Ann Marie Fleming is an

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in Pennsylvania, United States * Independentes (English: Independents), a Portuguese artist ...

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

filmmaker Filmmaking or film production is the process by which a Film, motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, beginning with an initial story, idea, or commission. Production then continues through screen ...

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles, genres and techniques to communicate ideas, to inspire feelings and emotions, or to entertain. Writers may develop different forms of writing such as novels, short sto ...

, and

visual art The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and texti ...

ist. She was born in

Okinawa most commonly refers to: * Okinawa Prefecture, Japan's southernmost prefecture * Okinawa Island, the largest island of Okinawa Prefecture * Okinawa Islands, an island group including Okinawa itself * Okinawa (city), the second largest city in th ...

, USCAR (nowadays

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

), in 1962 and is of

Chinese Chinese may refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people identified with China, through nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **Han Chinese, East Asian ethnic group native to China. **'' Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic ...

, Ryukyuan and

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

n descent. Her film ''

Window Horses ''Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming'' is a 2016 Canadian animated film written and directed by Ann Marie Fleming (sometimes stylized with the title in parentheses or written as ''Window Horses'' without a subtitle), and a gra ...

'' was released in 2016. Her animated biographical film ''The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam'' (2003) won Best Documentary at the

San Diego Asian Film Festival The San Diego Asian Film Festival (SDAFF) is an annual film festival in San Diego San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, ...

and the Victoria Independent Film Festival. She is the great-granddaughter of the Chinese magician,

acrobat Acrobatics () is the performance of human feats of balance, agility, and motor coordination. Acrobatic skills are used in performing arts, sporting events, and martial arts. Extensive use of acrobatic skills are most often performed in acro d ...

and

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment which began in France in the middle of the 19th century. A ''vaudeville'' was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a drama ...

performer

Long Tack Sam Lung Te Shan ( zh, c=郎德山; September 16, 1884 – August 7, 1961), known by his stage name Long Tack Sam, was a Chinese-born American magician, acrobat, and vaudeville performer. Early life and career Long Tack Sam, also known as Tack Sa ...

Background

Fleming has a

B.A. A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

(Hon) from the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

in 1984, and with a B.F.A. (

Diploma A diploma is a document awarded by an educational institution (such as a college or university) testifying the recipient has graduated by successfully completing their courses of studies. Historically, it has also referred to a charter or offi ...

animation Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animati ...

) from the

Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design The Emily Carr University of Art and Design (stylized as Emily Carr University of Art + Design and abbreviated as ECU) is a public university of art school, art and design located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Founded in 1925 as the Van ...

and the

Open University The Open University (OU) is a Public university, public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment, number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate ...

in 1989. Later, she did an M.F.A. at

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a Public university, public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It maintains three campuses in Greater Vancouver, respectively located in Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, British Columbia, Surrey, and ...

's School for the Contemporary Arts in 1992. She completed the Cineplex Entertainment Film Program Directors' Lab in 1992 and was a resident at the

Canadian Film Centre The Canadian Film Centre (CFC) is a charitable organization founded in 1988 by filmmaker Norman Jewison in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Originally launched as a film school, today it provides training, development and advancement opportunities for ...

(CFC) in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

in the same year until 1993. In the following year, she was chosen by the painter,

Lawrence Weiner Lawrence Charles Weiner (February 10, 1942December 2, 2021) was an artist born and raised in New York City. One of the central figures in the formation of Conceptual Art in the 1960s, Lawrence Weiner explored the potentials of language as a scu ...

, to be an

artist in residence Artist-in-residence (also Writer-in-residence), or artist residencies, encompass a wide spectrum of artistic programs that involve a collaboration between artists and hosting organisations, institutions, or communities. They are programs that pr ...

at the

Akademie Schloss Solitude The Akademie Schloss Solitude is a foundation under public law. The main aspect of the Akademie is to promote mainly younger, particularly gifted artists and scientists by means of residency fellowships and also by organizing events and exhibitio ...

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

until 1995. Fleming was a graduate film advisor at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a Private university, private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which gr ...

and co-founded

Global Mechanic Global Mechanic Media is an interdisciplinary creative studio headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is known for creating various digital and traditional media, feature and short films, television series, commercials, games, in ...

