Writer and Filmmaker
Hello. How are you? (Click Email to let me know).
I’m a writer and filmmaker based in Vancouver, BC. On my filmmaker side I make narrative films and music videos. On my writing side I’ve published short stories, essays, and book reviews. I’ve also written novels, feature screenplays, and film theory that are just sitting on my computer as of now but I’d like to publish them too one day. That would be so cool. I love writing.
I’m currently researching and developing a feature film with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
You can read essays I’m writing as part of my research here.
I graduated from the University of British Columbia in 2018 with a BFA in Film Production and a Minor in Literature. Since then, I’ve been in VIFF’s Catalyst Program and had my work shown in festivals across the country and my writing published in magazines distributed all over North America. I’m now pursuing my MA in Cinema Studies at UBC.
This is really fun for me and I like doing it. I’m going to keep doing it. Thanks for reading. (Click Email to say you’re welcome).
I’ve spent the last three years reading theology and mystic texts and religious esoterica and I barely understand a word. Regrettably. It doesn’t help that I’m reading texts from a religious tradition that desperately wants to obfuscate meaning but I thought it might. I thought I might achieve some kind of runner’s high where the act of reading something so difficult broke open to a brief spell of lucidity and I could see something you could define as spiritual truth but it turns out you can’t read yourself into that.
Then why put it to words? I wondered. Why bother? What does anybody get out of theology? What do the theologists get? What does any God get?
With Urtext I tried to give form to frustration, form to the pretense that anything beyond ourselves can be understood at all. I tried to draft a limit-experience of sorts, a glimpse of the beyond that is not unfreindly but can’t welcome us or the way we learn and know. No matter how much we wish it could. It’s a loose adaptation of an obscure Jewish creation myth which abounds in strange imagery and deep empathy for creativity in itself. A myth that understands that one must withdraw to make the space to create.
Then why put it to words? I wondered. Why bother? What does anybody get out of theology? What do the theologists get? What does any God get?
With Urtext I tried to give form to frustration, form to the pretense that anything beyond ourselves can be understood at all. I tried to draft a limit-experience of sorts, a glimpse of the beyond that is not unfreindly but can’t welcome us or the way we learn and know. No matter how much we wish it could. It’s a loose adaptation of an obscure Jewish creation myth which abounds in strange imagery and deep empathy for creativity in itself. A myth that understands that one must withdraw to make the space to create.
This movie stars Simon Farrell and could star nobody else. This is the first time I ever wrote a part for someone (and I’m not sure if he knows that). When Simon is on screen, any screen, he is unignorable. There’s something about him, but I don’t think you’re supposed to use words to define presence. His is exhilirating.
This was the first time I ever worked with Luke Strahm, who shot the film, and I’m hooked. He understands the image intricately; what makes one seductive, how to create an illusion, how to find a detail you can obssess over. He is also, and this is important, a joy to be around.
What can I say about working with Sophia Biedka? I only want to from now on. She makes filmmaking seem rational. I think that’s a miracle.
This was the first time I ever worked with Luke Strahm, who shot the film, and I’m hooked. He understands the image intricately; what makes one seductive, how to create an illusion, how to find a detail you can obssess over. He is also, and this is important, a joy to be around.
What can I say about working with Sophia Biedka? I only want to from now on. She makes filmmaking seem rational. I think that’s a miracle.