Rosa Cheng set out to revive Cantonese Opera in a changing Vancouver Chinatown and honour the memory of Wah-Kwan Gwan, a man born between two worlds. Martyna and Gregory were with her from the beginning. How a decade of community work became a film, what broke during production, and how it finally came together.
An elderly Chinese can collector and a house full of millennials in East Vancouver. A CBC short doc built on patience and proximity. How it got made, and what it took to earn the trust of a subject who never asked to be on film.
How we decided when live action couldn't carry the moment, what collaborating with animators actually looked like, and what we'd do differently next time.
Budgets, permits, community relationships, and the dozen things that go wrong on any given shooting day. The unglamorous infrastructure that makes documentary possible.
The tension between the DP who remembers what it cost to get a shot and the editor who needs to cut it. How Gregory navigates being both people in the same room.
Canada backwards. A street renamed to shed a rough past. A 1919 film company making nationalist cinema while Hollywood locked Canadian films out of Canadian theatres.
How Martyna's work at the Chinese Storytelling Centre, years before The Prop Master's Dream, built the relationships that made the film possible.