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Ann Marie was asked to create a silent film to be scored to by different composers and played live with the Victoria Symphony orchestra. She puts forward her own theory of acupuncture: how each needle has its own resonance which placement corresponds to a different median which runs to a different organ which has a different memory and a different solution. In the continuing adventures of stickgirl, we follow along as he alter-ego runs through her life, as told by her heart, lungs and brain.

As part of Reel Music 3, Saturday January 26, 8pm Royal Theatre, Victoria, BC.

CBC radio's Words at Large interviews Ann Marie about her book Sunday,
December 16th. If you missed it, you can read the transcript here.

You can also check out the article in the National Post about The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam - an Illustrated Memoir.

As part of Portland's 2007 WordStock, WordFest Book Fair, Ann Marie will be speaking, answering questions and signing copies of The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam - an Illustrated Memoir. Sunday, November 11th @ 3 pm Powell's City of Books Stage, Exhibit Hall B, Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.

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!

Shorts in Motion: The Art of Seduction is up for another international award.

The shorts and accompanying website are nominated for an International Interactive Emmy Award for Best Interactive Program.The nomination, announced by the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, is for television programming that has been enhanced with interactive content.

The Award will be handed out on April 18, 2007 at the MIPTV conference in Cannes, France.

More information on the award is available at the MIPTV website.

Here are the festivals for the Room 710 Official Selections:

• Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival
• Vancouver International Film Festival
• 2005 Toronto International Film Festival
• 2005 Ottawa International Animation Festival