Patricia Rozema

Patricia Rozema
Rozema in 2015
Born (1958-08-20) 20 August 1958
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
OccupationsFilm director, writer, producer, editor
Years active1985–present
Children2

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 the 1980s from Toronto, Canada, known as the Toronto New Wave.

Early life

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]

Film career

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] and the Netflix series Sex/Life.

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]

In 2017, Rozema founded her own production company, Crucial Things,[13] to co-produce Mouthpiece (2018), which was premiered at TIFF. The film is an adaptation of a two-woman play of the same name, 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."[14]

Personal life

Rozema is openly lesbian and has two children with her former partner, film composer Lesley Barber.[15][16]

Filmography

Short film

Year Title Director Writer Notes
1985 Passion: A Letter in 16 mm Yes No Also producer
1986 Urban Menace Yes No
1991 Desperanto Yes Yes Segment of Montreal Stories
1997 The Shape I Think Yes No
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 Executive
1995 When Night Is Falling Yes Yes No
Curtis's Charm No No Executive
1999 Mansfield Park Yes Yes No
2008 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Yes No No
2015 Women Who Act No No Executive
Into the Forest Yes Yes No
2018 Mouthpiece Yes Yes Yes

Television

Year Title Director Writer Executive
producer		 Notes
1996 The Hunger Yes Yes No Episode: "At My Back I Always Hear"
1997 Inspired by Bach Yes Yes No Episode: "Six Gestures"
2000 Happy Days Yes No No TV movie
2003 A Wrinkle in Time No No Yes TV movie
2007 Tell Me You Love Me Yes No Yes Episodes: "Pilot", "Episode 2", and "Episode 3"
2009 Grey Gardens No Yes No TV movie
2010 In Treatment Yes No No Episode: "Frances – Week 3"
2011 Michael: Every Day Yes No No Episodes: "Being Alone", "Ridicule", and "Sweating"
2016 Mozart in the Jungle Yes No No Episodes: "My Heart Opens to Your Voice" and "Avventura Romantica"
2017 Anne with an E Yes No No Episode: "Tightly Knotted to a Similar String"
2021 Sex/Life Yes No No Episodes: "The Wives Are in Connecticut" and "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight"

Awards

  • Second prize at the Chicago International Film Festival for her short Passion: A Letter in 16 mm.
  • I've Heard the Mermaids Singing won the Prix de la Jeunesse at Director's Fortnight in Cannes and was nominated for Best Picture – with Rozema garnering nominations Best Director and Best Screenplay – at the 9th Genie Awards in 1988. The film received 17 further awards. It is listed as one of the Best Canadian Films of All Time by the International Film Critics association.
  • White Room earned 4 prizes, and 3 Genie nominations.
  • When Night Is Falling premiered in competition in the 45th Berlin International Film Festival[17] and went on to win over 30 awards from different countries and at various gay and lesbian film festivals.
  • Yo-Yo Ma, Inspired by Bach Rozema's episode "Six Gestures" won a Prime Time Emmy Award and was nominated for a Grammy. (other contributors included Atom Egoyan)

See also

References

  1. ↑ Wise, Wyndham (2001), Take One's Essential Guide to Canadian Film, University of Toronto Press, p. 185, ISBN 0-8020-8398-6
  2. ↑ Patricia Rozema Biography (1958-)
  3. 1 2 Lucas, Ralph (2 June 2016). "The Polyphonic Nature of Patricia Rozema – Northernstars.ca". Northernstars.ca. Archived from the original on 13 January 2017. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
  4. ↑ Handling, Piers (Fall 1994). "Canada's ten best". Take One. p. 23.
  5. ↑ Gravestock, Steve (26 June 2015). "Essay". Toronto International Film Festival. Archived from the original on 4 July 2016. Retrieved 28 August 2016.
  6. ↑ "White Room with Patricia Rozema". TIFF Lightbox. Retrieved 3 February 2024.
  7. ↑ Kempley, Rita (1 April 1994). "White Room". The Washington Post. Retrieved 3 February 2024.
  8. 1 2 Radio, Southern California Public (29 July 2016). "Director Patricia Rozema's "Into the Forest" wasn't easy to get made". Southern California Public Radio. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
  9. ↑ Voigts-Virchow, Eckart (1 January 2004). Janespotting and Beyond: British Heritage Retrovisions Since the Mid-1990s. Gunter Narr Verlag. p. 51. ISBN 9783823360964.
  10. ↑ "Patricia Rozema heads 'Into the Forest' for realistic apocalypse". USA Today. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
  11. ↑ "Camelot & cover songs: Inside CBC's new fall lineup" . National Post, 8 June 2011.
  12. ↑ Snarker, Dorothy. "7 Queer Female Filmmakers to Watch for in 2015". Indiewire. Archived from the original on 31 May 2015. Retrieved 4 June 2015.
  13. ↑ "TIFF 2018 Women Directors: Meet Patricia Rozema – "Mouthpiece"". womenandhollywood.com. Retrieved 25 January 2019.
  14. ↑ "TIFF 2018: Patricia Rozema's Mouthpiece is her most directly political film yet". Retrieved 25 January 2019.
  15. ↑ "Interview with Patricia Rozema, screenwriter for the upcoming Grey Gardens film". Archived from the original on 17 July 2015. Retrieved 16 October 2015.
  16. ↑ "Patricia Rozema". IMDb.
  17. ↑ "Berlinale: 1995 Programme". berlinale.de. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Patricia Rozema.
This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.