Clement Virgo is Reelworld Award of Excellence recipient
November 16, 2020
Next to Clement Virgo’s home in Montego Bay, Jamaica was an outdoor movie theatre that he often attended to watch Western and Chinese films.
His fascination with movies continued after he came to Canada in 1977 as an 11-year-old.
Virgo spent his weekday evenings watching ‘Magic Shadows’ which was a half-hour Canadian television show on TVOntario.
Host Elwy Yost presented classic feature films in a serialized format.
“I watched old films and I would start to recognize certain names, like Alfred Hitchcock, George Stevens and Stanley Kramer from films that I liked,” he told Tonya Williams in a webinar discussion on October 16 as part of the 20th annual Reelworld Film Festival that was held virtually this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “But I really didn’t fully know I could be a filmmaker even though I wrote as a child.”
Seeing Spike Lee’s 1986 comedy-drama film, ‘She’s Gotta Have it’, was pivotal for Virgo who was this year’s Reelworld Award of Excellence winner.
“Then is when I realized that if this young upstart from New York could do it and he looks like me, perhaps I could also do it,” he noted. “At the time, I hadn’t seen Black filmmakers, so I never imagined myself doing that and participating in that industry.”
Lee wrote a journal describing how the film, that cost about $175,000 to make and grossed $8 million, was conceived and the trials and tribulations to see it to production.
“I went out and bought that diary that talked about his daily struggles to make this film,” he said. “Spike went to New York City’s Tisch School of Arts and I applied to do a night school course at Ryerson University when I was about 19. That was my introduction to the possibility of me making films.”
At the time, Virgo was working in the fashion industry as a window dresser for Harry Rosen.
In 1986, acclaimed Canadian filmmaker Norman Jewison created the Canadian Film Centre (CFC) that supports, develops and accelerates the content, careers and companies of Canadian creative and entrepreneurial talent in the screen-based and digital industries.
Five years later, the organization ran a fall lab to provide training for minority filmmakers.
The first cohort included Virgo and Damon D’Oliveira who co-founded Conquering Lion Pictures that has earned a global reputation for developing and producing compelling television and film material and was recognized three years ago with the CFC Creative Excellence Award, Stephen Williams and Mina Shum.
Virgo returned to the centre in 1992 for a nine-month residency where he and D’Oliveira produced ‘Save My Lost Nigga Soul’, a short film about two Black Canadian brothers – one of them a drug addict -- who live together but disagree on many things.
The film won the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Award for Best Canadian Short Film in 1993 and the Paul Robeson Award for the Best Short of the African Diaspora at the 1995 Pan African Film & Video Festival and was nominated in 1994 for the Genie Award for Best Theatrical Short Film.
Virgo’s first feature film, ‘Rude’ was released in 1995. He wrote and directed it while D’Oliveira was the producer.
Set in Toronto, it told three distinct but inter-related stories about Black Canadian life in Regent Park where Virgo and his family resided.
Screened at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival before making its Canadian premiere at TIFF later that year as the Perspectives Canada program opening film, ‘Rude’ won a Special Jury Citation for Best Canadian Feature at TIFF and was the first Canadian dramatic feature film to be written, produced and directed by an all-Black team.
“I am very proud of this low budget film,” said Virgo who is currently developing ‘Bloom’ through Higher Ground Productions founded two years ago by Barack and Michelle Obama. “The Canadian Film Centre Feature Film project produced and financed it. Many young fine actors came out of that film. We were all young in our early and mid-20s and starting our careers. It was also a different time when you had to shoot on film. I look back at that time fondly as it was a period when I was obsessed with movies.”
Released in 1997, ‘The Planet of Junior Brown’ -- an adaptation of Virginia Hamilton’s 1991 novel -- was directed by Virgo who co-wrote the film with TIFF Artistic Director and Co-Head Cameron Bailey, while his second feature, ‘Love Come Down’ garnered eight Genie nominations after its release two decades ago.
Virgo made his television directorial debut in 2000.
‘Soul Food: The Series’, was an American family drama series aired on Showtime until 2004.
“I had done a couple of things in Toronto for local TV stations, but when I did ‘Soul Food’, it was a different experience even though the process of producing for TV and film is similar,” he said. “It was great to work with talented African-American actors, writers and producers and also with Showtime.”
In 2015, Virgo directed and co-wrote a six-part miniseries adaptation of Lawrence Hill’s ‘The Book of Negroes’ that captured 12 Canadian Screen Awards.
“After I did that show, I got a call from my agent saying OWN has a new show and they would love for you to read the scripts and come in and pitch your vision as a director,” he noted.
‘Greenleaf’, an American television drama series, was created by Craig Wright and executive produced by Lionsgate Television and Oprah Winfrey who co-owns the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) basic cable channel.
It’s the story of a family with scandalous secrets and lies living in a palatial family mansion compound and owning a Memphis megachurch with mainly Black members.
“I had a Skype meeting with Craig and after about five minutes, he asked me if I wanted to do it and I said yes,” he related.
Clement Virgo
Virgo, whose directing credits also include ‘The Get Down’, ‘The Wire’, ‘The L Word’ and ‘American Crime’, spoke with Winfrey the first day on the job.
“In the script I read for the pilot, there was this house that the family lived in and I remember not liking the house after I saw it,” he said. “It wasn’t the house I imagined in the script and I was troubled as I sat in the car. Suddenly, my phone rings and it’s Oprah on the other line welcoming me to the show. I told her I had just seen the house and she asked me what I thought. I said it’s adequate and she said to me, ‘I don’t do adequate’. We went out to search to try to find a new house which we did. It felt like the house that the family would have lived in.”
He directed the first three seasons of the series.
Asked what advice he would give to aspiring filmmakers, Virgo – who also directed ‘Poor Boy’s Game’ and ‘Lie With Me’ -- said there are no short cuts and hard work and focussing on the craft of making films pay dividends.
“I would watch as many movies and television shows and read as many scripts as I could and try to evaluate them to see why they work,” he said. “Now, it’s easier and cheaper to make films. When I started, I had to shoot on film which is expensive. It’s a bit of a cliché, but now you can shoot a film on a phone. There’s an abundance of ways to make your first film and a number of programs that give you that opportunity. But I would always start with the craft, studying the history of cinema, looking at the masters and trying to dissect and figure out why those films work.”
Founded in 2000 by Williams, the Reelworld Film Festival and Reelworld Screen Institute are the largest national platforms dedicated to supporting minority Canadian filmmakers and artists.
The virtual awards ceremony took place on October 19.
“I have had the pleasure of watching Clement grow and succeed in spite of the many challenges and barriers that were presented to him,” Williams said. “His talent forced open those doors and he’s truly an inspiration not only to other racialized filmmakers, but to the entire Black community in Canada and Jamaica. He exemplifies all that this award stands for.”
