Synopsis

Tyr and Jasa grew up in an artistic household where art was a way of life. Quirky and insightful sisters, Tyr is a musician and singer while Jasa is an interdisciplinary artist. Inspired by their great-grandmother’s recordings of Icelandic folk songs, they have developed artistic practices that draw on their colourful imaginations and Icelandic roots. Their exploration leads them to journey to Iceland for the first time and collaborate on a project that brings together their artistic disciplines and cultural heritage. In her debut feature film Sisters: Dream & Variations, Catherine Legault immerses us in an oneiric world made up of animation, performances and cinema vérité. More than a portrait, the film is an inspiring look at the artistic approach, its various forms and how it can simultaneously express and explore who we are.

Trailer

Technical sheet

Sisters: Dream & Variations 
85 min, VO English/Icelandic with English subtitles
Documentary – Quebec, Canada – 2019 – HD/DCP

POSTER (click to enlarge)

Film Crew

Written & Directed by:
Producer:
Executive producer:
Cinematography:
Sound:
Editing:
Animation:

Online and Color Grading: 
Sound Editing:
Original Music:
Additional Music:
Mixing:
Post-Production:

Catherine Legault
Isabelle Phaneuf-Cyr
Catherine Legault
Catherine Legault
Catherine Legault and Eric Shaw
Catherine Legault
Jasa Baka, Frances Adair Mckenzie,
Kara Blake and Calvin Brett
Tony Manolikakis
Kyle Stanfield
Tyr Jami, Justin Guzzwell and Eric Shaw
Syngja and The Winks
Olivier Germain
REV13 Films, PRIM and Pixel Audio

Written & Directed by:
Catherine Legault

Producer:
Isabelle Phaneuf-Cyr

Executive Producer:
Catherine Legault

Cinematography:
Catherine Legault

Sound:
Catherine Legault and Eric Shaw

Editing:
Catherine Legault

Animaton:
Jasa Baka, Frances Adair Mckenzie,
Kara Blake and Calvin Brett

Online and Color Grading:
Tony Manolikakis

Sound Editing:
Kyle Stanfield

Original Music:
Tyr Jami, Justin Guzzwell and Eric Shaw

Additional Music:
Syngja and The Winks

Mixing:
Olivier Germain

Post-Production:
REV13 Films, PRIM and Pixel Audio

Festival Selection:

RIDM 2019, New Visions Competition
Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma 2020, Award Pierre-et-Yolande-Perrault Competition
Brooklyn Film Festival 2020, Official Selection
Revelation Perth International Film Festival 2020, Official Selection
The IndieFEST Film Awards 2020, Official Selection
FIDBA 2020, Official Selection
Reykjavik International Film Festival 2020, Icelandic Panorama
Nashville Film Festival 2020, Music Documentary Competition
Escales documentaires La Rochelle 2020, Youth Award Competition
Blow-Up Film Fest 2020, Official Selection
Female Eye Film Festival 2021, Official Selection
Reel 2 Real Film Festival 2021, Official Selection

AWARDS

The IndieFEST Film Awards 2020, Award of Excellence: Editing and Original Score
The IndieFEST Film Awards 2020, Award of Merit: Documentary Feature, Women Filmmakers and Arts/Cultural/Performance/Plays

PRESS

Point of View Magazine, New Visions at RIDM, by Madeline Lines
McGill Tribune, ‘Sisters: Dream and Variations’ brings a gust of Icelandic artistry, by Pascal Hogue
LA PRESSE, Sisters – Dream and Variations : entre art, famille et onirisme, by André Duchesne
Le Devoir, Variations documentaires sur l’immigration, by Caroline Montpetit
Spirale Magazine, L’art en héritage, by Justine Falardeau
Kinoculture Montréal, Recréer intinctivement les mythes fondateurs, by Elie Castiel
Le petit septième, Sœurs – Psychédélique, by Andrea Krotthammer

Mentions in IndieWire, Orca Sound, Media Film, L’initiative, CMTV.info, MSN, Lien Multimédia, Qui fait Quoi, Iceland Naturally and Requiem pour un film.

Interviews with Catherine Legault on Daybreak (CBC),
 The Mama Rose Show (episode #10) and Derrière l’image (Radio Centre-ville).

Biographies

Jasa baka

“I know that there is energy around us that we can’t see but you can feel it if you pay attention. You have to let it be alive first and then you kind of capture it and form it.”

Ever since she was little, Jasa has been a keen designer and loved creating fantastical dresses. Also known as Zuzu Knew, Jasa is an interdisciplinary artist who brings together costumes, drawings, overhead projections, prism imageries, and set designs in her installations and live performances. When Jasa is creating visuals for the musical project Syngja, she plays an overhead projector like a light organ, using analogue techniques to create atmospheric compositions. Her work is a particular breed of magic realism that explores where the subconscious and conscious meet. She now lives in Reykjavik, where she is doing her MA in Fine Arts at the Iceland University of the Arts (Lístaháskolí Íslands). She was a key collaborator on the original animations for the film Sisters: Dream & Variations.

Tyr Jami

“Art is something that’s outside of yourself. (...) So it’s not about you when you’re performing but it’s about the music and you’re just a medium or a conduit of that.”

Music has been Tyr’s passion ever since she started playing the cello at age seven. While classically trained, she has experimented over the years with different styles (The Winks, Gutstrings), and has a loyal fan base. Today, her band Syngja (“to sing” in Icelandic), makes psychedelic electro-acoustic pop inspired by her great-grandmother’s recordings of Icelandic folk songs. Her sound is melancholic, dreamlike and at times playful. A cello teacher for the last 15 years, she recently opened a music school, La Tour Prisme, with her partner Justin Guzzwell. She co-composed, with Justin Guzzwell and Eric Shaw, the original music for the film Sisters: Dream & Variations.

