Monkey Beach

I am the most unlikely filmmaker - a teenage runaway, teen mom and I've been homeless (like sleep in parks and grain sheds homeless). But somehow I prevailed, got to film school, made many docs and created children's series, like Coyote's Crazy Smart Science Show, about Indigenous science. When I started making films, as an Indigenous woman every film was a challenge to get produced. It was the same for Monkey Beach. It took me over 15 years to make Monkey Beach but I never gave up. And I made it in the village where the story is set (18 hour drive from Vancouver - so about a third of my budget went to ensure the Haisla people felt that this film was theirs, too.

Monkey Beach has been embraced with great love by the Indigenous community. Some people have even told me it is the most Indigenous film they've seen - though not take away from other Indigenous films. A good friend and an Elder told me it is like true Indigenous filmmaking based on traditional storytelling.

Eden Robinson, the author of Monkey Beach the novel, has shared how she is influenced by Stephen King and Edgar Allen Poe – and I imagine Charlotte Bronte, Alice Walker, Ursula Le Guin. But Eden is always her own self – her own voice. And she said I was the only filmmaker she would trust with her voice in Monkey Beach. I've shared meals with her relatives and listened to their many stories; it is clear she is from a continuum of brilliant storytellers who can make you forget time while you are immersed within the stories, within the words and places, hearing the laughter and tears of the people and the ancestors, the sound of the waves and the feel wind and the rain.

Monkey Beach holds many stories about the metaphysics of life and death, about the poetry and pain of coming to know one’s self, about the fragility of happiness and family. And there are ghosts and spirits and the supernatural co-existing with us in the real world.

Monkey Beach is “far more than a novel of psychological transformation... It is, in the best sense, a thriller, a spiritual mystery... breathtaking... Robinson rewards our faith that after all these years writers can still, as Pound said, 'make it new.' (The Washington Post). In making Monkey Beach, my vision is to make it new – a rich, cinematic experience that layers the beauty of land, water and story.

The book and the script move through Lisa’s life in an elliptical journey – rather than a linear progression toward conflicts resolved. Instead it follows the rhythms of Indigenous storytelling – where narrative elements flow from associative meaning, layering moments and meaning rather than being driven by linear cause and effect. Lisa's stories are hard realities and deep truths merged with glimpses of dreams and pieces of memories. This is a story about a young woman who must embrace her medicine

I was dedicated to filming Monkey Beach in the territory where the story flows- that of the Haisla Nation in Kitamaat, BC. It engaged many people from the community – from cast to crew and artists. And I was dedicated to a film of beauty and poetry. That is my vision.