News & Events

PSYCHOS, VAMPIRES AND VAMPS

Actor, screenwriter and director Guinevere Turner has written a menagerie of challenging characters, from a yuppie serial killer in American Psycho to a 50’s bondage model in The Notorious Bettie Page, to a vengeful half-vampire in Blood Rayne.  As an actor she’s played both the lovelorn Max in Go Fish and the two-timing Gabby Deveaux in The L Word, along with numerous other edgy and original characters.  

In conversation with Ken Eisner, critic for the Georgia Straight and Variety, Turner will show clips from her work and talk about the challenges of writing characters on the margins of society.

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 12 2008   7:30 PM
SFU Harbour Centre
515 West Hastings, Room 1800

ADMISSION IS FREE
Seating is limited.
Please RSVP to praxis@sfu.ca with 'Guinevere Turner' in the subject line.

For more information please call the Praxis Office: 778.782.7880

Deep Mehta in Conversation

On October 4, 2008, Deepa Mehta and her partner, producer David Hamilton, met with a packed audience in the Cineworks studio to discuss their new feature Heaven on Earth before its screening at the Vancouver Film Festival.  Like their previous films Water, Earth and Fire, Heaven on Earth is a serious drama exploring the oppression of Indian women – here, a young bride who comes to live with her husband’s family in a Toronto suburb.  At the same time, Heaven on Earth has a magical element glimpsed in earlier Mehta films Bollywood Hollywood and The Republic of Love, with a love potion that conjures up an unplanned romance.  It was loosely inspired by Let’s Talk About It, Mehta’s recent documentary on wife abuse, and by Neelam Mansing Chouwdry’s play Naga Mandala, itself based on an old folk tale.  It features Bollywood star Preity Zinta and Indian theatre actor Vansh Bhardwaj in his first film role.

Mehta and Hamilton spoke candidly and eloquently to an audience of eighty about their long-time collaboration.  Hamilton admitted that on one or two earlier projects, they started to shoot without being fully financed, trusting correctly that their footage would find backing.  Several women filmmakers in the audience asked for advice on topics ranging from handling difficult actors to straddling two competing cultures; Mehta’s response was simply to stop worrying and accept the contradictions as they arise.  Answering a question about reconciling politics and aesthetics, she noted that the dominance of the visual element in her work protects her from didactic dialogue.

Mehta and Hamilton’s next project is the $35 million Exclusion, based on the true story of the Komogatu Maru incident in 1914 in which a ship filled with Indian immigrants was blocked from unloading at Vancouver Harbour.  It stars Akshay Kumar and will begin shooting in Vancouver next September.

Photos of event courtesy of Heinz Ruckemann / UPI Newspictures