Ed Sinclair

Ed Sinclair (born 1968) is an independent Canadian film and television director best known for his award-winning social documentaries.

Education and early career

After graduating in 1993 from York University in Toronto, Ed Sinclair's work and interests continue to span numerous genres including drama, music video, lifestyle series, dance and experimental film, but it is mainly his documentary work that stands out today.

Perhaps his best known international piece from the early 1990s is The Internal World of Cherry Chan, an 8 and a half minute Black and White film that he co-created with fellow York University graduate Karen Kew. Originally meant to be the second installment of an arcing trilogy of identity-themed films, The Internal World of Cherry Chan became an underground festival favourite due mostly to its unusual story structure. "Five loops of images and texts are repeated but each loop is slightly different. It is not a linear narrative but a story of fragments, told through a female voice, of a character who is quite misplaced. The stories are of cities and her city is full of stories. She is a stranger as much as she is strange walking the streets of Toronto in a blonde wig looking like a hooker, her Asian identity quite evident to the viewer. And above it all is the male voice who finds his mystery in her, the one who is secure behind the camera, who questions his place there and his relation to her."¹ Kew and Sinclair collaborated on four films in total: Chasing the Dragon (1993), The Internal World of Cherry Chan (1994), Kung Fu Karaoke (1995) and OHM: dance through an electric eye (1999).

Sinclair's post-graduate years were spent working with influential Canadian and international multi-media artists such as Vera Frenkel, Nancy Nicol, Colin Campbell (artist), Richard Fung, Michael Balser & Andy Fabo, Kinga Araya, John Marriott, Janieta Eyre, John Greyson, Andrew J. Paterson and British artist Sharon Morris (currently [in 2007] the Head of Film and Video at the Slade School of Fine Art in London). While the majority of Sinclair's interactions with these video artists had been as their picture editor, he was also developing a keen interest in becoming more than just a media artist himself. He served as a location camera operator on the production of Vera Frenkel's 1992 installation entitled ...from the Transit Bar, which was the Canadian entry in the prestigious art festival documenta 9 in Kassel, Germany. Sinclair then created a half-hour documentary based on the inner workings of that exhibit. What made his approach to this documentary unique was that he based the visual aesthetics and the signature style of detached narration of Frenkel's own way of working, blurring the line between artist as the story-teller and artist as the subject of the documentary.

By the mid-nineties, Sinclair was one of the first people in Canada's media art scene to champion the use of a non-linear video editing system known as the EMC (Editing Machines Corporation, founded by American Bill Ferster in 1988), by co-editing Nancy Nicol's compelling look at the plight of Filipino Migrant Workers in Canada, entitled Migrante. Both Nicol and Frenkel are considered to be Sinclair's earliest mentors in the film and video industry, having also been his most-influential instructors at York University.

By 1997, Sinclair had started collaborating with established artists as an equal and over the years that followed, created several video tapes with pop-culture critic and writer, Michael Balser. Their firm friendship lasted until Balser's AIDS-related death in 2002 and culminated in Sinclair and Balser's then-partner Andy Fabo constructing Balser's last video Imperfect Proportions, from copious personal notes and discussions.

Dance on Film for Television

After writing and directing several festival shorts, installation videos and documentaries, Sinclair approached his old collaborator Karen Kew to make a new film and together with Producer Eliza Haddad, they went to Bravo! Television Canada in 1999 to commission his first long format film for broadcast. OHM: dance through an electric eye featured dancer and choreographer Viv Moore as a woman living on the edge of poverty in the heart of a bustling, yet typically exclusionary city. Her journey to the local launderette is juxtaposed against the personal journeys of many others. "OHM diverges from the traditional and often cliché portrayals of dance films by utilizing composite and integrated digital effects. This texturing of multiple video layers results in an overall ambiance that causes the choreography to become more significant than its everyday connotations by utilizing movement and gestures from everyday life. The video generates an atmosphere where casual movement can not only be meaningful and emotive, but extremely beautiful."² Noted for being highly original visually, OHM debuted to tremendous reception in Toronto at the 2000 Moving Pictures Festival Of Dance On Film And Video and is one of the six works directed by Sinclair listed in the on-line catalogue of V-Tape, (a Toronto-based artists' film and video distribution centre). A few years after OHM was commissioned, Sinclair named his production company, Electric Body Productions Inc. as a tribute to the past work he and Kew had done.

