also in Montreal, but not much. Anyway, and then in Dawson City, most recently, for 18 years.
What the film program couldn't give me – being able to join a cooperative gave me – big time. It didn't mean that there was always harmony because fiercely individualistic people were attracted to film co-ops and you were able to do your film, but your own fucking way and pushing people aside in order to get this film made, but also embracing other people and working on their films.
And so there was a give and take, huge tolerance for people who were on the spectrum, had learning disabilities, all of that. The arts continue, I think, to be a refuge for people who will not fit in academic stream. And what that means is that we have to build our own community, in which we can support each other.
So I've seen that kind of support be really incredible with the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative in Halifax. One of the members was schizophrenic. Here he is burying his telephone in the backyard because he's having a fight with the telephone company about his bill, and yet we stayed friends with that guy all the way through. He just died a few weeks ago and he had these solid people behind him all his life. He's a wonderful guy, but the fact that he flipped out every now and then did not alienate because the bond was so strong. And so I think that too is a way that it can be an inclusive community of people who can have difficulties.
On the other hand, I think there's a danger in that we can sometimes in our communities, exclude others and we can be clique-ish. And are we all entitled white settler, upper middle class, had the opportunity for education? Generally speaking: unfortunately, yes. In my cliques, in my little mini societies built around filmmaking, and that's too bad, and so it's something we have to work on.
In my life, what I did was, when I left Halifax, left that scene, which was extremely productive, I was making at least a film a year, but I could not make a living. I just kept hitting walls with film industry not coming through and film art support not being sufficient to be able to make a living. And when I looked for a community, the first place I went to was Vancouver.
And yes, I could make a really good living, making really bad television, and I did that for a year and I could not stand it. What I was seeing there were people who, like me, were working in bad television and like me, were going, "you could do better than you did. They gimme the money, but they won't gimme the money, what's wrong with them." It was just a self-defeating world that we lived in of bitterness, and so I had to get out of there. Vancouver didn't work on the independent side. Why? They had a film co-op like Halifax – Cineworks. Toronto has one – the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto – LIFT. Why are those co-ops not as successful as ones in St. John's, Newfoundland and in Halifax, and in Winnipeg, and what we do in Dawson City? Why? Because there is a pervasive other industry in Toronto and Vancouver. It sucks the energy away. It pays people who work as craft services more money than you can afford to pay your own sound recordist on your independent film.
So there's this combatitive society that is not, that doesn't work well together, the independent scene. Whereas in those smaller cities like St. John's and Winnipeg and Halifax, and Dawson City, there are groups of like-minded people who can come together in the spirit of cooperation and build community, keep batting each other up: "why don't we try this? Why don't we do that?" We keep building on, building, and building. Dawson is like, the savior for me because it's again, a small, isolated community of like-minded individuals, and yes, we create our own genius, [laughs] communal, pushing each other. So yeah,
I have this theory that if you come from a small community, you can be a big fish. And once you land in a big pond, Toronto, Vancouver, whatever, you can fill that gap. You can be a big character still, because you've become a big character in your small town. And so I think it, what I see influencing me in growing up in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, population 5,000 when I was growing up, is that we, yes, there was the whole co-op movement, it was an incredibly inspirational movement, but it didn't influence much of a fact that we had a very vibrant arts community in the university. I think that's when I first started to see how you don't need to have 2 million people around you in order to be able to be cohesive, and think together, and move together like a centipede, crawling towards your objective together, and excelling at what you're doing.
I think it really helps if there is some kind of cohesive organization already there, so that you don't have to invent the wheel. So you get people who want to set up their own film festival, or their own production studio or whatever, and they're building infrastructure, or setting up even a small society means that you have to get together and put together your bylaws, get your board of directors, blah, blah, blah.
Whereas if you just parachute into something that's already established, as I was lucky enough to do with the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative, and with Klondike Institute of Art and Culture, these entities were there and functioning. And so all we have to do is produce. And that is huge because a lot of artists get distracted building infrastructure or in maintaining it, and it cuts into creative time.
I also think that, it is wonderful if they're at the top, not necessarily the administrators, but among the team, people who are very principled, and forgiving, and tolerant, because the entity has to survive. I think that comradery really helps. The fact that people get along, that kind of generosity of personality is really good to have among people who are the founders, or the leaders, or whatever. When I could no longer make Halifax work for me was when I was needing to make a living, more of a living. I've never made much of a living, but I needed, I was just scraping by. I made the mistake – what happened to me, and it happens to a lot of artists – is that I had some real success with this film, the Moody Brood. It had traveled internationally, it had won awards, and yet of the eight projects I was trying to get off the ground, none of them were getting financed. So I had thought it was gonna get easier when I had this successful film, but it doesn't work that way. So those false expectations are what drove my self-esteem into the ground and why I had to find a new place.
By the time I got to Vancouver, I thought, I'm not gonna be a filmmaker anymore, and I went to a employment counsellor. They gave me the survey to fill out. I fill out the survey all about my interests and everything. I come back a few days later, give it to them: "have you thought about being a director? Maybe you should be a director, film or theater." That's what they told me. So there was no getting away from it anyway, but I got over that hump because there was another collective that I could fit into and do my work, and I'm so happy. My feeling is that choosing a distanced location in order to make the work entails also the responsibility of being able to connect with the rest of the world by bringing that work out there and being part of presenting it and seeing. So I'm always finding ways to go off to film festivals, connecting with the bigger world serves my agendas because I find out about funding and meet people and blah, blah, blah.
But it also feeds back into my work and inspires me and makes me more committed to the form.
I think that my perspective now is very different from when I was first starting off. I think I was a lot more intolerant and more judgmental about my colleagues in the scene. Back then, there was even a phrase, "making the scene," being part of what's happening, being part of the scene, being cool and not square, being an insider, and not an outsider.
So those kind of parameters and judgements that you're making on yourself and other people can be very detrimental to inclusivity. Now as an adult, as an older adult, I feel as if I have a better perspective on how I have to understand people more, give them a lot more, cut them more slack, and help them to flourish in a way that I was not very generous as a younger person.
But because we're all different voices, we have to be able to hear every voice and not just the one who's shouting the loudest or has the most white privilege. So that's what is new for me now, is to try to be able to recognize everyone's doing their damned best. And in ways we pervert our forward movement by putting all kinds of blocks in front of ourselves, and in front of others, and let's just get the work out there, that's the most important thing.
I don't feel as if I have any right to judge other people's work. I do have my own tastes and I am not in the horror genre, or I'm not making Harlequin romance type work, but it's a big world out there, so there can be other people who enjoy that kind of work. So I guess I learned at an early age it was really fun to be in Halifax. And to have a boyfriend who was working on Paul Donovan's early films, which were sexploitation, bullshit action adventure, sleazy movies, and I was part of this whole elitist art scene that was making "pure cinema," whatever the hell, it didn't matter. There was an audience for both. So let's give the world what it needs.
Jacob Zimmer: Thanks very much for listening. You can find out more at nakai theater.com/podcast where there's links and transcriptions.
Thanks to the Government of Canada through the Department of Heritage for funding this cycle of the podcast in which we discuss how to be together and thrive as live performance makers.
Stay well.