Not many people would admit they started their career as a clown. But for Jan Miller, executive director of the Local Heroes International Film Festival, it’s not just an admission, it’s a point of pride.

Miller, who majored in film and television at Toronto’s York University before going on to study clowning at the National Arts Centre with famed clown guru Richard Pochinko, says playing the clown changed her life. ‘Clowning requires that you be absolutely honest. You know when a clown isn’t genuine. It’s not like an est thing, but it does require that you be absolutely in tune with where you are, who you are and what you’re feeling.’

It’s this same kind of passion and verve that Miller brings to the National Screen Institute’s annual Local Heroes winter festival.

Arriving in Edmonton on a 30-below February day, one can’t help but wonder how year after year she attracts the ilk of Australian director Bruce Beresford, (Driving Miss Daisy), British director Ken Loach (Hidden Agenda), New York City-based director Charles Burnett (To Sleep With Anger), Russian Academy Award nominee Rustam Ibragimbekov (Close To Eden) and Costa-Gavras, the French director of Missing and Z, to this frozen hinterland so far removed from the major centers of production – even by Canadian standards.

Miller says ‘most often they come because I just ask and I keep asking.’ And if you get the impression she doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘no’, when it comes to this festival, she doesn’t.

Miller grew up in Ottawa and moved out West in 1978 after being invited to perform as a clown at Fish Creek Provincial Park in Southern Alberta while touring Northern Canada with a theater company. Her first response was, ‘Go where? No thanks.’ However, her partner, producer/writer Geoff LeBoutillier, was a lot more enthusiastic about the adventure and convinced her to pack their bags. The plan, says Miller, was to stay three months. Sixteen years later they’re still together and still in Alberta.

Miller moved up to Edmonton and joined Small Change Theatre, a clown and mask troupe that performed throughout the world. Back in Edmonton during a hiatus, she helped found Alberta’s Film and Video Artists co-operative in the late seventies.

In 1979 Miller got her first film role in a half-hour television drama directed by Calgary’s Randy Bradshaw. The bug had bitten.

‘I loved film acting,’ says Miller, ‘and I wanted to do more of it. But when I inquired where I could go to school to study, there were no programs available here.’ It was suggested she form a workshop in Edmonton so that people could learn locally. Never one to be deterred by such a small task she set up the workshop, and when it was up and running, asked, ‘Well, now can we make movies?’

No, she was told, it doesn’t quite work that way, there’s not much filmmaking in the ‘regions.’

So she asked again. ‘Well, if we look at filmmakers from around the world who are doing low-budget films in their own `regions’ that haved gained critical and commercial success and we bring them here to inspire us, then can we make movies?’

This time the powers that be reluctantly said yes, if only to pacify this demanding whirling dervish. In 1984, the local production community banded together, with Miller at the helm, to produce the first Local Heroes Film Festival. It was to be a one-time thing.

The festival was a huge success and sent Miller down a totally different career path from the one she’d originally planned. As a result of the festival, nsi was established in Edmonton in 1986 and Miller was hired as executive director with the intention of making Local Heroes a biannual festival. By 1989, it had become an annual event.

In a city overflowing with festivals, Miller says Edmonton needed one more – to inspire filmmakers. ‘The majority of festivals are started to generate a public buzz about the industry, but in our case the festival was started with only filmmakers in mind and then it grew to become a public event.’

Following each festival, it’s not unusual for Miller to receive such glowing accolades as this one from Toronto-based filmmaker Vincenzo Natali: ‘If my life could be seen as a screenplay and major turning points as plot points then Local Heroes would certainly be a plot point for me.’

Filmmaker Jane Thompson, a previous nsi drama prize winner and a 1994 Gemini Award winner for her film Letter From Francis, says she wasn’t sure about returning to Local Heroes. But after attending this year’s festival, Thompson had this to say: ‘I was so reinspired that it reminded me of the passion of making films, not just the business.’

Generally, that’s what filmmakers get out of Local Heroes. Edmonton producer Norm Fassbender (City of Champions) puts it this way: ‘Every year what it does to me is pump me up to the point where I think, let’s just go and make a movie. If you just find a way to get it made there is an audience out there. As long as the festival serves to inspire filmmakers to make movies, then it’s serving a very important role.’

Miller would be pleased. ‘The focus of our festival will always be the filmmaker,’ she says. ‘It’s not a matter of how many people can we pack into how many screens. The programs are developed from the morning industry workshops to the late-night receptions around the `exchange’ between filmmakers.’

What continues to excite Miller about the festival, she says in an unabashed gush, is the filmmaker. The films, she says, are a reflection of who made them. ‘Every year I love meeting all these people who are doing what they feel passionately about and knowing that what we have created here in the festival is contributing positively to their lives.’