Documentary as art
After graduating from Ryerson University with a BA in radio and television arts, Cheryl Sim began working at the National Film Board (NFB). Her goal was to take video documentaries “to the next level, to make them video art, drive them into experimental territory. I wanted them to be a political tool and a way to tell personal stories.” Sim managed to live her dream, working at the NFB’s celebrated feminist Studio D in the ’90s.
From there, she moved to artist-run non-profit organizations run by collectives aimed at helping other artists. Sim became exhibition coordinator at Montreal’s Oboro, a new media arts centre, in 1997, “a very nine-to-five job: administration, logistics, communications and grant-writing.”
By 2006, she craved stimulation and knew she had to return to her artistic practice. She’d heard about Concordia’s Master of Arts in Media Studies, and was admitted in 2007, some 15 years after her BA. She kept working full time, feeling like she “had a foot in two highly complementary worlds.” Her fellow students were a little younger but “very supportive and incredibly generous.” The faculty was extremely “open and flexible, helping to meld my interests with the multidisciplinary nature of their program.”
Instead of a thesis, Sim produced “a beautiful, poetic video entitled Ode to the Cheongsam. It explored issues of women’s identity and ethnic dress in relation to traditional Chinese dress,” says Sim’s MA supervisor, Monika Kin Gagnon.
“The word that sums up these women’s attitudes best is ‘ambivalence’,” Sim explains. “They have this desire to wear the cheongsam and yet a sense of fear and responsibility in doing so. Because it’s so form-fitting, Asian prostitutes in movies are often shown in cheongsam, for example. So there’s this fear of reinforcing sexual and racial stereotypes.” Yet women still want to honour their traditions and see cheongsam as a way of connecting with their heritage.
Sim plans to keep her current position at DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art as she starts a PhD in the fall at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
Related links:
• Concordia's Master of Arts in Media Studies
• Oboro
• DHC/ART