By Mike Levin

Somewhere in Micheline Shoebridge’s past, she learned to trust her instincts. It meant following her professor father’s advice to quit university and manage his film school; marrying into a Francophone family named Kelly; and spending much of her time recently with a festival that teaches children how art can change the world.

It’s also helped her accept rejection, a familiar companion on the path she’s chosen to walk.

Documenting Micheline Shoebridge. Photo by Mike Levin.

Shoebridge is a film and video producer. With partner, and husband, Randy Kelly, she’s now completing two documentaries that are so intuitive they’ll probably never get mainstream attention. Which would be a pity because both tell stories that define the human spirit: The Animated Activist (working title), about Firdaus Kharas, Ottawa’s least-known international wonder; and Buzkashi!, a co-production about four Tajikistani stars in the world’s most irascible sport.

If you look into her past, narrative was the only future. When father Tom discovered how film focussed his troubled students at Algonquin College, he launched the Summer Institute of Film and Television (SIFT) in 1981, taking it independent in 1993 as the Canadian Screen Training Centre (CSTC). He wanted to be a screenwriter, but he was also a great storyteller.

“Oh yeah, that is his vehicle,” Shoebridge says, and then explains how her artist mother Gloria taught her to search for compassion and about her brother Paul’s interactive documentary Pine Point that helped her understand community. The family’s passion is evident – especially when Tom had 10-year-old Micheline sell beer tickets during SIFT’s opening nights – and it always had a progressive direction.

She took women’s and Canadian studies at the University of Ottawa, and lasted two years before taking her father’s suggestion to manage CSTC. She stayed until 1998 when she decided to work on an organic farm in Spain for a year. When she returned, Shoebridge formed Chispa Productions in Gatineau with Kelly, the boy from Aylmer. “I always had French boyfriends, so I learned my bilingualism in bars.”

Kelly mirrored her beliefs, even if they differed in styles. “I’m more into the issues side. His passion is film and TV,” she says of of the father of her two daughters who at 39 planned to train for the brutal sport of Mixed Martial Arts and then to turn the documentary camera on himself. They couldn’t find a broadcaster, so the project fizzled out – bringing a certain amount of relief to Shoebridge.

Many of the couple’s feature projects are in French, mostly because the francophone industry is much more open to new ideas and new people. An English-language version of their documentary Champions grisonnants – her father’s concept about the athletic achievements of seniors – wasn’t touched by distributors despite the industry’s embrace of a similar European documentary called Autumn Gold.

Shoebridge doesn’t dwell on this double standard or on the funding crisis that is pummeling Canadian documentary making (she is the Secretary of DOC Ottawa-Gatineau). But she had to branch out. One path involved One World Arts; in May she managed the One World Awesome Arts Festival in Ottawa. The program included a presentation by Chocolate Moose Media, Firdaus Kharas’ company.

Firdaus Kharas launches No Excuses at the United Nations. Courtesy of Kharas.

Shoebridge first met Kharas when he sat on the CSTC’s board of directors. The producer/director has a long resume of international work, and his public-service announcements (PSA) The Three Amigos and Buzz and Bite had made him a household name, outside Canada. “I never understood why he got so little attention here. He is, after all, world famous, friends like (Archbishop) Desmond Tutu, campaign launches at the (United Nations), Peabody Award,” she says.

(Promotional Alert: This has also confused me, and I am writing a full feature on the man due to be published in the fall edition of Point of View magazine.)

Shoebridge and Kelly spent 2 1/2 years filming a documentary that followed the evolution of Kharas’ third PSA campaign No Excuses, which confronts domestic violence around the world. It launched at the UN in April.

No distributor has yet shown any interest in their documentary.

She finds it sad, but instead of moaning she’ll take her family to Central America to work on an organic farming co-operative for two or three months this winter: “to show the girls how good we’ve got it.” Her instinct told her to to do it, and that basis of supposition hasn’t steered her wrong yet.

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It is impossible to tell what images will roll out of Sam Vainola’s mind. Red Room (left) is just one. The newest versions can be seen at Cube Gallery until June 26.