Sinclair's other passion beyond film-making was a socio-political one and he devoted much of his spare time to work on projects that helped present social causes and politically-sensitive issues to the wider public. He served two terms on the Board of Directors for the Toronto artists' collective organisation Trinity Square Video during which time he initiated the centre's transition into using non-linear editing and digital camera technology as well as community out-reach programmes and a gallery space for exhibiting the works of underprivileged youth and other emerging artists.

After completing OHM, Sinclair was offered the opportunity to direct the Second Unit on Jeremy Podeswa's second feature film, The Five Senses. The experience gave him greater insight into how the larger industry of film and television operated in Canada. "It was then," Sinclair says, "that I decided I would rather work in broadcast television than strictly as an artist in galleries and festivals."³

In the spring of 2003, Sinclair, Haddad and Moore teamed up once again for another dance film commission from Bravo! Television Canada entitled, Waking the Witch. This film was more ambitious than 1999's OHM, but acted as a kind of abstract sequal. Shot primarily on location around Moore's childhood home in Wordsley, (a small English village in the West Midlands), the story dealt with issues of magic spells, spiritual re-birth, loss of innocence and the more haunting attributes of memory. The arrival of a predominantly Canadian film crew stirred up local excitement, especially during the filming within the ruins of historic Dudley Castle where Moore performed a wartime blitz-themed waltz with her mother, Ethel upon the gravel ramparts. A local newspaper ran an article on the filming, siting the crew's fascination with ghosts and Moore and Sinclair's assertion that they had actually experienced a spooky encounter while on location in Avebury stone henge.

GLYPH

In 2003 Sinclair collaborated with Canadian comedy duo GLYPH for a pilot video based on their stage skits. Comedians David Tomlinson and Lex Vaughn played countless characters in the 30 minute pilot including a spoof on flowery Enya music videos, a possessed and opinionated Ouija board, the plight of Gay Babies, and a hen-pecked cafe patron who confronts his wife while ordering donuts.

Sinclair and Tomlinson continue to write and collaborate, and have produced several shorts together including their 2007 comedy film, Most Gorgeous.

Gloriously Free

In the spring of 2004, Sinclair wrote a proposal for a social documentary film about the persecution of gay people around the world for Toronto production company Filmblanc, which was subsequently submitted to OMNI Television's newly established Producer's Innitiative Programme. Shortly there after, the film Gloriously Free, (a titled coined by Argentinian Canadian Producer Noemi Weiss), expanded on the initial concept and illustrated how Canada had become a sort of refuge for persecuted gays and lesbians hoping to escape the negative stigma of their countries of birth. With a decent budget to play with, Sinclair hired Director of Photography Jeremy Benning and decided to utilize some aesthetic trademarks of his earlier career - namely mixing media. Gloriously Free was shot on Digital Video, 16mm Film and Super8 Film, and pushed the boundaries of storytelling by focusing on the personal lives of five men who each had a tragic tale to tell. The interviewees themselves were allowed to participate in the shoot by being given the Super8 camera for a week and two rolls of Tri-X film. In the edit suite, Sinclair and editor Rod Deogrades used the Super8 like "found footage" and in the end that material brought out resonant nuances of character for each of the interviewees. In November 2005, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters awarded Gloriously Free with the Gold Ribbon Award for Best Television Documentary/Public Affairs Programme.

Gloriously Free is still going strong and after being sold to CBC Newsworld, it has been purchased by almost a dozen other territories around the world and has been an audience favourite in international film festivals, including: Bogota (Colombia), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Manchester (UK) and San Francisco (US).

