Cannes 2014 Special: The beauty of Horror & the challenge of independent films by Karen Lam

Evangeline, by Karen Lam, will be presented in Cannes 2014

The unique and prestigious Cannes Film Festival returns next week to the France. Between 14th to 25th May 2014 well known and upcoming film directors, actors, producers and professionals from the Film industry will gather together to talk about what they are more passionate about.

This year I have decided to focus on few of the independent runners during the festival. Since I am an Independent writer and graphic designer myself, I can understand the challenge and yet the satisfaction of doing everything by yourself, without the nodding head of big fishes.

Someone who has expertise on delivering great creative projects on her own is Canada based film director and writer Karen Lam. Karen’s short films have won international awards and extensive screenings at international film festivals. Her 2011 short film “Doll Parts” has been invited to over 54 international film festivals since its completion. Last year she completed three short films: “The Meeting”, “Stalled” and “The Pit: A Study in Horror.” These short films have received awards worldwide, including “Best Film, “Best Cast”, and nomination and awards for “Best Director”. Also last year, Vancouver recognised Karen’s artistic achievements, and awarded her with the Artistic Innovation Award for Women in Film .

At the present edition of Festival de Cannes 2014, Karen Lam is presenting “Evangeline (The Soul Collector)”, a thrilling horror film where a girl returns from the death with vengeance for those who sadistically killed her for fun.

The Creative Post: You are the writer, director and producer of Evangeline. Could you tell us how and when did you come up with the story and how was the journey until you started filming it?

Karen Lam: I wrote/directed a short film called Doll Parts (2011) that premiered at the Edinburgh Short Film Festival and went on to be screened at over 50 film festivals worldwide.  The short inspired the feature film “Evangeline” which really centres around a young woman who turns the tables around on her male human predators.  The script was selected as one of twenty projects to showcase at the NAFF — Network of Asian Fantastic Filmmakers in Pucheon City, South Korea in 2012 and we made the film the in the winter of 2013.

For independent filmmakers, there’s never been a better but harder time. It means that for reaching our audiences and seeing content, it’s easier to directly talk to other horror fans and audience, but it also means there’s no one central place.

T.C.P.: Who is Evangeline?
K.L.: Evangeline is a young woman who is killed by a group of sadistic fraternity boys and comes back from the dead to seek vengeance.

T.C.P.:  What was the most challenging part during filming?
K.L.: I ended up self-financing on credit lines and mortgaging my place, so I’d say finances were tight.  But I was really lucky to have the support of my local film and television industry in British Columbia, which is the production backlot for Hollywood, so the film looks way more expensive than it is!

T.C.P.: You have mostly specialised in Horror genre. Was this a career choice or a natural progression in your career? Where you into horror books and films in your school days?
K.L.: I love horror, and I came to it more from a literary perspective.  Edgar Allen Poe, and gothic literature like Mary Shelley, Daphne du Maurier are probably my biggest influences.

Karen Lam

T.C.P.: What are/were your references and influences of your work?
Along with literature, I’m a huge fan of old Kung fu movies, samurai comic books and horror/fantasy films.  For Evangeline, the influences were The Crow, Lone Wolf and Cub and t Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series.

I ended up self-financing on credit lines and mortgaging my place

T.C.P.: You have worked both on film and tv.  With so many successful tv series that have been produced in the last decade, do you think TV and home streaming is the future and how challenging is making films for the big screens at the moment?
K.L.: For independent filmmakers, there’s never been a better but harder time.  How we watch films and tv is all being blended into one.  It means that for reaching our audiences and seeing content, it’s easier to directly talk to other horror fans and audience, but it also means there’s no one central place.  It’s a fractured marketplace, but it means being a lot more entrepreneurial and creative in our approach.

T.C.P.: You are writer as well as director. Have you written fiction books and/or adapted these to become movies/short films in the past?
K.L.: I actually start all my scripts as short stories.  My treatments are very visual stories broken into rough scenes but written as prose.  It affects my scripts in that I’m not dialogue-heavy, but detailed in the fights and action.  Evangeline has a lot of action sequences, and I wrote the fight scenes out in beat for beat detail.

T.C.P.: Tell us about your presence in Cannes
K.L.: This is the first year I’m not attending the Marche, and mainly because I have a lot of development on the Evangeline television and web series that have hard deadlines.  It’s an incredible festival for meeting with the industry, getting a sense of what’s on the horizon, and meeting other producers and filmmakers.  I wish I had a cloning device for this year….and an unlimited bank account!

T.C.P.: Have you ever been in London?
K.L.: I been to London when I was in high school, but am dying to go back. My short horror comedy The Meeting played last year at the British Horror Film festival and we were nominated for Best Director and Best Actress, and I wish I could have been there.

T.C.P.: What films, directors and actors from the UK do you admire and would like to work with?
K.L.: I am a huge fan of British genre television so Luther, Doctor Who, The Fall, Sherlock…whatever I can get my hands on, and usually through Netflix.  I think being Canadian means we have a huge debt to British culture and what girl doesn’t dream of having her own Tardis? I think the best actors working in North America are almost all British.  The theatre and training means that the approach to acting and storytelling is second to none. Idris Alba, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rebecca Hall, Emily Blunt, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Saunders, the list of talent is just endless.

T.C.P.: What are your next projects?
K.L.: I have 4 feature scripts, but two that are in pre-financing mode, and in the midst of developing Evangeline into a larger universe: TV series, web series and graphic novels.  I’m quite serious about the cloning.

Thanks Karen! Watch the trailer for Evangeline here:

Evangeline (Official Trailer) – Feature Film from Opiatepix on Vimeo.

We will be covering more features on independent filmakers and artists taking part of Cannes 2014. If your are around do not miss

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