NOOR KHAN, EAST: A RELATIONSHIP (2019)

Adam: We said it off mic but we’ll say it on mic - thank you so much for being here to talk to us. Today, we are speaking to…

Noor: Noor Khan.

Adam: About what film?

Noor: It’s called EAST: A Relationship.

Adam: And where is it going to be playing on July 19th?

Noor: Insomniac Film Festivaaaaal!

Seb: And how hot is it in this courtyard that we are in?

Noor: Probably 36 degrees celsius.

Adam: And what can our great viewers expect from your film?

Noor: The film is sort of a personal land acknowledgement. I didn’t think it would turn out to be that way when I was in production, but when I went into editing I realized that that’s exactly what it is. It’s about my relationship with Scarborough, which is where I currently live. It’s a very simple film. It’s a very short film. It’s a poetry piece mostly, with imagery. 

Adam: You mention that the film became this personal land acknowledgement - what made it transform into that as you began creating it?

Noor: Well, I thought it was going to be more documentary style, not so much about my experience but about other people’s experiences. More of a communal, participatory film. But because my budget wasn’t so big, and because it was my first film, I wasn’t able to make it as big as I wanted to.

So it was my perspective, which I’m really thankful for, because I feel like I needed to reflect. With the funds I had to make the film, I think that’s exactly what I did. I definitely anticipated it to be longer, time wise. And more voices, other than just the one. But it is what it is now, which is really beautiful about film. Especially documentary.

Seb: Do you think a lower budget forces you to get more personal? Is that a way to work around a lower budget?

Noor: Totally. I think having a smaller budget - you kind of are confined to only yourself and you end up being the crew. So, the writer, the director, the camera operator. You’re confined to how many people you have, and also when I work with participants I like to fund the people that I’m interviewing. Or giving them something at least, so the fact that I didn’t have the funds to do that, or give the community anything back in a sense, I was confined to just talking about myself.

Which I don’t think is a bad thing at all. I feel like we should be self reflective. So I really appreciate small budgets. They can do a lot for a single person I feel. And they can bring you a long way in terms of starting your career.

Adam: That self reflexivity is obviously a prominent thread throughout EAST - questioning your relationship with the land that you’re on. I think making any film is emotionally taxing because you’re always pulling so much from yourself, but especially for a film like this that is so intensely you, I’d love to hear what the process was like.

Noor: Because I didn’t anticipate it being about me, it was easier. I didn’t put that pressure on myself to write anything. I wasn’t thinking about it as a personal piece. So when I wrote the written piece, that was more out of anger. I had all these questions, I’m really angry, something has instigated me to ask all these questions and confront myself and my community.

So it was more a natural process, but I didn’t think about it. I think if I had thought about it being personal it would have put a lot of pressure on me, but it was so natural, so I’m thankful to have gone that way.

Adam: It’s almost like if you start to think about how personal the film is, it becomes like, “oh, is this the best representation of what’s on my mind?”

Noor: Yeah. I don’t know how recording artists do it, because I work with a lot of recording artists who put out music that is just about them and their life, and I could never do that. Even after this film I was like “I don’t want to talk too much about myself”, but maybe it will happen again if I have a low budget again.

Seb: Have you done a personal essay film like this before?

Noor: Never. This is actually my first film. Literally my first film.

Adam: Oh really?

Noor: Yeah, it’s literally my first film. I actually went to University of Toronto for International Development Studies and Social Geography and I ended up not wanting to do anything related to research and writing. I just felt like that was not what I was cut out to do, and I was just like failing at it anyways. So I picked up the camera again, because I mostly did stills before. And it was a very natural progression into motion, because of my inclination towards sound as a way to speak. 

Navigating my community through sound is very important to me, so motion picture was the perfect mix of everything I love, and that’s what I tried to do. It was my first experiment in putting sound together with motion picture.

It was filmed separately than it was scored. It was scored at a completely different time, like the sounds that you hear. They were done with my designer, Eric Slyfield, and then I had someone do the voice over separately. So it was two different processes coming together, which was an experiment for me to be honest.

Adam: I was going to ask about that. So you developed the imagery and voice over completely separately?

Noor: Totally, yeah. I actually started filming in the summer of 2017, and then I thought it would go the direction I was speaking of previously, but then I realized by December of 2017 that it was going to take another turn. So I went back and I filmed in January 2018, and then I basically took that and reflected on that imagery and then I wrote the piece. And then I was like “how do I score this? What sounds do I want?”, and that was all done in February/March 2018.

Seb: That’s interesting that it was a super organic process where you take each part and then build upon it for the next. Do you think you’re going to continue exploring social geography through film?

Noor: I actually have another film coming out [...] at Nuit Blanche this year. It will be shown both in Scarborough and in Parkdale. It is about geography, about Scarborough and Parkdale this time, and it’s a double screen installation. And I’m actually again exploring the same kinds of phenomenon, but this time I have a bigger budget, so it definitely includes more voices than my own. It actually doesn’t include my own at all right now. We’ll see what happens with that, because I feel like it’s going to be in there somehow. 