Lost Innocents

The summer and autumn of 2005 also saw the filming of Lost Innocents: The Children Of War, a heartfelt portrait of the physical, mental and spiritual recovery of Iraqi war victim, fifteen year old Ali Abbas. The film was produced by Eliza Haddad, shot in three countries (Canada, the United Kingdom and Kuwait), and made its world premiere on OMNI Television on September 30th 2006 to tremendous response.

"Lost Innocents: The Children of War is the personal journey of a Lebanese Canadian survivor of war intent on discovering what, if anything is being done to aid the countless children still victimized by the most recent war in Iraq."

"Her travels take her from Canada to England, and Kuwait City where she meets the doctors, politicians and activists who made the daring decision to airlift a dying twelve year-old boy out of a war-torn Baghdad neighbourhood. That one act of kindness sparked a massive humanitarian movement that eventually involved the rescue of thousands of physically and emotionally damaged children and thrust the life-or-death struggle of little Ali Abbas into the international spotlight."

"After losing both of his arms, his parents, and twenty-two family members in a missile attack that supposedly went astray, Ali Abbas is now forging a new life in England under the specialist recovery care of the Limbless Association. He is joined by his best friend Ahmed himself a survivor of an internationally prohibited cluster-bomb attack that claimed the life of his thirteen year-old sister and left him with only one hand and leg. Their painful recollections are the stuff of nightmares and yet, as they enter their mid-teens, it seems they are able to cope with all that has happened to them."

"For many Iraqi children, the world has come to their rescue: to sponsor, adopt or raise money for expensive surgical treatments. But many more children have nothing but grief and struggle ahead of them, trapped in a country that is still politically restless and unsafe. For Ali, the media has remained a microscopic lens over his shoulder, trained on his every movement and every word. As he grows into adulthood, what role does he see himself playing in the never-ending dilemma that is the Middle East?"⁴

"But throughout it all, Ali and Ahmed’s stories remain unique. Their remarkable resilience in the face of extreme personal tragedy exposes the strength of a child’s spirit and the breadth and limitless nature of human compassion."

Recent Work

In April 2007, Ed relocated to Wales, UK in order to pursue more challenging projects and collaborations within the expanding Welsh television industry. He was the 3rd Assistant Director on the feature film Inconceivable by Irish director Mary McGuckian, (starring Andie MacDowell and Jennifer Tilley), and collaborated with first-time producer Paul Harding on a documentary about the soon-to-be second largest port in the UK - Milford Haven.

Sinclair is currently developing a pilot television script with former Big Finish writer and producer Nigel Fairs, penning an extremely quirky feature film script, and is finishing up a "Choose Your Own Adventure"- style novel with illustrations by high school friend and artist Andres Musta.

Credentials

Sinclair is an alumnus of the Canadian National Screen Institute’s Totally Television Programme, and was a Canadian Shorts Jury Member for the 14th Annual Inside Out Film and Video Festival in 2004. He was a regular guest lecturer at York University (Toronto), Concordia University (Montréal), Brock University (Kingston), The University of Toronto, and the Ontario College of Art and Design (Toronto), and was the Technical Advisor/MFA Media Instructor at York University for two sessions.

He will be instructing a 29-week course in Home Video for local Bridgend County Borough Council's Adult Learning series in September 2008.

References:

¹ Karen Kew, V-Tape Online Catalogue, 1994² Stephen Foster, Video Vogue, Trinity Square Video, Autumn 1999³ Ed Sinclair, 2003⁴ OMNI Press Release, 2006

http://www.galeriesawgallery.com/archives/2004_e.htmhttp://vtape.org/catalogue.htmhttp://www.omnitv.ca/ontario/tv/signatureseries/episodes/lostinnocents/http://www.omnitv.ca/ontario/tv/signatureseries/episodes/lostinnocents/production.shtmlhttp://www.omnitv.ca/ontario/tv/signatureseries/episodes/gloriouslyfree/