Filmmaker Stacy Gardner keeps her gaze on the artists in her everyday life

Stacey Gardner has just released her first film but has been telling stories and facilitating other storytellers for her entire life. Her directorial debut, a short film entitled The Gaze, premiered last month at the Atlantic International Film Festival and is set to be screened at the St. John's International Women's Film Festival, taking place Oct. 17-21.

"I probably wouldn't have made this film if it wasn't for Vaida Nairn," says Gardner, who worked for several years with the City of St. John's helping immigrants settle in the city.

Through her work, she came to know Nairn, a St. John's photographer and filmmaker, with whom she co-wrote The Gaze.

"She really rallied me to move forward with it."

With the support of the Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers Co-operative's first-time filmmaker program, Gardner directed the short documentary featuring South Korean-born visual artist Ginok Song, who has lived in Petty Harbour for two decades. The film explores Song's experience as a female artist practising in a tradition — and growing up in a culture — where the male gaze has traditionally been held as the authority.

As the film begins, Song turns around to look directly into the camera. That gaze, in effect, evens the playing field between the subject of the film and the audience. The artist becomes both the viewer and the viewed.

"She looked like a painting in that moment," Gardner says.

Finding inspiration by inspiring others

She facilitated writing groups in her early 20s while working at Covenant House Toronto, an agency serving homeless or at-risk youth.

"Even without my conscious awareness of it, listening to people and meeting people and hearing their stories has always been valuable to me," says Gardner, 51. She initiated the creative writing workshops, she says, "to have them explore their own ways of being expressive in a healthy, safe space."

The program began as a writing group for young females but eventually expanded to all genders and opened up to a variety of creative practices."

"They all wrote differently," she says. "Some guys were true rappers, some were storytellers, and some were poets. Some were painters, actually."

She recalls the café events she organized to give her young clients a venue in which they could present their creative works.

"I would have a screen or a slide show, and there'd be a kid up there reading their poetry with this art revolving in the background."

Gardner believes these workshops to have been the spark that ignited her own creativity.

"They all got to reclaim their voices. I think that helped me find my own, just through working with them."

From storytelling to poetry to filmmaking

Gardner's storytelling practice began in her youth.

"You could throw me in any field and I'm going, this is a story," she says. 

She remembers inventing personas for herself as a teenager.

"I worked at my dad's gas station in the summertime, pumping gas. I used to fake all these accents. In the summer there'd be lots of tourists, and I'd fake an accent and be like, 'I'm from New York, just up here for the summer.' I would just become another person."

In addition to storytelling, Gardner sees The Gaze as a form of poetry: "When I think of the shots that I have there, that's like a poem for me."

A published poet who has also been a reader and editor of Room magazine, Gardner likens the sensory nature of poems to the sensory detail captured by the camera.

"That rope in the water with the ice still frozen on it, that's a poem."

A conduit for the stories of others

In The Gaze, as the artist recounts her earliest desire to paint, she remembers asking herself, "Can I become an artist?" and determining she has the authority to declare it for herself. When Gardner watched the scene in the initial playback, she wept.

"I cried at the beauty of it," Gardner says. "This is my first film, and it's like, 'Oh, so I can become a filmmaker? Oh, I can make a movie?' I can't help but feel that's the same question I can pose for myself."

Gardner has established herself as a creative facilitator, poet and storyteller in her own right while also creating spaces in which other artists can tell their own stories.

"From social services to journalism to immigration services," says Gardner, "it's all about connecting people to their own voice."

The Gaze credits Duncan de Young as cinematographer and Justin Simms as editor and features music by Ian Foster. It will be screened Wednesday at the Majestic Theatre in St. John's as part of the festival's Wednesday Late Shorts program, starting at 9:30 p.m.