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Cameras roll on NFB live-action 3D film The St. Judes

Posted Thursday, March 10th, 2011 - Comments Off on Cameras roll on NFB live-action 3D film The St. Judes
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Toronto, March 10, 2010 – Principal photography has begun in Toronto on The St. Judes, a National Film Board of Canada experimental 3D documentary directed by acclaimed filmmaker Jeffrey St. Jules and produced by the NFB Ontario Centre’s Anita Lee.

The first NFB 3D documentary since 1986’s Transitions, The St. Judes combines archival footage, black-and-white recreations and 3D interviews to explore St. Jules’ troubled family history in the lumber camps of 1930s Northern Ontario. Inspired by historical NFB series such as Canada Carries On, St. Jules contrasts the romantic mythology of Canada as a vast wilderness settled by brave pioneers with a portrait of his grandparents’ harsh reality. Plagued by unemployment, alcoholism and neglect, they relinquish custody of their five children, including St. Jules’ father. This theme of loss is amplified through modern-day interviews with real parents who also gave up their children, using the 3D effect to create a greater sense of intimacy with the subjects. A collage of real and imagined stories, The St. Judes reflects the murky nature of memory and family history.

“French director Robert Bresson once said ‘the goal of cinema is interiorization, intimacy, isolation, the innermost depths,’” says St. Jules. “It is my feeling that 3D cinema can be an even more powerful tool to meet this goal. With this film, I want to move beyond the thrills and tricks that 3D is often used for, and start exploring the real emotional impact this medium can have.”

The 3D production services are provided by stereographer Tim Dashwood and his company Stereo3D Unlimited; John Minh Tran is director of photography.

About Jeffrey St. Jules

Jeffrey grew up in Fall River, Nova Scotia. He got his BFA in Film Production with a minor in Creative Writing from Concordia University and is an alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre’s Director’s Lab. In 2005, Jeffrey was the first and only Canadian ever selected for the Cannes Résidence du Festival in Paris.

His surrealistic CFC short The Sadness of Johnson Joe Jangles won him Best Emerging Filmmaker at the 2005 Worldwide Short Film Festival. The innovative Genie-nominated short The Tragic Story of Nling was deemed a future cult classic by indieWIRE and the best short film of 2007 by Film Threat. It screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007 and has garnered much acclaim for its dark yet whimsical humour.  Both films premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. His feature film Bang Bang Baby, an expressionistic 1950s-style musical, was developed with the support of the National Screen Institute and Telefilm Canada.

About the NFB

Canada’s public film producer and distributor, the National Film Board of Canada creates social-issue documentaries, auteur animation, alternative drama and digital content that provide the world with a unique Canadian perspective. The NFB is expanding the vocabulary of 21st-century cinema and breaking new ground in form and content through community filmmaking projects, cross-platform media, programs for emerging filmmakers, stereoscopic animation—and more. It works in collaboration with creative filmmakers, digital media creators and co-producers in every region of Canada, with Aboriginal and culturally diverse communities, as well as partners around the world. Since the NFB’s founding in 1939, it has created over 13,000 productions and won over 5,000 awards, including 12 Oscars and more than 90 Genies. The NFB’s new website features almost 2,000 productions online, and its iPhone and iPad apps are among the most popular and talked-about downloads. Visit <NFB.ca> today and start watching.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon