Being a filmmaker and a mom requires lots of sacrifices, says Kari Skogland, the award-winning director of Fifty Dead Men Walking and The Stone Angel.
"The sacrifices are made as much by the kids as by you," she says, by phone from her home in Toronto.
"And that has to be taken into account."
When Skogland comes to Halifax for the Women Making Waves conference today to Sunday, she’ll be bringing her 14-year-old daughter MacKenzie Munro. (She’s also mom to Aislin, 8, and her husband, Jim Munro, is a film editor.)
Skogland decided to include MacKenzie "who grew up on film sets" after her daughter joined her at a seminar she was doing for the Canadian Film Centre.
"It came to me that part of the mentoring process was to include her in seeing this side of the business. She has a career of her own. She’s done two films and wants to be a filmmaker."
Skogland, who began her career as a film editor before moving into directing commercials and then film and TV series, including The Borgias, The Listener and Being Erica, says she was told she could never have children and a career.
"In the context of women and film, it’s a big topic for women in their 20s. Do they want a family? Is that possible?"
She says when she started out in the film business, she couldn’t mention family, but as the divorce rate grew, men had to take responsibility for their families, so it’s become more acceptable to leave a meeting.
Still as a director on film or on a TV show, work dictates her schedule.
"Everyone makes sacrifices. You work crazy hours and juggle. I have a phone glued to my ear. I drive the kids to ballet, do a business call, a conference call, pick them up at ballet and come home and work on three pages of a script," she says.
"The trick is multi-tasking and anyone in the business, whether it’s a director, a costume designer, a hair and make-up person, has to juggle the same way."
The writer-director-producer will open the Women Making Waves conference at 9:15 a.m. Saturday at Mount Saint Vincent University in a candid conversation with TV and radio reporter Christine McLean. At 1:30 p.m., she’ll give a directing workshop.
Skogland was born in Ottawa and grew up in Toronto at a time without "TV on all the time, when going to a movie was an event."
When she saw David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter, she knew she wanted to make movies, too.
"It was an epic tale with a political theme, something I resonate towards. It was absolutely stunning and I loved everything about it. It was nominated for a couple of Oscars and was a beautiful film, though slow by comparison to today’s films, but it was a grand epic."
Named by the Hollywood Reporter as one of its 10 directors to watch in 2002 for her debut as writer-director of Liberty Stands Still, Skogland has lived in Montreal and Toronto and sees Toronto as the best place in Canada to make films.
She says Canada is more open than other countries to women directors but she believes the doors are starting to open elsewhere for women directors.
"They are coming up through the ranks and winning awards," she says.
Skogland debuted 50 Dead Men Walking at a gala at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2008 and was named to the Critics Top Ten and earned a Genie for best adapted screenplay.
"Thirty per cent of films that year were directed by women," she says. "That was unprecedented."
Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar win as best director for The Hurt Locker in 2010 put the spotlight on a genre that women were typically not involved in — action films.
"It helped that a female won an Oscar in a male dominated genre, it broke the mould," she says. "Women directors are often marginalized into romantic comedy or drama."
And 50 Dead Men Walking, a movie about Irish Republican Army informant Martin McGartland, starring Ben Kingsley, Jim Sturgess and Rose McGowan, opened doors for Skogland as it sold well around the world.
Skogland has spent the last three years adapting The Prisoner of Tehran, the bestselling memoir by Marina Nemat. She is now finalizing casting and plans to begin shooting the film in Toronto and Turkey this summer.
She says she knew it would be a hard project.
"But it’s one where passion wins out. It’s a story that must be told."
The Prisoner of Tehran is set in Iran in 1981 and is the tale of a young woman who is arrested as a counter-revolutionary, tortured and sentenced to be shot as a traitor but her interrogator falls in love with her. He insists she convert to Islam and marry him.
"It’s a heartfelt, interesting story of a woman’s survival. It’s my kind of thing, a controversial, political look at the human journey . . . an unlikely love triangle set against the backdrop of world events."
Skogland is also set to direct new episodes of The Borgias and Boardwalk Empire. While she doesn’t believe TV will ever replace feature films, she says "some TV cable stuff is really pushing boundaries."
MAKING WAVES
Friday, 7 p.m. Opening Reception, Lord Nelson Hotel
Saturday, Mount Saint Vincent University (selected events)
9:15 a.m. A Conversation With director Kari Skogland
10:45 a.m. Panel Re: Unions – Getting Our Dues
1:30 p.m. Workshop The Permission Slip: Avoid Wrong Turns With Copyright. Learn the latest on how to obtain, reduce costs and limit risks using stock footage, stills and recorded music
1:30 p.m. Digital Media Workshop Hi-Tech/Hi-Touch: Building a winning audience engagement strategy
1:30 p.m. Workshop Kari Skogland In Action
3:45 p.m. For A Funny Time, Call: a women in comedy panel
9 p.m. Saturday Night Screening, Regency Ballroom, Lord Nelson Hotel. The Cake, director: Ester Richardson, UK; Menisus, director Mari-Elana Doyle, New Zealand; AWOL, director: Deb Shoval, U.S.; Flush, director Megan Wennberg, Nova Scotia; Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice-Guy Blaché, director Marquise Lepage, Canada
Sunday, March 11, Ela! Greek Taverna, 1565 Argyle St., Halifax
10:15 a.m. If The Show Fitz: A Conversation With Sheri Elwood.
Noon The Wave Awards Brunch
Individual event tickets are available at wift-at.com/women-making-waves-conference/registerwmw for Saturday keynote, lunch, workshops and panels, dinner and screening ($5 suggested donation for screening) and Sunday conversation and awards brunch. The conference is open to everyone.
