Courtesy of Eadweard: director Kyle Rideout, writer/producer Josh Epstein and star Michael Eklund.
Filmmakers Kyle Rideout and Josh Epstein returned home to the Vancouver Playhouse last night for a Vancouver International Film Festival screening of their indie film Eadweard, starring Michael Eklund as the 19th-century-American photographer, cinema pioneer and murderer Eadweard Muybridge. Both had performed in the Electric Company Theatre’s well-reviewed Studies in Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge at the Playhouse in 2009. And begun work on what is their first feature-length film in a back office there. Playhouse connections also secured them the loan of a period costume wardrobe they could not have afforded on a $150,000 budget.
No wonder the pair were so ebullient on stage with their cinematographer Tony Mirza and cast Sara Canning, who answered questions about Muybridge’s wife Flora.
Eadweard cast and crew have been making the rounds at the Vancouver International Film Festival, ahead of a 15-city cross-Canada theatrical tour, starting next week in Toronto.
Josh Epstein and Kyle Rideout pose on the BC Spotlight Gala red carpet.
.@MichaelEklund and the cast of #Eadweard on the #redcarpet! #VIFF pic.twitter.com/G3e4Q4lmTH
— Vancouver Film Fest (@VIFFest) September 9, 2015
Eadweard opens with a younger, dark-haired Muybridge photographing a vista from atop Squamish’s The Chief, the last location of the film’s month-long rain-free July shoot in 2013. How did cast and crew get up there? A long hike carrying everything they needed.
From Josh Epstein’s Twitter.
Production shot domestic scenes of a prematurely white-haired Eadweard (Michael Edklund) and his much-younger wife Flora (Sara Canning) at the Roedde House Museum in the West End.
The leads posed for me during a set visit in 2013 even though the scene was of an Eadweard oblivious to his errant wife. When the cuckhold did catch on, he killed his wife’s lover but was acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide.
Eadweard’s most ambitious set: a replica of Muybridge’s outdoor studio at the University of Pennsylvania where he carried out his animal locomotion studies, many nude.
Eadweard images.
Eadweard poster.
