by Carol Thorbes
Photograpy by Greg Ehlers

From waiting on tables to standing in the spotlight - Keith Behrman's story is a real-life Cinderella story set in a film studio. An aspiring novelist from small-town Saskatchewan, the Simon Fraser University grad discovered film was his true medium when he was 23. He then spent the next 16 years scraping together a living while financing his education and making short films and music videos.

When he was almost 40, Behrman got his big break. He wrote and directed Flower & Garnet, a $2 million independent feature film that opened in mainstream theatres on March 28.

"It was a long, hard process that required a great deal of tenacity," says the award-winning independent filmmaker.

And Behrman is just one of a bumper crop of celluloid Cinderellas on Vancouver's filmmaking horizon who graduated from SFU's film program at the school for the contemporary arts.

"They are part of a tight-knit filmmaking community in Vancouver that thrives on symbiotic relationships," says Rob Groeneboer. A former SFU student turned senior lecturer and filmmaker, Groeneboer has mentored many of the rising stars coming out of SFU. His students' short films have gone on to headline film festivals worldwide, garner prestigious awards, and run in mainstream theatres.

"After graduation they continue the team work ethic we foster at SFU and they wind up working on each other's projects, critiquing each other's scripts, and inspiring each other to greater heights," adds Groeneboer.

Behrman is still riding his latest high. Odeon Films is showing Flower & Garnet in Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto. Alliance Atlantis handles international distribution of the poignant and absorbing drama about how a rural family deals with loss.

Behrman snagged the Claude Jutra Award at the Genies for outstanding achievement by a Canadian director in a first theatrical feature and was named the best emerging western Canadian director at the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF).

The Toronto International Film Festival designated Flower & Garnet one of Canada's top 10 feature films in 2002. The Berlin Film Festival included the film in its Special Panorama section and it was named Best Canadian Feature at the Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival.

All of this heady success hasn't broken the 1993 SFU grad's steadfast commitment to making very personal films. They explore relationships in minute detail, often through subtle changes in close-up facial expressions, singular sounds, and isolated environmental features.

"I don't make films in order to have box-office hits," says Behrman, also director of an episode of the popular TV drama Da Vinci's Inquest. "I want to make movies that tell meaningful and entertaining stories about what it means to me to be alive. My biggest rush is when my storytelling connects me to the viewer."

The importance of staying true to one's creative self, solid script writing, and a shrewd sense of film financing are instilled in SFU film grads early on. It's that combination of abilities, plus a team culture, that is leading Behrman and several other SFU film grads to help remake Hollywood North.

Three for the road

Take for example Anagram Pictures, a six-year-old film production company in East Vancouver run by Andrew Currie, Trent Carlson, and Blake Corbet. Currie and Carlson graduated from SFU's film program in 1993 while Corbet was a student for a year in the program. They take turns writing, directing, and producing projects, so each of them experiences what it is like to have their creative heart on the boardroom table in the daylong script critiques.

"There's a lot of trust involved. The hardest thing in making a film is giving birth to a great script," explains Currie. He made his debut as a feature film writer and director with Mile Zero in 2001, Anagram's first project.

Carlson, who co-produced the movie with Corbet, adds, "The writing can be so elusive in filmmaking, but you've got to get it right because it's the blueprint to a good film."

Anagram learned with Mile Zero that a good script can become a calling card. The script alone attracted $1.6 million in funding from broadcasters and distributors including TMN - The Movie Network, Superchannel Ltd., Showcase Television, the Canadian Television Fund, Telefilm Canada, B.C. Film, and Starr Schein Releasing.

The film became the darling of international film festivals in Montreal, Vancouver, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, and Cork. It was showered with awards, including the Platinum Award at the 2002 Houston Worldfest and the City TV Award for the best feature film at the Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival. And it enjoyed a three-week run at mainstream theatres including Famous Players in Toronto and Fifth Avenue and Tinseltown in Vancouver.

Mile Zero eventually secured Currie a job as director of Sleep Murder, a CTV/Disney movie of the week that went into production in Halifax in late March.