, an animation/film/design production house, in

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

. She is also the Phil Lind Multicultural Artist in residence to the

from October 2015 to May 2016. There, she mentors and works with students in the university's Film Production program and those from other programs who are keen on learning about

filmmaking Filmmaking or film production is the process by which a Film, motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, beginning with an initial story, idea, or commission. Production then continues through screen ...

. Fleming first emerged from the West Coast art scene in the 1980s with the likes of visual artists-turned-filmmakers like Fumiko Kiyooka, Linda Ohama and

Mina Shum Mina Shum (born 1966) is an independent Canadian filmmaker. She is a writer and director of award-winning feature films, numerous shorts and has created site specific installations and theatre. Her features, ''Double Happiness (film), Double Ha ...

. Fleming and Shum met as students in 1989 and have since remained close friends. It was through Shum that she first met actress

Sandra Oh Sandra Miju Oh (born July 20, 1971) is a Canadian and American actress. She is known for her starring roles as Rita Wu in ''Arliss (TV series), Arliss'' (1996–2002), Cristina Yang in ''Grey's Anatomy'' (2005–14), and Eve Polastri in ''Kill ...

in 1994. Fleming later met Oh again at the

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world. Founded in 1976, the festival takes place every year in early September. The organi ...

in 2014 and asked her to perform

voice-over Voice-over (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique used in radio, television, filmmaking, theatre, and other media in which a descriptive or expository voice that is not part of the narrative (i.e., non- ...

in and produce her animated feature, ''

'' (2016). The film is largely financed by

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance, to fund projects "withou ...

through

Indiegogo Indiegogo is an American crowdfunding website founded in 2008 by Danae Ringelmann, Slava Rubin, and Eric Schell. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California. The site is one of the first sites to offer crowd funding. Indiegogo allows peo ...

Stick Girl

In her early days as an

student in the 1980s, Fleming refused to drop out of school after sustaining injuries from a car accident. Her severely limited mobility during recovery allowed her to draw only 'tiny little gestures' which led to the creation of her iconic avatar and muse, 'Stick Girl'. Stick Girl has two slanted black lines for eyes, reflecting Fleming's Asian heritage. Fleming uses Stick Girl to represent herself in her biographical documentary, ''The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam'' (2003). Stick Girl will also play Rosie Ming (voiced by

), an Asian-Canadian poet with

and

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

roots, in ''Window Horses.''

''The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam'' (2003)

While recovering from the same traffic accident, Fleming acquired 16 mm film reels, home movies of her great-grandfather, the mysterious Asian magician,

. Intrigued, she went to find out more about how a

man could have been a successful

star during days of political strife and racial tension in the early 20th century who was, as the film later reveals, world-renowned, yet forgotten. As a narrator and character herself in the story, Fleming traces her grandfather's footsteps all over the world, from

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

and later back to Canada. Her journey for clarity proves difficult when contradicting origin stories for Long emerge. Daniella Trimboli argues that instead of focusing on multiplicities, Fleming deconstructs the idea of singular truth by blending traditional

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

forms with her non-conventional storytelling techniques. Fleming does this by combining

comic-book A comic book, comic-magazine, or simply comic is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and written narrative, ...

strips for Long's origin stories and

of characters in old photographs with

interview An interview is a structured conversation where one participant asks questions, and the other provides answers.Merriam Webster DictionaryInterview Dictionary definition, Retrieved February 16, 2016 In common parlance, the word "interview" re ...

first-person narration A first-person narrative (also known as a first-person perspective, voice, point of view, etc.) is a mode of storytelling in which a storyteller recounts events from that storyteller's own personal point of view, using first-person grammar suc ...

and old

footage In filmmaking and video production, footage is raw, unedited material as originally filmed by a movie camera or recorded by a digital video camera, which typically must be film editing, edited to create a motion picture, digital video, video cli ...

