After a night of exciting and excellent Top 5 pitches, the winner of the 2021 CineSpark competition was revealed on Thursday, May 20th, to be Sarah Nicole Faucher for her project “Going Home.”

CineSpark is CineVic‘s major annual production grant and features a lucrative prize:

•  $13,500 in-kind equipment rentals from CineVic
• $2,500 in-kind equipment rentals from William F. White
•  $1,500 cash grant
•  $100 Modo driving credits toward production van rental
•  Production Insurance: 10 consecutive days of coverage ($195 value)
•  One-year complimentary CineVic Production Membership ($220 value)
• Your film will premiere at the 2022 Short Circuit Film Festival

I recently interviewed the winner via email.

Q: Congratulations, Sarah Nicole! How does it feel to win?

A: “Most disabled people tend to experience the “imposter syndrome” which is the psychological phenomenon of feeling they don’t deserve their accomplishments. Some so badly want to get somewhere or to win for all their efforts and hard work, and then when it happens, it’s, “What? No, I couldn’t have. No way did I accomplish this.” That is what I’m feeling and I am trying to deal with right now. My husband Stephen and a couple of friends are helping me through it. It has been this way for the majority of the nominations and awards for two short films and six scripts for the past year or so — it’s been difficult to keep track of them all. I don’t announce all of the nominations or all the awards on Facebook because of this.”

Q: How many times have you entered the script portion of CineSpark?

A: “Last year, I entered one short script “Vignettes from a Cold War Child” into CineSpark 2020 and it never even made it into the Top 5, even though it was nominated and won a few awards in other events. This year, again, I entered just one script — this time “Going Home.””

Q: “Going Home” is a very personal and tragic film. Why did you feel now is the time to tell the story?

A: “”Going Home” was one of ten short scripts that I wrote during the lockdown in 2020 which forced me into a very intense, deeply reflective time of my life. The writing experience proved extremely cathartic.  It was entered into four to five other film festivals prior to CineSpark. Because of those previous nominations and wins, I decided to enter our local film festival and pitch event because I realized I would prefer to see it being made here in Victoria. As an activist for persons with disabilities, I write to various politicians to push for change, on the rare occasion enter local art shows like the one held through the Victoria Disability Resource Centre, and assisted a retired nurse-friend help a homeless person off the street — a woman suffering from severe, debilitating PTSD find shelter and healing through sewing crafts. This particular woman now has an IMDb credit as a Costume Assistant in the short film production of “The Door Between Worlds” that has been nominated for numerous awards.  It’s a short fantasy that has won Best Short Script in one film festival and an Award of Merit in another — I came so close to winning an award for Best Director for this one. My husband Stephen danced around and cheered so loudly when he discovered that I was being considered for this. I kept saying, “Really? You think I’m that good?”  He’s my best fan.The short fantasy “The Door Between Worlds” won’t complete it’s film festival circuit until some time next year. It, too, deals with disability and acceptance within the community.”

Q: Please tell us about your Producer.

A: “Krista Loughton is an actress, director, producer and writer who does work from the heart. Her film “Us & Them” tells the stories of four different unhoused people, houseless not because they wanted to be, but because they’d fallen through the cracks of society in one way or another — like my friend did in Ottawa in the 1980s in the script “Going Home”.  This is why when I moved back to my home province of BC many years ago, I began buying a sandwich or a muffin and a beverage for an unhoused person on Fort Street or Government Street if I were downtown on some errand about once a month whether I was working or not.

Krista recognizes that one’s life can so easily be turned upside down suddenly and at times without warning. I had found a director first before thinking outside my usual group of people for a producer. Krista is a documentary filmmaker with obvious great sensitivity. I was unsure about whether she would consider doing a short narrative. I emailed her anyway and received a positive response; she explained that she was working on a documentary about an unhoused deaf person right now! She felt my narrative short would make a good crossover or transition away from documentary filmmaking. We shared thoughts over a video call, discussing certain details about her film that I could relate to, including the government cover-up of a past residential school for the deaf in Vancouver and its abusive horrors that she didn’t know about until she met this unhoused deaf woman. I already knew about this same residential school for the deaf decades ago, because as a child my parents came so close to sending me to it. In the end, they decided not to, and my mother continued to teach me how to speak properly and to lip-read every evening at home while I went to public school. I recall reading about the terrible abuse briefly later in the news, however I won’t go into this story further because this is something for Krista and this unhoused deaf woman to share. Krista even asked me to be her consultant and I agreed.”