I’m really excited to talk about a different place that’s so similar to where I’m from, and in the process of talking to people that are going through similar things that people from Scarborough go through - gentrification, etc. So now it’s bringing that small, local, personal experience to the other side of the city, which is really great. 

Adam: Through the imagery in EAST, you get a sense of the community, even if we only hear one voice. What was your approach to the visual language of the film?

Noor: When you’re from Scarborough, you know there’s key places everyone just knows, and so my goal was to document those places in the way that we see them, as opposed to the way that it’s usually documented by the city and those official archives. [Those] photographers aren’t local photographers, so I wanted to do something that was purely through our eyes. So myself, my drone operator Marlon [Sidlacan], and the videographer I was working with, Kariza Santos, were all from Scarborough. We got together and went to places that we thought were important, and a lot of that is the Bluffs.

And for me that imagery is also the Mosque, because I live in that neighbourhood. [...] It’s the biggest mosque, it’s so vibrant, there’s so many people living around it and it’s the most lively intersection in my neighbourhood. So it had to be documented. And it’s also so beautiful against this almost brutalist, older infrastructure that isn’t bright. The mosque is just this outstanding building that’s radiating light, so I felt like I needed to document that.

There’s a halal food store in [the film], and that’s the experience of Scarborough - those small food spots that all happen to serve halal meat. Like it doesn’t matter what it is - they’re gonna cater to Muslim people, because we’re out there.

Seb: It was Canada Day recently, and I always feel a weird thing about Canada Day. My Mom’s family came here under political exile, so for a lot of my life I’ve been grateful to Canada, but then as you get older you learn more about what Canada Day actually means. I was wondering what you’re feeling this year, or in general about that day, because it’s always complicated for me.

Noor: It’s definitely complicated for me as well. I’m still negotiating what it means. I don’t think celebrating that day is for me, just because I feel like it’s such a nationalist celebration, and I feel like local celebrations are much more meaningful. And really using that time to get to know where we live is something that I feel like I would invest my time into instead of the way we do it as a culture, which is just like fireworks and go to these particular places to experience that. So it’s more like the culture of the day that I’m like “this is not the way it should be” - there should be more inclusion of Indigenous people.

I also have a problem with the word “immigrant”, like I just don’t know how I feel about branding myself as an immigrant - that’s not necessarily something that I’m proud of. Just knowing that I’m a settler, and just what it means to call yourself an immigrant versus a settler. Words are so powerful, and who assigns them is so powerful too. Like why is this called “Canada”?

I have a lot of questions about that as well, and who came to that decision, knowing very well that Indigenous folks call this land Turtle Island. I have a lot of questions about the meaning of words and how they’re used, but I feel like celebrating this land is very important, and paying respect to it is very important, and that’s something that I wanted to reflect in my film. 

A lot of people think that Lake Ontario is the most polluted body of water when that’s really not the case. It’s a huge body of water - not all of it is polluted. It’s definitely suffering, but there is still beauty to it that needs to be preserved and fixed.

There’s this stigma that if you go into Lake Ontario you’ll come out with an extra arm. So when I tell people that I swim in the Bluffs part, people are like: “I can’t believe that you actually go in that dirty water”, and I’m like “don’t disrespect the water”. It’s clean on our end and it should be clean on the other ends too. But I feel like that’s my way of celebrating the land. Celebrating the water, and the parts of it that are good. So yeah - I feel like celebrating is very important, if it’s not hurting anyone.

Adam: That comes across in your film. It’s a strong celebration of the land, but also it’s a recognition of our history. You also pose it around these questions of “what do we do now?” Why was it important for you to center the film around questioning rather than posing it as an essay?

Noor: Honestly, because I don’t know the answers to those questions. I really don’t know, and I hope that people would answer them. I literally hope that people would DM me, or message me like “hey, I want to talk to you about these questions”.

And some people did. They definitely did address some of the questions, and the film was actually screened at some institutions like York and UofT, and so a lot of students had things to say about the questions and answers to give. So I feel like it was a good way for me to actually ask my community and the larger community these questions.

Adam: Totally. And I don’t think it would be as accessible for someone to see a film in which the artist is acting like an authority on this unanswerable conversation.

Noor: Exactly. No one has figured it out.

Seb: Do you think that’s part of your goal as a filmmaker - to take the fields that you’ve studied and share your knowledge and get more knowledge back on those concepts?

Noor: Definitely. I definitely feel like film is a great medium to do research and give back to the community in an accessible way. [...] I came from a research background, [and] I feel like when people do written research, it’s all so confined into “oh, it’s gonna get published into this research journal”, but does it every really get out? Like how is it getting out?

And a lot of academics get so tired after writing those papers that they never end up translating it to the community, so for me it’s like - let me just completely trash that medium and go for something [where] I’m just directly speaking to the community instead of having to speak to the institution about it first, or ask someone’s permission to do that.

Adam: Any last words? Anyone you want to shout out?

Noor: Shout out Insomniac. Shout out all of you. Shout out the entire team for being an independent festival because that’s friggin’ huge.