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Patricia Rozema is a Canadian film director, writer and producer. She was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s from Toronto, Canada, known as the Toronto New Wave.
Occupation
film director, screenwriter, film editor, director
Citizenship
Canada
Born
August 20, 1958
Website
http://www.patriciarozema.com
Notable quotes
“Isn't life the strangest thing you've ever seen?”
— Lines written for "Polly Vandersma", in I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987)
“Our voices, our representation of ourselves, have been in the hands of others, namely men, since the beginning of the mediums of film and television. My main character in I've Heard the Mermaids Singing videotaped a confession that is used through the film. It's her way of having control over her definition of herself.”
— As quoted in When Women Call the Shots : The Developing Power and Influence of Women in Television and Film (1996) by Linda Seger, p. 117
“Maybe it's the remnants of my religious upbringing, but I do try and insert a sense of social justice into the work … for instance, to me, Mansfield Park is a story about servitude and slavery. Other people may have a problem with that, but that's how I read the book and so that's how I shot the movie.”
— As quoted in Weird Sex and Snowshoes : And Other Canadian Film Phenomena (2001) by Katherine Monk, p. 150
“I wanted [Martin] to be a really decent human being because I didn't want to depict the cliché that a woman becomes a lesbian because her husband is terrible to her.”
— On Martin, the husband of Camille Baker, in When Night Is Falling as quoted in "Patricia Rozema : The Mermaid's Song" interview with Patricia Rozema, in The View from Here : Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers (2007) by Matthew Hays, p. 287
“When I look back upon the choices I made in making Mansfield Park, I feel they were pretty ballsy. I just thought there has to be a reason why I was doing a period piece. I wanted to say, "Look, we are rich because of slavery. We stole people and made them into slaves. Nothing comes for free." I didn't want to do another English dance party.”
— As quoted in "Patricia Rozema : The Mermaid's Song" interview with Patricia Rozema, in The View from Here : Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers (2007) by Matthew Hays, p. 289
Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.
Patricia Rozema (born 20 August 1958) is a Canadian film director, writer and producer. She was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers who emerged in the 1980s from Toronto, Canada, known as the Toronto New Wave.
Contents
Early life
Rozema was born in Kingston, Ontario and raised in Sarnia, Ontario. Her parents, Jacoba Berandina (née Vos) and Jan Rozema, were Dutch Calvinists. Television was severely restricted and she did not go to a movie theatre until she was 16 years old. Rozema studied philosophy and English literature at Calvin College in Michigan.
Film career
After a brief stint as a print and then television journalist (CBC Television's The Journal), Rozema directed her first feature, I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987), a serious comedy starring Sheila McCarthy about a loner named Polly who is an art gallery secretary and aspiring photographer. At the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, I've Heard the Mermaids Singing won the Prix de la Jeunesse. In 1993, the Toronto International Film Festival ranked it ninth in the Top 10 Canadian Films of All Time, with Rozema becoming the first female director to have a film on the list. The film did not appear on the updated 2004 version.
In 1990, Rozema directed White Room, a neo-noir starring McCarthy, Kate Nelligan, Margot Kidder, and Maurice Godin. Writing in The Washington Post, Rita Kempley described it as "a suburban gothic fairy tale, a work of dark, conflicted magic that might have been cut from Blue Velvet by Edward Scissorhands." Rozema also directed the Six Gestures (part of the Yo-Yo Ma Inspired by Bach television series), which combined images of Yo-Yo Ma performing with skating sequences by Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean, interwoven with J.S. Bach's first-person narrative. Six Gestures was nominated for a Grammy and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Classical Music-Dance Program, as well as a Golden Rose, the top television award in Europe. She then directed the romance film When Night Is Falling in 1995 starring Pascale Bussières and Rachael Crawford, and featuring Don McKellar and Tracy Wright.
Rozema's next two feature films were made outside Canada; Mansfield Park (1999) is a revisionist adaptation of Jane Austen's novel of that name. Happy Days (2000), an Irish production, is a film version of Samuel Beckett's humorously despairing play in which a woman lives partially buried in a mound of sand.
She later directed and ghost-wrote Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008), which was based on the American Girl book series. The film earned Rozema a Directors Guild of Canada Award nomination for Best Director.
Rozema's television credits include the pilot and two subsequent episodes of the HBO series Tell Me You Love Me (2008), an episode of the HBO series In Treatment (2010), and episodes of the Canadian television sitcom Michael, Tuesdays and Thursdays, which premiered on CBC Television in fall 2011. She most recently worked as a director on the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle and the Netflix series Sex/Life.
Rozema and co-writer Michael Sucsy received an Emmy Award nomination (Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special), a Writers Guild of America Award nomination (Long Form – Original) and a PEN USA Award nomination in Screenplay for the HBO movie Grey Gardens (2009).
Her feature film Into the Forest, starring Elliot Page and Evan Rachel Wood, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2015.
In 2017, Rozema founded her own production company, Crucial Things, to co-produce Mouthpiece (2018), which was premiered at TIFF. The film is an adaptation of a two-woman play of the same name, created and performed by Norah Sadava and Amy Nostbakken, who also star in the film. Sadava and Nostbakken play dual versions of the same female protagonist, who struggles to find her voice while writing her mother's eulogy. A profile of Rozema in the Globe & Mail called it "her most directly political film" and added that "it also may be her most heartfelt and emotionally mature."
Personal life
Rozema is openly lesbian and has two children with her former partner, film composer Lesley Barber.
Filmography
Short film
Feature film
Television
Awards
Second prize at the Chicago International Film Festival for her short Passion: A Letter in 16 mm.
I've Heard the Mermaids Singing won the Prix de la Jeunesse at Director's Fortnight in Cannes and was nominated for Best Picture – with Rozema garnering nominations Best Director and Best Screenplay – at the 9th Genie Awards in 1988. The film received 17 further awards. It is listed as one of the Best Canadian Films of All Time by the International Film Critics association.
White Room earned 4 prizes, and 3 Genie nominations.
When Night Is Falling premiered in competition in the 45th Berlin International Film Festival and went on to win over 30 awards from different countries and at various gay and lesbian film festivals.
Yo-Yo Ma, Inspired by Bach Rozema's episode "Six Gestures" won a Prime Time Emmy Award and was nominated for a Grammy. (other contributors included Atom Egoyan)
Article from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), where it is maintained by volunteer editors.
