J’ai deux professions : la réalisation et le montage. J’ai monté plusieurs documentaires primés à des festivals canadiens et internationaux. Je privilégie l’étape du visionnement des rushes, j’aime questionner les réalisateurs car cela m’aide à saisir leur intention, leur quête. À la fin du montage, ma plus grande satisfaction est d’entendre le réalisateur déclarer : »C’est le film que je voulais faire! »

Née au Canada, j’ai commencé à « cadrer » le monde en Italie et imaginer des histoires vraies et surréelles car celles racontées sur le grand écran continuaient dans la vie de tous les jours. De retour au Canada, j’ai fait des études en « Film Production » à l’Université Concordia à Montréal. Depuis, j’ai scénarisé, realisé, produit et monté mes propres documentaires et courts-métrages primés et présentés à des festivals au Canada et à travers le monde. J’alterne entre la fiction et le documentaire, à la recherche de sujets qui expriment des émotions fortes dans mes documentaires et légèrement surréelles dans mes fictions.

I have two professions: directing and editing. I’ve edited many documentaries which have won numerous Canadian and International Awards. I particularly enjoy the screening of rushes with the director. I ask many questions as this process helps me interpret the footage and the director’s vision and quest. At the end, my biggest satisfaction is when the director tells me: « This is the film I wanted to make! »

Born in Canada, I began « framing » the world in Italy and imagining surreal stories as those told on the big screen continued in everyday life. When I returned to Canada, I studied film production at Concordia University in Montreal. Since then, I have scripted, directed, produced and edited my own documentaries and shorts which have garnered awards and presented in various festivals in Canada and worldwide. I alternate between fiction and documentary as I seek stories which portray powerful emotions: real in my documentaries and slightly surreal in my dramas.

LE VOLEUR DE PAPILLONS – Fiction, 20 mins, Production Pandora Films et Vidéo Femmes. 2012 – FESTIVALS : Festival International Vues d’Afrique Montréal 2013, Festival International du Film Pan Africain Cannes 2013, Festival International du Cnéma de Burundi 2013. Une allégorie douce et violente sur le colonialisme, raconte le dernier jour de M.Léo et de sa collection de papillons du Congo Belge. Une dernière visite au musée qui expose ses papillons bien-aimés le replonge dans l’histoire violente du Congo.

MY BLUENESS– Fiction, 7 min. Pandora Films Production 2009 – A neurological tale. Unmindful of the beauty and history of Florence, a woman disappears into a vortex of blues which reveals a suppressed loss and fear.

UNBUCKLING MY BIBLE BELT – Road movie, 72 mins. Pandora Films Production 2007. FESTIVALS: Doxa International Documentary, Festival, Vancouver – Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Montréal- Indie Memphis Film Festival, Tennessee – Festival des 3 Amériques, Québec – Theatrical distribution at Cinéma Ex-Centris, Montréal – Broadcasted on Canal D – An intimate portrayal of the South as It captures the beauty and starkness of the landscape as well as the complex relationship these Southerners have with their God. At a time when religion offers a powerful and personal look at the changing face of life in the USA.

LE COMPLEXE QUÉBEC CANADA – Docu-drame, 52 min. Diffusé à Radio Canada et CBC., Production Necessary Illusions 2000. PRIX : Meilleur Documentaire par la AJC (Association des journalistes canadiens) – Une thérapie pour un couple : Louise (Québec) et James (Canada) souffrent du Complexe Québec-Canada, un état mental qui empêche de reconnaître l’identité de l’autre. Un psychanalyste Jungien, un Freudien, des psychologues analysent notre problème national.

PAUL AND CHRISTINA – Fiction, 24 min, 16mm,. Broadcast on CTV and CBC. Pandora Films Production 1994 – A drama about the psychological and physical ravages of Alzheimer. A woman forced to passively witness her father’s slow disintegration fears that the same fate awaits her. She decides to view and experience the world wih a new intensity.

BROKEN PROMISES – Documentary, 16mm, 52 min. Broadcast on Radio Canada and CTV. Nutaaq Media and National Film Board Production 1995. FESTIVALS & AWARDS: Public Choice Award Far North Film Festival – Menzione Speciale, Festival de Pordenone – Festival du Réel, Paris – Vancouver International Film Festival – In 1953 the Canadian Government fearing a USA occupation of the Canadian Artic relocated seven Inuit families from Northern Quebec to the High Artic to stake out its territory. The families were dumped on barren land in the middle of winter with only tents, oil lamps and wooden crates to keep warm. Thirty years later, the federal government finally provided assistance to the exiles,enabling them to return to their ancestral home in Northern Quebec.

GOODBYE FEDERICO – Fiction, 24min. 16mm, 1992 Pandora Films Production. FESTIVALS & AWARDS: Golden Sheaf. meilleur Best Canadian Short at Yorkton – Toronto International Film Festival – Festival du Nouveau Cinéma – Göteborg Film Festival – Melbourne Film Festival – Rendez-vous with Madness, Toronto – Eileen, a scriptwriter, has been writing letters to Federico Fellini who has become her friend, and means of escape. Various rejections lead her to lose her grip on reality and retreat into her own world with one last hope: join Federico in Cinecittà with the two men she loves.

INFINITELY YOURS – IN DEVELOPMENT – Feature, Harold Greenburg Fund: First and Second draft and Development – The destiny of two lovers who have different expectations about love: Emily dreams of Alberto nurturing her to life while Alberto wants Emily to mother him, to nurture him to death.. A strange, surreal, sensual story set against dreams, ecstasy and Tuscan

INFINITELY YOURS – IN DEVELOPMENT – Feature, Harold Greenburg Fund: First and Second draft and Development.