Several of Mile Zero's funders and Cinema Libre have helped foot $1.3 billion for The Delicate Art of Parking, Carlson's directorial debut as a feature filmmaker. Now in post-production, it is a comedy about a filmmaker who learns more about his craft while lampooning parking enforcement. Anagram's most ambitious venture so far in terms of film financing is the upcoming Fido, a $5-10 million budget 1950s-style parody of a boy and his dog films.

"Now that we have more experience in putting financial deals together we're venturing outside the Canadian model with Fido," says Corbet, the financial brains behind Anagram. "Instead of securing a broadcaster and distributor before applying for federal development funding, we're collaborating with international partners."

The rollercoaster of funding

Funding problems can block an independent feature filmmaker's road to success, as Scott Smith found out. But the 1994 SFU film and marketing graduate's knowledge of the film industry's fickleness made him flexible. He was determined to get his directorial debut, Rollercoaster, into mainstream theatres.

Mainstream distributors couldn't conceive of an audience for the dark film about a group of suicidal teens so they wouldn't distribute it. Smith took Rollercoaster directly to theatres in Vancouver, Toronto, and four small Canadian centres. He also got his film on Pay-TV and video/DVD in Rogers and specialty stores.

"I got the two dollars under a million bucks I needed to make and distribute Rollercoaster by selling off my television and distribution rights," explains Smith. "I believed there was an audience for this film. I just had to find it. It's important that independent filmmakers keep making movies that have a personal voice; otherwise viewers have no choice. Films disappear on screens of sameness."

Rollercoaster, which won the Best Narrative Feature Film Award in Austin, Texas, and the Most Popular Canadian Film Award at the 1999 VIFF, has screened at 45 film festivals internationally. Its success paved the way for the development of Smith's current directorial project, a film based on Canadian author Barbara Gowdy's novel Falling Angels.

The team produces the dream

Many grads credit SFU's four-year film program and Praxis, a national film writing and production workshop housed at the university, for their success.

Since the 1970s, when SFU's film program first took root as a free-standing workshop, it has blended interdisciplinary studies with collaborative filmmaking, along with a credo that stresses pushing one's personal creative envelope. Since 1987, when SFU professors Patricia Gruben and Colin Browne conceived of Praxis, budding filmmakers have gravitated to it to workshop their first feature films with renowned directors, writers, and editors.

"As a workshop our focus on scriptwriting is unique in Canada," says Gruben. "We've had 25 feature films made from scripts workshopped here." These include Rollercoaster and some of Anagram's projects.

Under the stewardship of Canadian filmmakers, including Gruben, Browne, Chris Welsby, and Jackie Levitin, SFU has nurtured numerous celluloid luminaries. They include Sandy Wilson (My American Cousin), Noel Archambault (Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones), and more recently, Bruce Spangler (Protection) and Asghar Massombagi (Khaled).

John Dippong has a theory about what's going on. In an ironic twist, the director of Telefilm's feature film business unit decides the financial fate of many of his former classmates' feature films.

Dippong was an SFU film student at the same time as Currie, Carlson, Corbet, Behrman, and Smith.

"The crop of funding applications we now get are symptomatic of the fact that the independent filmmaking industry is coming of age in Vancouver," concludes Dippong. "Western feature filmmakers, particularly those coming out of SFU and UBC, have become increasingly adept at developing strong projects that can attract both development and subsequent production financing."

And the collaborative rather than competitive spirit of homegrown filmmakers is making B.C. a force to be reckoned with on the national and international film scene. Anagram is in competition with Screen Siren Pictures, the producer of Behrman's latest projects. But that hasn't stopped the two film producers from sharing office space and equipment. They're also looking at making films together. Behrman recently returned to SFU to share his Cinderella story with students dreaming of following in his footsteps.

Meanwhile, across town Smith muses, "I've always admired the work of Trent [Carlson], Andrew [Currie], and Keith [Behrman]. Their work has influenced mine." He laughs, "Wouldn't it be great if I worked for Trent and Andrew one day?" aq

>> Find out in which movies SFU played a starring role.

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