About Morris
Welcome to MorrisChapdelaine.com! I am a film maker, actor, director, art director and puppeteer (of all the crazy things!) living in fantastic Vancouver, British Columbia- the Sci-fi and comic book film and television capital of the world. (OK, it's just ME that proclaims that, but over my 10 years+ here, I have had the great opportunity to play aliens and creatures on several different shows)My first feature is just making the festival rounds and has already won it's first award! As a director I have made several short films and continue to do so and I have recently been working in many 'new media' formats as a director and art director. Take a look at my galleries, portfolios, demo reels and films and feel free to leave your comments- they're most appreciated. Thanks! MorrisSummer
Europe, Canada and the US of AAugust 14th, 2009
Yes. I have been busy. I have been away. Went to Paris, Madrid, Barcelona and London for a well deserved vacation and to meet with European distributors about the film.
Great news! We have a deal with France and most French speaking nations. Optimale was gracious enough and excited to take 'Beyond Gay- The Politics of Pride' on board and I couldn't be more excited about working with Thierry and his gang there. I also got offers in the UK from an amazing new online venture called QUOD, but have yet to make any decisions for English speaking territories.
We also had a splashy screening for cast, crew and invited guests at the beautiful District 319 here in Vancouver. A few days later, this amazing piece appeared as the cover story in the Entertainment section of the Vancouver Sun:
VANCOUVER - Vancouver’s Pride movement is finding new relevance in missionary work and finding that there is indeed much work to do.
Bob Christie’s nearly finished documentary Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride follows Vancouver Pride organizer Ken Coolen to the four corners of the earth and unearths new goals for the movement, including international outreach.
From our vantage point in a city that turns out in the hundreds of thousands for the annual Pride Parade, the level of political, institutional and violent grassroots resistance the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) community endures in Asia and Eastern Europe seems almost unfathomable.
Vancouver Police officers and Mounties march in uniform in the Pride Parade, while their counterparts in Warsaw and Moscow hold back crowds of violent nationalist and religious anti-Pride protesters. Well, they nearly hold the protesters back. A few get through to lay a beating on some marchers and even the documentary camera crew.
“I got punched in the head in Moscow and so did our other producer when they jumped us from behind,” said Christie. “It was the first time in my life I have been gay-bashed and it was pretty scary for us.”
Gays face significant institutional resistance in Russia, too. Moscow’s mayor has refused 155 applications by organizer Nikolai Alekseev for a permit to hold a march over the past several years. This year Alekseev and 40 other organizers were arrested before they could even start the parade.
Since its earliest beginnings in the 1970s, the Vancouver Pride Parade has evolved from its political roots into a mainstream celebration and family-friendly festival, Christie said.
“I think in the ’90s the Pride movement kind of lost its way a little bit,” Christie said. “And we never saw the level of resistance here that they are fighting [abroad].”
“In the last three to five years, we are starting to look beyond our own borders,” he said.
What they find is deeply disturbing. Rather than the huge open celebration that cities such as Vancouver, San Francisco, Toronto and New York take for granted, Christie’s cameras scurry down dim stairwells to clandestine meetings with activists dodging incarceration. Large, menacing crowds of thugs pelt marchers with trash and firebomb gay bars in Eastern Europe, and in Sri Lanka there is no march at all because the penalty for homosexual acts is 10 years in prison.
Lesbians are subjected to beatings and gang rape to “cure” them of their sexual orientation, said Sri Lanka Equal Ground executive director Rosanna Flamer-Caldera. “They are deathly afraid to come out.”
It is a difficult environment in which to hold public Pride events.
“At home we are not surrounded by people who want to kill us,” observed Coolen, who playfully dubs himself Big Gay Ken.
Though Beyond Gay is marketed as a Big Gay Movie with all the queer trappings that Pride parades in the West can conjure, it is quickly apparent that Pride at its core is not about sexuality but basic human rights — the right to live without fear of violence, imprisonment and murder.
Jamaican Pride activist Gareth Henry recounts the murder of a gay man in his home country that started as a police beating. When a crowd formed and demanded the police surrender the man to them to “finish him off,” they obliged and he was brutally murdered by the mob. He counts 13 friends murdered for their sexuality.
Pride marchers celebrate in Moscow when one of their activists is beaten by an anti-gay mob but released by police and his attackers detained, because “last year it was the other way around.”
As painful as it is, it is progress.
One can’t help but marvel at the irony of seeing the children and grandchildren of Russians and Poles who were murdered and oppressed by Adolf Hitler’s Nazis and Stalin’s brutal Soviet machine within living memory follow so closely in the footsteps of those monsters through the persecution of gays.
Marvellous, too, is the raw courage of the men and women who defy their governments and risk their lives for the simple right to walk down the street without hiding who they are.
Vancouver Pride has brought foreign organizers to participate in the last two Vancouver Pride Festivals. Sri Lankan Equal Ground organizer Sahran Abeysundara wept openly as the parade progressed past thousands of supporters.
For those who think that the Pride movement has passed its best-before date in Canada, Beyond Gay is a reminder that there is work to be done abroad and here at home too. Outside Canada’s major cities — and within — anti-gay sentiment still simmers just below the surface and occasionally boils over. Our cities are deceptive islands of tranquillity for the LGBT community.
“We sometimes joke that we live in a bubble in Vancouver,” Christie said. He argues Vancouver Pride has not lost its political function as a struggle for human rights.
“If you talk to the people that march, they will tell you that there is an ongoing political struggle,” he said. “Our parade is very much a celebration of what we have, but we are reincorporating that human rights element.”
Christie counts the Warsaw Pride parade as the “most empowering” of all the events he and his crew chronicled.
Warsaw Pride had to go to the European Union human rights tribunal to force the Polish authorities to allow the parade and offer police security. The police march in riot gear, forming a phalanx around the parade and containing a crowd of violent nationalist anti-Pride protesters who sing and chant like football hooligans.
“It’s sad that they can be so misguided, thinking that they are standing up for their country when what they are doing is a lot more dark than that,” Christie said.
At the end of the parade the police protection they had enjoyed quickly evaporated and they ducked into a public bathroom to turn their Pride T-shirts inside out.
“It just wouldn’t be a good idea to walk around with those on,” he said.
rshore@vancouversun.com
Pretty great eh? I am now in the process of finishing things up with Bob- technicolor, some final voice over work a few last edits, but it should be totally set to go by the end of August. Want to see the film in your city? Email me here!
New Spot Completed
Online eBay Course Promotional VideoMay 25th, 2009
I recently completed producing and directing this spot for The Internet Marketing Center. I had a really great digital imaging grad from Vancouver Film School do all the titles and graphics. I have a feeling I'll be working with him a lot more.
My Latest Corporate Gig
First Video in a series of 3April 6th, 2009
Yes, it's true. I have been TOO busy to blog lately. So much work and so little time. I wanted to show this first video from the new Insiders Secrets course, currently offered online by The Internet Marketing Center. They actually liked these 3 videos so much they have scheduled another 4 to be produced this Spring.
I am also in post for a brand new bit of technology called The Backbeat. I'll be sure to post the video here when the project is complete. It's 20 degrgees outside today...so happy Spring has finally sprung!
An Academy Award Nominated Short
It's only 2.5 minutes...watch and enjoy!February 26th, 2009
Fave New Song of '09
Lily Allen :)February 10th 2009
Just wrapped filming on 'The Hole' and I have a very good feeling that the movie will rock. Sometimes, when working on a project, one can just 'tell'. We had some slushy snow here this morning but the weather has been predominantly sunny as of late.
This song makes me feel like Spring is already here.
Enjoy!