LE VOLEUR DE PAPILLONS – Court métrage, (2008) SODEC.

RED IS MY MIND – Feature, Neurological Thriller, (2010-12) SODEC.

  SYNOPSIS

RED IS MY MIND, a thriller about a woman’s inability to reconstruct her memories, her life  following a murder she’s accused of committing. Pandora is under the care of a neurologist  who aims to set a legal precedent by proving her culpability through brain scans MRI’s and EEG’s.

Pandora must remember a childhood memory to discover that  Returning to a city which evokes memories of love, fear and loss, Pandora discovers that she must suffer one ultimate violence which she will repeatedly avenge with one word : Forgiveness.

The outline of RED IN MY MIND can only allude to the damaged workings of Pandora’s brain which in the script become « filmic piece   Pandora must remember to discover her husband’s fate and to comprehend the victim’s last words in the restaurant : « Esta muerto »

  FILMMAKER’S STATEMENT

Neuroscience and violence are two underlying themes in RED IS MY MIND, a neurological thriller about a woman’s loss of memory and self, following a murder. I have been imagining for some time a neurological thriller which would combine an innumerable succession of events, facts, real and imagined that would result in the story of a life damaged by remnants of violence.

I feel that we are living in turbulent, violent times, perhaps the horrific images of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan have left their imprint, the increase killings within families, random shootings in the USA, the string of killings in Mexico, I could go on…RED IS MY MIND  is about violence on a small scale,  about a woman and a childhood violence that has marked her soul and destiny.  The possibility of further violence inflicted upon her leads her to withdraw into a neurological void. 

The world of neuroscience has been described as the last frontier of research. Scientists now claim that brain scans can read our memories, our inner thoughts and in the near future may also indicate places we’ve been.  Last year a woman in India was convicted of murdering her lover on the basis of EEG results. The National Research Council in Washington predicts that brain scans will screen terrorism suspects at checkpoints.  Neurosurgeons declare that they can go anywhere in the brain now, they can turn it up or down and regulate it like thermostat!

RED IS MY MIND will incorporate the elements that inspire me in the writing of a script: time, memories, dreams and the surreal. In my first film, Goodbye Federico, the main character has an imaginary relationship with Federico Fellini and sets off to realize her dream.  In Paul and Christina, the protagonist creates new memories to ward off a fear of losing her memory like her father. In Infinitely Yours, a script funded by the Harold Greenberd Fund, the main  character is revealed through dreams and flashbacks. 

The outline of RED IN MY MIND can only allude to the damaged workings of Pandora’s brain which in the script will become « filmic pieces » made up of fragments of stories, memories, colors, sounds, futile attempts at assembling memories.  An object, a reflection, a word, a gesture suffice to propel Pandora into a hodgepodge of interrupted images. Snippets of the murder in the restaurant will persistently return with Pandora in the guise of the murderer – Dr. Lewis’ version – and as bits of memory Pandora must remember to unveil her husband’s fate : the victim’s last words in the restaurant : « Esta muerto »

The film MEMENTO by Christopher Nolan about a man’s inability to form new memories and the theme of violence may come to mind but my script in no way resembles its plot.  Memento is based solely on revenge,  the hero’s search for his wife’s killer and unrolls in a continuous replay of actions and encounters with the exception of one character whose story is told in real time.

RED IS MY MIND’s structure is more linear. The plot moves towards a reconstruction of a life with its imprint of violence. The loss of memory encompasses a broader scope as Pandora attempts to retrieve an entire life of memories.  Revenge propels the character in Memento.  Pandora’s revenge is quasi surreal as she discovers an « absolving » power within herself which in turn avenges her own lot of violence.  The city in the script could be anywhere in North America.  It is never identified.  I imagine it in grey colors, desolate, neglected by dire economic times. Pandora does not know where she is and neither does the spectator! Ray Healy, goes about his investigation in nondescript neighborhoods.  The sharp contrast between the two locations, the grey American city and Tijuana, accentuate the reemergence of Pandora’s memories.   The noise, colors, crowds, lights of Tijuana bring Pandora back, back to her « heart of darkness ».

I worked with two great story editors on Infinitely Yours, for the first and second     drafts and I loved the process.  However for this first draft I have chosen to avail  myself of a neurologist as consultant :  Dr. Bernard Blais who is also a researcher in the area of neuroscience. Using his field of expertise to interpret Pandora’s loss of  memory – a neurological storytelling, –  adds credibility to the script.

The surreal elements are more powerful if they do originate from reality. Dr. Blais’ collaboration is fundamental in creating the proper neurological jargon and diagnostic tools for Dr. Lewis.  Pandora’s memory loss will be more believable if it is rooted in neurological facts, symptoms.   A perfect amalgamation of science and fiction.  Conversations with Dr. Blais about the workings of the brain may lead  to unexpected visual and storytellling elements. . .

Finally RED IS MY MIND is a film about violence with little violence,  about the loss that remains, about a life irrevocably changed. Only a  lingering sadness remains.

  LOG LINE

A woman accused of a murder she cannot remember committing unearths an agonizing truth which empowers her to exact vengeance with one word: forgiveness.

  ONE PARAGRAPH PITCH

Pandora’s brain has become a sieve  of filmic pieces, fragments of stories, colors, sounds, all futile atteempts at assembling her memories, her life. An object, a reflection,  propel Pandora into a whirlwind of images. Snippets of a murder in a restaurant persistently return to haunt her as she struggles to make sense of the victim’s last words: « Esta muerto »