Patricia Rozema | |
|---|---|
 Rozema in 2015 | |
| Born | 20 August 1958 Kingston, Ontario, Canada |
| Occupation(s) | Film director, writer, producer, editor |
| Years active | 1985–present |
Patricia Rozema (born 20 August 1958) is a Canadian film director, writer and producer. She was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave.
Rozema was born in Kingston, Ontario and raised in Sarnia, Ontario. Her parents, Jacoba Berandina (née Vos) and Jan Rozema, were Dutch Calvinists. [1] [2] 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. [3]
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. [3] 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. [4] The film did not appear on the updated 2004 version. [5]
In 1990, Rozema directed White Room , a neo-noir starring McCarthy, Kate Nelligan, Margot Kidder, and Maurice Godin. [6] 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." [7] 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. [8] [9] 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), [10] 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. [11] She most recently worked as a director on the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle . [8]
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. [12]
Her most recent feature, Mouthpiece (2018), premiering at TIFF, is an adaptation of a two-woman play 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." [13]
In 2017, Rozema founded her own production company, Crucial Things, to co-produce Mouthpiece. [14]
Rozema is openly lesbian and has two children with her former partner, film composer Lesley Barber. [15] [16]
Short film
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1985 | Passion: A Letter in 16 mm | Yes | ||
| 1986 | Urban Menace | Yes | ||
| 1991 | Desperanto | Yes | Yes | Segment of Montreal Stories |
| 1997 | The Shape I Think | Yes | ||
| 2000 | This Might Be Good | Yes | Yes | |
Feature film
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | I've Heard the Mermaids Singing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1990 | White Room | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1995 | When Night Is Falling | Yes | Yes | |
| 1999 | Mansfield Park | Yes | Yes | |
| 2008 | Kit Kittredge: An American Girl | Yes | ||
| 2009 | Grey Gardens | Yes | ||
| 2015 | Into the Forest | Yes | Yes | |
| 2018 | Mouthpiece | Yes |
TV series
| Year | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1996 | At My Back I Always Hear | TV episode |
| 1997 | Inspired by Bach | Segment "Six Gestures"; Also writer |
| 2000 | Happy Days | TV movie |
| 2008 | Tell Me You Love Me | HBO pilot and 2 episodes |
| 2010 | In Treatment | Episode "Frances – Week 3" |
| 2011 | Michael: Every Day | 3 episodes |
| 2016 | Mozart in the Jungle | Episodes "My Heart Opens to Your Voice" and "Avventura Romantica" |
| 2017 | Anne with an E | Episode "Tightly Knotted to a Similar String" |
| 2021 | Sex/Life | 2 episodes |
Sheila McCarthy is a Canadian actress and singer. She has worked in film, television, and on stage. McCarthy is one of Canada's most honoured actors, having won two Genie Awards (film), two Gemini Awards (television), an ACTRA Award, and two Dora Awards (theatre), along with multiple nominations.
The 9th annual Genie Awards were held March 22, 1988, and honoured Canadian films released in 1987. The ceremony, which was broadcast live on CBC Television, was held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and co-hosted by actors Megan Follows and Gordon Pinsent.
I've Heard the Mermaids Singing is a 1987 Canadian comedy-drama film written and directed by Patricia Rozema and starring Sheila McCarthy, Paule Baillargeon, and Ann-Marie MacDonald. It was the first English-language Canadian feature film to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Inspired by Bach, a part of Sony Classical celebrates Bach, presented the contemporary cellist Yo-Yo Ma performing the six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by Johann Sebastian Bach, in a series of six films, each showing a collaboration with artists from different disciplines.
Luke Farrell Kirby is an American-Canadian actor. He is best known for his role as Lenny Bruce in the Amazon Prime Video comedy-drama series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.
John L'Ecuyer is a Canadian film and television director.
David Acomba is a Canadian television and film producer/director whose television programmes have been featured on CBS, ABC, PBS, CBC, CTV, BBC, Channel 4, Showtime, and HBO.
Semi Chellas is a director, writer, producer who has written for film, television and magazines. She was born in Palo Alto, California and grew up in Calgary, Alberta. She is known for her work on the television series Mad Men and her film adaptation of American Woman based on Susan Choi's novel of the same name.
Lesley Barber is a Canadian composer of music for film, theatre, chamber and orchestral ensembles and she is also a conductor, pianist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Barber is best known for composing the film scores for Manchester by the Sea, Late Night, You Can Count on Me, Mansfield Park, Irreplaceable You, Hysterical Blindness, When Night Is Falling, and composing music for the animated television series Little Bear.
Anne Émond is a Canadian film director and screenwriter, currently based in Montreal, Quebec.
David Devine is a film director and producer, specialising in children's films. He was the co-founder and CEO of Devine Entertainment between 1994 and 2013, where he created original content for film, television and digital media.
Brian D. Johnson is a Canadian journalist and filmmaker, best known as an entertainment reporter and film critic for Maclean's.
Andrew Cividino is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. He is best known for his feature film directorial debut Sleeping Giant, which premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, and for his frequent work as a director on the Emmy winning comedy Schitt's Creek, for which he won a Primetime Emmy at the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards.
Michael Mabbott is a Canadian film and television director and writer. He is best known for his debut feature film as a director, The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico, which won the Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival.
The Toronto New Wave refers to a loose-knit group of filmmakers from Toronto who came of age during the 1980s and early 1990s.
The 43rd annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from September 6 to 16, 2018. In June 2018, the TIFF organizers announced a program to ensure that at least 20 percent of all film critics and journalists given press accreditation to the festival were members of underrepresented groups, such as women and people of color. The People's Choice Award was won by Green Book, directed by Peter Farrelly.
Mouthpiece is a 2018 Canadian drama film directed by Patricia Rozema, from a screenplay by Rozema, Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, and based on the theatrical play by Nostbakken and Sadava. The film centres on Cassandra, a woman who is making arrangements for her mother's funeral. Cassandra is played by both Nostbakken and Sadava, as a dramatization of her inner conflict.
Jasmin Mozaffari is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. She won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Director at the 7th Canadian Screen Awards in 2019 for her debut feature film Firecrackers.
Deragh Campbell is a Canadian actress and filmmaker. She is known for her acclaimed performances in independent Canadian cinema. Her collaborations with filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz—Never Eat Alone (2016), Veslemøy's Song (2018), MS Slavic 7 (2019), and Point and Line to Plane (2020)—have screened at film festivals internationally. Campbell has also starred in three of Kazik Radwanski's feature films; she played a small role in How Heavy This Hammer (2015), the lead role in Anne at 13,000 Ft. (2019), and opposite Matt Johnson in Matt and Mara (2024).
Mouthpiece is a 2015 Canadian feminist play by Norah Sadava and Amy Nostbakken of Quote Unquote Collective.
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