Private Project

Cancelled Stamp

When sex comes between aging conjoined vaudevillians, each sister must make her own life & death choice.

  • Joyce Kline
    Director
  • Joyce Kline
    Writer
  • Jocelyn Russell
    Producer
    Bubba Lou, The Hollow Child, CAW, Reset
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Drama
  • Runtime:
    12 minutes 59 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    October 21, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    16,700 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    RED Gemini digital format
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9, 4:3
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Leo Awards
    Vancouver
    Canada
    July 5, 2022
    Nominee Best Short Film Production Design
  • Victoria Film Festival
    Victoria BC
    Canada
    February 9, 2022
    Audience Favourite Best Short Film
  • Short Circuit Pacific Rim Film Festival
    Victoria, BC
    Canada
    May 5, 2022
    Official Selection
  • Foggy Isle Film Festival
    Victoria BC
    Canada
    September 29, 2022
    Official selection
  • Miami Short Film Festival
    Miami Florida
    United States
    Semi-finalist
  • Comox Valley International Film Festival
    Courtenay BC
    Canada
    May 12, 2023
    Official Selection
  • Capital City Film Festival
    Lansing Michigan
    United States
    April 14, 2023
    Official Selection
Director Biography - Joyce Kline

Joyce is a Leo award winning production designer with a passion for storytelling. Formally trained as a visual artist, she draws on wide-ranging experience as a writer, playwright, dancer, set decorator and installation, performance and storyboard artist.

As a production designer, Joyce has worked on numerous multiple award-winning short films. Prior to that, she exhibited across Canada and in Finland, had theatre pieces produced and workshopped in Victoria, Vancouver and Toronto, and danced professionally in London, Paris, Strasbourg, Vancouver and Vancouver Island.

Joyce’s short animation screenplay Glycol Disappears was a semi-finalist in CinemaStreet’s 2020 Women’s Short Screenplay Competition and a quarter finalist in Screencraft’s Animation Screenplay Competition.

Currently, she hosts Cinevic Society of Independent Filmmakers’ podcast Push In: The Cinevic Podcast and is expanding her short story The Knife Thrower’s Assistant (a quarterfinalist in Screencraft’s 2022 Cinematic Short Story Competition) into a feature screenplay.

This is her first time directing her own work.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Shooting during Covid 19 may have been a challenge, but it enabled me to realize a dream seldom possible in an indie short—building a custom sound stage! When live theatre shutdowns left a local theatre empty, I was able to build the exact 1920’s world I imagined.

Why the 1920’s? Because the conjoined sisters in Cancelled Stamp work in a field being deeply impacted by technological change. Movies are replacing vaudeville, leaving them trapped in a dying industry that is all they have ever known.

Adding to that are the financial and emotional pressures of aging. This is still a huge issue for women, performers in particular, and I wanted to create nuanced roles for older actors that didn’t infantilize them as adorably cute or demean them as stereotypical cougars.

Finally, shutdowns revealed that no matter how deeply we may love, constant intimacy can be at war with an equally strong desire for solitude and independence. In Cancelled Stamp, the conflict between these opposing drives is dramatically played out in the push/pull of sisters who want different things from life but are forced to share the same body.