Director Andrea Dorfman’s film, Heartbeat, which premieres at TIFF this weekend, is a feature-length prequel to How To Be Alone, a 2009 video poem.Courtesy of Mongrel Media.
Andrea Dorfman doesn't care if you see her film or not.
The movie is Heartbeat, an offbeat, melodic celebration of harmony, humanness and Halifax, and anyone who believes in those things will want to see it indeed. But for director-screenwriter Dorfman, the movie was in the making of it, and the question of Heartbeat's success will be measured not by audiences or critics.
"I'm a huge believer in the process is everything," says the young filmmaker and animator from her home in the Maritimes' most populated city. "There was such a talented group of people involved with this film. My nervousness lies in whether they're going to be proud of what they see on the screen, and I will feel very disappointed if they're not."
Heartbeat, which makes its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend, stars Tanya Davis, a musician, former Halifax poet laureate and newly minted actress. Dorfman has been a fan of Davis's music for nearly a decade; the pair collaborated in 2009 on How to Be Alone, a video poem (featuring Davis and her words and music) that was popular among the YouTube set. It was charming and soulful – a loner's guide to the universe of one, later published as a book by Harper Collins.
In a sense, Heartbeat is a feature-length prequel to How to Be Alone. Davis stars as a single woman unsure of her place, with an underused heart and a guitar she does not strum enough. The narrative involves her quest to overcome her stage fright, using music and songwriting to strengthen her artistic beat.
Fear is a powerful motivator, the natural impulse being to run. Dorfman's film, however, is a testament to the type of moves that are counterintuitive. "When the fight-or-flight sensation kicks in, you're being told, 'Move away, move away,'" she explains. "But I had an epiphany. I realized that if something means so much to you and makes your heart start to beat out of control, you should move toward the heartbeat and the things that make you afraid."
Heartbeat is Dorfman's first feature film since Love that Boy (2003) and Parsley Days, which premiered at TIFF in 2000. She had been working in animation at the National Film Board of Canada, making among other things the Emmy-nominated animated short Flawed, which aired on PBS in 2012. Heartbeat itself is made whimsical by the animated flourishes that thread their way through the film.
From time to time, Dorfman is asked why she doesn't leave Halifax. She did move to Toronto at one point, staying long enough to determine that she could make a go of it here but not on her own terms. "I'd have to choose to be a cinematographer or an animator or a director, and if it was a director, would it be in film or television," she explains. "In Halifax, I get to be all of that, and more."
Heartbeat's protagonist seeks to become a musician and to make it onto the stage, often in the face of expectations to do otherwise. "There's a pressure that women in their late 20s and early 30s feel to settle down," Dorfman says. "I had this realization that the only times I wanted to have kids were when I was depressed, alone or unemployed. It's a good thing I didn't do it then. Because for me, it absolutely would have been the wrong decision to have a child."
And now?
"I love what I do. I get to create, and I have step-kids," says Dorfman, who shares a home with a boyfriend, two children and a cat.
As for the matter of people watching her new film or not, I recite to Dorfman a line of advice from Davis's How to Be Alone poem: "Go to the movies, where it's dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst fleeting community." I suggest to her that Heartbeat is that movie for someone alone to go see.
"I agree," she says. "I think you're right, and, in fact, I think that should be on the movie poster."
There you go. Dorfman wants you to see Heartbeat, after all. But please, just you, nobody else.
Heartbeat
Brad Wheeler