. ''The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam'' is part of a subgenre that Jim Lane calls the 'family portrait

' in which the boundaries of private and public histories intersect as the filmmaker's life interweaves with the family in focus, as an

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, and insights. This genre allows individuals to share thei ...

layering the

biography A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curri ...

of the family. An example of this is Fleming's profession directly affecting Long's; the movies were overtaking

in the American mainstream entertainment business. Rocio C. Davis sees the documentary as an important project and product of Asian Canadian cultural and historical revisioning, a way for Fleming to claim for her ancestor, and by extension, for herself, a place within Canada's cultural and historical narrative. Trimboli also notes that the film can be a useful tool for engaging in

cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all human beings are members of a single community. Its adherents are known as cosmopolitan or cosmopolite. Cosmopolitanism is both prescriptive and aspirational, believing humans can and should be " world citizen ...

with its 'persistent self-reflexivity' on the ideas and themes of cultural differences,

ethnic identity An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, rel ...

, and

orientalism In art history, literature, and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects of the Eastern world (or "Orient") by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. Orientalist painting, particularly of the Middle ...

.Trimboli, Daniella. (2015). "Memory Magic: Cosmopolitanism And The Magical Life Of Long Tack Sam". ''Continuum'' 29 (3): 479-489. doi:10.1080/10304312.2014.986063. In 2007, Fleming made a

graphic novel A graphic novel is a self-contained, book-length form of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and Anthology, anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics sc ...

adaptation of the film which won the Doug Wright "Best Book Award" for graphic novels in 2008 and had two Eisner award nominations.

Filmography

*''Waving'' (1987) *'' You Take Care Now'' (1989) *''New Shoes: an interview in exactly 5 minutes'' (1990) — a segment of movie ''

Five Feminist Minutes ''Five Feminist Minutes'' is a Canadian short film anthology released in 1990 by the National Film Board of Canada. The films were produced independently for the 15th anniversary of Studio D of the National Film Board of Canada in collaboration ...

'' *''Pioneers of X-Ray Technology'' (1991) *''So Far So...'' (1992) *''It's Me, Again'' (1993) *''Buckingham Palace'' (1993) *''La Fabula della bella Familia auf du World'' (1993) *''My Boyfriend Gave Me Peaches'' (1994) *''I Love My Work'' (1994) *''Pleasure Film (Ahmed's Story)'' (1995) *''Automatic Writing'' (1996) *''Great Expectations: not what you're thinking'' (1997) *''AMF's Tiresias'' (1998) *''One & Only'' (1999) *''Hysterical: the musical'' (2000) *''Lip Service: a mystery'' (2001) *''Aguas de Março'' (2002) *'' Blue Skies'' (2002) *''The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam'' (2003) *''Room 710'' (2005) *''The French Guy'' (2005) *''

My Obscure Object of Desire My or MY may refer to: Arts and entertainment * My (radio station), a Malaysian radio station * Little My, a fictional character in the Moomins universe * ''My'' (album), by Edyta Górniak * ''My'' (EP), by Cho Mi-yeon Business * Market ...

'' (2006) *''Running'' (2008) *''Landslide'' (2008) *''My Place webisodes'' (2009) *''Window Horses Karaoke Project'' (2009) *''

I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors ''I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors'' is a 2010 animated film by Ann Marie Fleming based on a 2006 autobiographical graphic novel by Bernice Eisenstein. In the book and its film adaptation, Eisenstein explores her own identity through the exper ...

'' (2010) *''Gluttony'' (2011) *''Big Trees'' (2013) *''

'' (2016) *'' Vancouver April 2020 18:59:30 PT'' (2020)Norman Wilner
"Canadian directors are making films in self-isolation"
''

Now Now most commonly refers to the present time. Now, NOW, or The Now may also refer to: Organizations * Natal Organisation of Women, a South African women's organization * National Organization for Women, an American feminist organization * Na ...

'', May 12, 2020. *''

Can I Get a Witness? ''Can I Get a Witness?'' is a 2024 Canadian science fiction film directed by Ann Marie Fleming. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 2024. It is set to be released in Canada on March 14, 2025. Premise B ...

'' (2024)

References

External links

* *
Ann Marie Fleming Biography and Filmography on Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fleming, Ann Marie 1962 births People from Okinawa Prefecture Film directors from Vancouver Living people Canadian Film Centre alumni Canadian people of Chinese descent Canadian women film directors Emily Carr University of Art and Design alumni Asian-Canadian filmmakers University of British Columbia alumni Simon Fraser University alumni