The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which left over a million
people displaced and a quarter of a million dead, created some
unanswered questions for Halifax filmmaker Rohan Fernando. For his 2007
NFB documentary, Blood and Water, Fernando followed his uncle
Anton to Sri Lanka a year after he lost his wife and daughter in the
disaster. But Fernando held back from seeking answers for ethical
reasons, “to avoid shoving a camera in someone’s face when they were
crying.” So he sought another way.
“I felt that a drama would be a more appropriate way of exploring
those emotions and questions,” Fernando says of Snow, which he
wrote, directed and finished shooting last weekend. The film is about
Parvati, a Sri Lankan woman who immigrates to Nova Scotia after she
loses her family in the tsunami. Once in Canada, she meets troubled
street musician Emily, and strikes up a turbulent yet invigourating
friendship.
“The idea was to explore someone who not only loses their family and
home, but also their identity and any sense of meaning,” says Fernando.
The friendship between the two women “clarifies things for both of them
and is kind of mutually a dangerous and beneficial relationship.”
For Snow, Fernando trusted mostly non-actors for parts large
and small, an experience akin to working with subjects in a
documentary. “They’re not used to the camera and don’t have a bunch of
approaches to their craft already. It created a very open
collaboration,” he says.
Parvati is played by Toronto-based Kalista Zackhariyas, who has some
stage experience, but also boasts a mixed bag of talent, including
dance, martial arts and TV presenting. Ria Mae MacNutt, a local
singer-songwriter (with an EP release, Between the Bad, slated
for November 10 at The Company House) and first-time actor, surprised
herself with the depth of feeling she drew out as Emily, a victim of a
dysfunctional family and her own drug addiction. From answering an open
casting call, to her audition process (which she worried might actually
be a Candid Camera-type reality show, with all the expressly
dramatic scenes she was required to read), to her
“deer-in-the-headlights” feeling on set, Snow has been an
eye-opening experience for MacNutt.
“There are things that I had to go through, but I didn’t know that I
did,” she says. “Maybe not the heroin addiction! There’s just me being
able to release emotions that I wouldn’t normally be able to
release.”
“With Ria it was a total fluke that she even heard about the
audition and showed up,” Fernando says, “but she was obviously a very
emotive person and had access to her emotions, and had a real integrity
that came out of that. It seemed very natural for her to be able to
play this part.”
MacNutt found that her new acting job has benefited from her
songwriting skills. “It’s the songwriting that helped me get into other
people’s lives,” she says. “All my songs are written from the
point-of-view of other people. ‘Waiting’ is about my best friend, who
went through a huge break-up. I’ve always, since I was a young kid,
loved getting into someone else’s head.
“I’m loving it right now, I don’t want it to end. I want to explore
other parts and get the chance to do another one very soon.”
This article appears in Nov 5-11, 2009.