* Director/writer: Keith Behrman * Producer: Trish Dolman * Cinematographer: Steve Cosens

On a budget just shy of $2 million, director Keith Behrman’s first feature film tells the story of eight-year-old Garnet, whose mother died giving birth to him, his 16-year-old sister Flower and their father Ed. Shooting in the small town of Ashcroft, BC complements the film’s themes of isolation versus community. Flower & Garnet is the second project Behrman, producer Trish Dolman and cinematographer Steve Cosens have teamed up on. The first was Behrman’s short White Cloud, Blue Mountain, made in 1997. Behrman’s short film Ernest, made during his residency at the Canadian Film Centre, screened at TIFF 2000 to critical acclaim.

Behrman and Dolman recall the six-year process of bringing Flower & Garnet to the screen:

1996: While writing the script for his short film White Cloud, Blue Mountain in the fall, writer/director Keith Behrman starts thinking about the idea for a feature film. In his original concept, Flower and Garnet are younger siblings of a main character who gradually fades away, leaving the story focused on the brother and sister. However, the characters spend two years on the pages among piles of notebooks before Behrman comes back to them.

April 1998: Scenes and ideas for Flower & Garnet fill more than three notebooks, and Behrman knows it is time to put it in a script form.

December 1998: Dolman applies to Telefilm Canada for development funding.

May 1999: The first script of Flower & Garnet is accepted by CBC’s Arts Performance Showcase and is read and workshopped by director Jane Thompson along with actors David Hewlett (Pin), Robyn Stevan and Sean Dick.

November 1999: Dolman applies to British Columbia Film for development support.

Behrman is accepted into the Canadian Film Centre and begins working on his short film Ernest.

Januray 2000: Dolman receives funding from the National Screen Institute’s Features First Program, leading the team to contract Alexandra Raffe as executive producer.

February 2000: Telefilm and B.C. Film confirm second-draft development support.

June 2000: Ernest debuts at a CFC screening, sparking the interest of distributor Odeon Films. Behrman meets with Marguerite Pigott, VP development and production at Odeon.

September 2000: Behrman and Dolman meet with Pigott and decide to move forward on Flower & Garnet with the Canadian distributor.

Ernest screens at TIFF.

April 2001: CBC officially comes on board with a broadcast licence, as do The Movie Network and Superchannel (now Movie Central).

June 2001: Telefilm funding decisions are delayed as new guidelines for the feature film program are released.

Canadian actor Callum Keith Rennie (Hard Core Logo, Last Night, Memento) reads the script and is interested in playing Ed. The search for who will play Flower and Garnet continues.

July 2001: Movie Central’s Shelley Gillen comes up with some last-minute funding to push the film through the final phase of development, allowing Behrman to improve the script with help from story editor Ken Chubb.

August 2001: Telefilm confirms its participation, but with no word from the Licence Fee Program, Behrman and Dolman worry they will not have funding secured in time for the planned September shoot and consider pushing it.

Behrman meets with actor Jane McGregor and casts her in the role of Flower.

September 2001: Telefilm recommends CTF provide LFP funding and the team begins preparing for a summer shoot.

October 2001: Rennie officially signs on as Ed.

The Equity Investment Program and LFP are confirmed and the project is ready to go ahead, but only if Dolman defers most of her fees to close the financing. Berhman and Dolman realize shooting in the summer is out of the question unless they wait until next year, so they begin to rewrite the script for a winter shoot to finish production by Christmas.

November 2001: One week before production begins Behrman is introduced to Colin Roberts, and after hearing his first line knows he has finally found Garnet.

‘Once we decided to go, we had only three weeks prep, so by the time I started shooting I was totally exhausted. I never had any time to do any storyboards or shot lists. I started my storyboards the night before our first day of shooting,’ says Behrman, who finds time on the first weekend to storyboard the coming week and continues to do shot lists the night before.

Production begins on Nov. 13 in Ashcroft, where the film shoots until Dec. 12 before heading to a Vancouver hospital for three more days, wapping on Dec. 17.

Post commences during the first week of production and the picture is locked March 15, 2002.

As the editing nears completion, Alliance Atlantis views an Avid output of the film and decides to come on board as international sales agent.

June 2002: The film is delivered to AAC.

September 2002: Flower & Garnet makes its world premiere in TIFF’s Perspective Canada program.