Sleepy Dog Films Blog

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Not the french guy.  But then, he can't run for president of the united states.  not yet.  life is becoming the truman show.  i wonder how peter weir feels these days about that?  i am at the computer, pulling down images of the holocaust for this animatic i am putting together.  i am working on adapting a beautiful book into an animated documentary.  i won't even say what book it is until this goes through, because i am so nervous.  it's a collaberation, really, between myself and the producers, and i am worried that the artist won't like it.  it's such a personal piece.    okay, i'll tell you.  the book is amazing and it is called "i was a child of holocaust survivors", an illustrated memoir by bernice eisenstein.  but i am dying pulling out these images, and i am wondering how such events ever happened and how they continue to happen, every day, all over the world.  and when will it stop?  can it stop?  is it the nature of being human?  all this violence?  and this is partially what i have been exploring in all my film work.  humankind's capacity for violence.  and how it is in all of us.  it is not some weird pathology of a murder, or a serial killer, or a gang, or a culture.  it is in all of us and we have to see that.  that's like in the french guy, where elizabeth murray tries to protect herself from the outside environment.  like all of us, she wants to be safe.  to surround herself with all those things that make her feel safe: friends, lovers, family, a home, a job, lovely things... but you can't protect yourself from yourself.  the violence is within you.  she just wants to help, but she lands up hurting everyone around her. meanwhile, the french guy is so self-absorbed he doesn't notice the carnage that is going on around him, and he is being more than cruel to his lovely french maid. but, in the end, is his arrogance the unwitting cause of a death that he'll never know about?  it's all different levels of violence, from the seemingly inconsequential to the horrific.  it's not like the french guy has a big message to throw out there, but it's kind of about taking responsibility.  we are all responsible for everything.  for all that is good and all that is bad.  because there is only us.  and no matter what you believe in... creationism, evolution... whatever...  we are all variations on a theme... surely, we have the capacity to learn something while we are here?  where do we begin?

hello.

well, i just got back from my cousin's wedding in honolulu.  it was lovely.  i bought a tibetan singing bowl (it's my tone...) and today i'm going to the Genie reception for the Western Canadian nominees at the Met.  Then, I'm off to VIVO for a Western Canada book launch for this anthology - Reel Asian: Asian Canada on Screen.  I have an interview, sort of, in it, with Mina Shum.  I don't really mention anything about my mother.  That's just a weird editing gaffe.  You'll see what i mean if you buy the book.  It's available through Coach House Press.  Also, I'm about to go on my first Cruise.  Which has nothing to do with anything i am working on.  After that, it's off to the Sylvia Hotel, which i have been frequenting for over 25 years... to talk about my graphic novel, the magical life of long tack sam.  they are going to show my film, too.  Later, in april, i'm off to kelowna with the french guy for their film festival.  i'm going to give a workshop or panel or something or other there.  when i get a little more used to this blog thing, i'll probably write these things down in shorter, more regular spurts.  i promise.  thanks for reading.  next installment i'll wax on about how i think that suicide bombers in the middle east are not so different from the shooters in highschools in north america.  wait for it!

Kirkus Reviews Online has sent us a copy of their review of The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam.

Just about every aspect of Canadian independent filmmaker and animator Fleming’s first foray into graphic literature dazzles like a Broadway marquee.

Using as a springboard for this illustrated memoir her award-winning 2003 documentary film of the same title, Fleming tells the amazing, forgotten story of her great-grandfather, Long Tack Sam (1895–1961). He was one of the 20th century’s most famous magicians, playing the Palace Theatre, Broadway’s top vaudeville house, more often even than Houdini. The rise to popular glory of a small acrobat from a village in China offers his great-granddaughter an opportunity for her own journey of self-discovery. Just as Sam’s variety show captivated audiences from Shanghai to New Zealand and New York, Fleming aims here to enchant both young and old with a fascinating scrapbook-style narrative. It’s vividly illustrated and quite moving, particularly the portrait of transcontinental love between Sam and Austrian shopgirl Leopoldine Roesler, who married in 1908. What really distinguishes the work, however, is its collage-like, collaborative form.

Fleming underscores her belief that “it’s hard to know what is true” by including the different versions of Sam’s history she encountered in various sources; she chose to have these multiple possibilities illustrated by Julian Lawrence in the ravishing style of a 1930s comic. Gently connecting the dots among episodes in Sam’s life, offering captions for the photos and for the found objects from his career, is “Stickgirl,” a charming persona drawn by Fleming herself. She narrates the work as a friend sitting next to you on the couch might annotate the pages of a family photo album, an approach that creates great intimacy. Meanwhile, a timeline of important 20th-century events runs alongside the personal narrative, illustrating how daily life is subject to world affairs. A touching, playful tribute to a vaudeville giant—and so much more.

"Magical barely begins to describe the enchanting narrative unveiled on the reapes of this "illustrated memoir," the daring first venture into graphic lit from award-winning Canadian independent filmmaker and animator Ann Marie Fleming. Nearly two years in the making, Fleming's work takes as its template her 2003 documentary film of the same name, whose mesmerizing subject, Long Tack Sam (1895-1961), was not only one of the 29th century's most evered magicians and vaudevillians - achieving worldwide Houdini-like fame - but also happened to be the author's great-grandfather. "I dedicate both the film and the book to my grandmother (Long's daughter), who I was very close to, and who die 20 years ago," she says. "I was close to her, yet I didn't know any of this." Though aware that Long Tack Sam had left his native China and, in 1908, married Leopoldine Roesler of Linz, Austria, Fleming was shocked to learn that he first trained as an acrobat, went on to lead a Chinese variety show and bsically was "famous his whole career," she says. The memoir then centers as much on Long's amazing life - richly illustrated through snapshots and comic sequences, and smartly contextualized with an accompanying time line historical miscellany - as Fleming's relation to it, subtly emphasized through the charming figure "Stickgirl."

Aesthetically we to the principle of her work's form matching its subject, Fleming says 'zines gave her the "permission" to take a scrapbook-like approach in telling Long's story. "Collage, of course, is the nature of the film, and the nature of Long Tack Sam;s life an show, really," she says. "My question was, 'Can I be personable using a collage technique on the page... or is it emotionally alienating?" Like her great grandfather's global audience, readers of all ages will delight in the warmth, humanity and playfulness of this inspiring tale of geopolitical awareness. "

Get your copy from Amazon.ca!