Why I Hate Bees

WHY I HATE BEES is a comedic journey into a young girl’s memories of near death, based on the short story by Canadian writer Nancy Jo Cullen. Awards: Best Canadian Lesbian Short, Inside Out Festival, Toronto, 1998; Grand Prize, Cabbagetown Film Festival, Toronto, 1999; Honourable Mention, Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2000. DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: When I discovered Nancy Jo Cullen’s short story “Why I Hate Bees” in the Saskatchewan quarterly literary magazine, Grain, it had just won an honourable mention in the publication’s writing contest. Nancy lives in Calgary, Alberta. The complete text of her story serves as the narration for the film. Non-professional actors were used on location in Brockville and Gravenhurst, Ontario. The energy of the kids was explosive and Kathleen Swim Fowler was stung by a bee during rehearsal for the kissing scene. In the film, I play with the way memory races ahead or lags behind the stories we tell and the tendency it has to linger on things we do not mention in our stories. Through optical printing, use of colour, animation, editing and sound, I interpret the memory and point of view of the young narrator – sometimes touching directly on her story, other times suggesting what she might have experienced but is not telling.