Debora Alanna

“A lot of my work, not so much my stone sculptures but my installations are about place and memory. So that, in itself, is passing down the experience.”

Debora is Tyr and Jasa’s mother. She is an accomplished and prolific conceptual visual artist and intermedia artist. Her sculptures, installations, drawings and writing have a poetic sensibility that explores disparate thoughts. She explores the multidimensionality of space and time and challenges conventional material use. She collaborated with her daughters on the project New Spring, performing as the Mountain Queen. She is currently studying at Concordia University, developing VR and 3D prints projects.

instagram.com/embellish4art

 

Ingibjorg Johnson (1891-1994)

“Sorrow and joy go together
Sweet and bitter is mixed into my cup of life 
A mixture of both is given to me”

Ingibjorg Johnson Guðmundsdóttir was born in Iceland in 1891. When she was 33, she immigrated to Selkirk, Manitoba, with her husband. Singing was a huge part of her life, something she did casually but daily as a way to evoke memories of her homeland. She believed that singing had healing properties. In her 90s, while at the nursing home, she would often perform for the other residents. When Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the former president of Iceland, visited Selkirk in 1989, Ingibjorg was chosen as the care home representative to sing for her. Her favorite pastime was recording audio letters for her family. In the past decade, she has been featured on many Syngja recordings, as well as in the performance New Spring.

James K-M

Home is a metaphysical place that’s always calling, that always has a pulse, like a heartbeat. So we can understand existence and art only in relation to that place, that pulse. "

James K-M is Tyr and Jasa’s father. A Vancouver visual artist, his work is abstract, geometric and metaphysical. He also creates digital paintings and exhibits innovative interactive works worldwide. James is an inspiring educator and taught creative process, media literacy and digital media production for many years. He has taken on the role of artistic mentor to his daughters and encourages them to thrive in their own practice. He was working on his most recent solo exhibition, Pyramids, during the filming of Sisters: Dream & Variations.

https://jameskm.wordpress.com

Frances Adair McKenzie

A long time collaborator of both Jasa Baka and Tyr Jami (Party Like 1699, New Spring), Frances Adair Mckenzie is a Montreal-based interdisciplinary artist. In her video installations, sculptures and animations, she combines genres and technologies to invoke the construction of fantastical internal and external worlds.  Frances worked on the original animations and motion-design for the film Sisters: Dream & Variations.

https://francesadair.com/about.html

Justin Guzzwell

Justin Guzzwell is Tyr Jami’s closest collaborator, infusing Syngja’s music with his drum beats, analog synths and vocal harmonies. He also teaches piano at their music school, La Tour Prisme. In his self-produced albums, he blends classical technique with experimental harmonic language and incandescent vocal styles. He was a musical collaborator on the project New Spring. He co-composed, with Tyr Jami and Eric Shaw, the original music for the film Sisters: Dream & Variations.

syngja.bandcamp.com
soundcloud.com/syngja
latourprisme.com 

Gallery

World Premiere

FILM

Catherine Legault is a filmmaker and an award-winning documentary film editor. Her editing skills bring fluidity and structural sophistication to projects layering different levels of meaning throughout. She graduated from Film Production at Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. Over the past 15 years, she has worked on several award-winning films that have screened internationally in theatres, festivals, and on television. In 2017, she received an Iris award for Best Documentary Editing on Family Demolition. In 2019, she was nominated again for Serge Giguère’s last film, My Mother’s Letters. She was also awarded a Gemeaux for 21 jours, in 2017, and Ma caravane au Québec, in 2013. Her collaborations have included PilgrIMAGE, by Peter Wintonick and Mira Burt-Wintonick, Mort subite d’un homme-théâtre, by Jean-Claude Coulbois, Family Demolition by Patrick Damien, Rebels on Pointe, by Bobbi Jo Hart, My Mother’s Letters, by Serge Giguère, and most recently, FANNY: The Right to Rock, by Bobbi Jo Hart. In 2016, Catherine founded Concerto Films. Sisters: Dream & Variations is her first feature documentary as a director.
Isabelle Phaneuf-Cyr is co-founder of the Montreal-based production company FIZ Studio. She has 15 years of experience in the development of varied content, including corporate, advertising, documentary and animation. Her university education in advertising and communications (Université de Montréal), and in screenwriting (UQAM) enabled her to quickly develop within the largest media groups in Quebec (Astral and Quebecor). She has worked with a number of clients from different backgrounds, as well as with numerous communications agencies in Canada and the United States. Isabelle brings her extensive artistic and technical know-how to all her productions. Her curiosity and interpersonal skills allow her to excel in her work. In 2016, Isabelle teamed-up with Concerto Films to produce Sisters: Dream & Variations

Contact

Production
Catherine Legault
Isabelle Phaneuf-Cyr
Concerto Films

5612 av. de l’Esplanade
Montréal, QC,
H2T 3A1, Canada

Distribution
Camille Jacques

+1 514-937-4893 ext 122
cell: +1 514-691-7198
distribution@eyesteelfilm.com

Eyesteelfilm Distribution

7095 rue Marconi, #201
Montréal, QC,
H2S 3K4, Canada
eyesteelfilm.com

Public Relations
Caroline Rompré

+1 514-778-9294
caroline@pixellex.ca


pixelleX communication

1340, Boul. St-Joseph E, suite #3
Montréal, QC,
H2J 3M2, Canada
pixellex.ca