Q: Please tell us about your Director.

A: “I met Trent Peek and his wife Andrea through CineVic’s seminars and workshops a few years back, one of which was about pitching one’s own scripts. At that time, my old hearing aids were on the blink and I had to face buying new hearing aids — $5,000 to $6,000 each. My enunciation of words was down. My self-confidence and sense of self-worth were at their lowest. Trent took the time to patiently sit down with me to go over the notes of his pitching seminar. This is how I first got to know him. He has developed a good reputation for producing and directing short films locally and through Brent Lanyon‘s ’29 Takes Productions.’  When I approached Trent and asked if he would like to direct “Going Home,” he agreed because he was actively searching for a drama to direct.”

Q: This film will call needed attention to the situation of the deaf and hard of hearing community. Can you tell us more about that, what’s being done, and what you and the community would like to see?

A: “Not just the deaf and hard of hearing community. I feel strongly that it will call needed attention to the situation of many disabled people in Canada as a whole. What needs to change are attitudes, but it needs to start at the top with our governments for the trickle down effect to work.

In March 1990, disabled persons in the USA dramatically got out of their wheelchairs to climb — or crawl — up the steps of the Capitol.  In Canada, what is little known is that the disabled have been squashed from day one in any form of dramatic activism like in the USA. This is because there was a restriction clause on advocacy by charities in both tax and common law for so many years.

My short film script “Going Home” invites the audience into a deeper understanding of the conflicts within a country with one of the lowest Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ratings in the world. Canada rates lower than the USA, Ireland, the UK, France, Belgium, Iceland, Sweden and many other countries in the world in assistance for it own disabled persons in employment and housing.

The many disabled communities around the world have struggled to assist Canada’s disabled community to get the government to change so many weak clauses into stronger ones before the passing of the Canada Accessibility Act in 2019. The government seemingly refused to listen because it has been passed with a major flaw — accessibility won’t be enforced until 2040! This is so unlike what my husband and I experienced in Scotland and in Northern Ireland in 2016 — they were enforcing accessibility in the community and the media as a whole. They had professional disabled stuntmen and veterans act in “Game of Thrones.” They had profoundly deaf background actors going to work at Titanic Studios in Belfast. In Glasgow, there were loop systems in all of the shops, pharmacies, you name it — so I could switch my hearing aids to the ‘T’ switch (telecoil) and I could clearly hear everything the service person was telling me. There is nothing like this in Canada. The UN has consistently condemned Canada for breaking human rights regulations for accessibility for buildings, education, employment, medical treatment, etc. We shouldn’t have to rely on going to the Human Rights Tribunal with cases taking up to two years.  Sad to say, I believe Canada sunk to its lowest in 2021 with its passing of MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) that the UN considers a human rights disaster — it is far easier for a disabled person to obtain MAiD than it is to obtain accessibility to shelter, to education, to employment and to medical treatment.

For a country recognized for its public healthcare it has done dismally for its own disabled citizens. My story “Going Home” is only a mere drop in a large bucket of hundreds of sad stories experienced by disabled Canadians that need to be told.”

Q: When do you think “Going Home” will be ready to film?

A: “I don’t know for sure yet, though I suspect it won’t get off the ground until the late summer or early fall.”

Q: Thanks, Sarah Nicole!

A: “You’re welcome, Michael. Peace and stay safe.”

My take: one of the challenges a film about hard-of-hearing people faces is how to bring viewers into their world without compromising the audio, because sound is at least 50% of the film-going experience. I’ve thought about this and my solution would be to do the visual equivalent of dropping out all the mid-tones and only leaving bass and treble: don’t use any medium shots. If I was shooting this film, I would only shoot extreme long shots on a tripod intercut with handheld extreme close ups of the eyes and mouths of the two protagonists. Even though we would still hear the words clearly, this treatment would give viewers an insight into the lip-reading life of the hard-of-hearing.