Maple Ridge teen girls bare their souls for poignant documentary about their lives, loves and devotion to curling.
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Sport and sisterhood are front and centre in the coming-of-age documentary Curl Power.
The film from Bowen Island director Josephine Anderson follows the lives of teen curlers (and BFFs) Sav Miley, Brook Aleksic, Amy Wheatcroft, Hannah Smeed and Ashley Dezura, a.k.a. the 4KGirl$ rink as they train and compete in pursuit of a curling championship.
The film, which has enjoyed a strong festival run and is now headed to Canadian theatres on Jan. 24, is an up-close-and-intimate portrait of young women who have developed deep bonds in and out of the curling rink. This is much more than a sports movie, it’s a poignant examination of an age where everything changes.
“It’s a story about how sport can bring people together, and about growing up. The ups and downs of it, and how friendship is,” said Dezura, who is studying psychology at Western University in London, Ont., and curls on the school’s varsity team. “I mean, it sounds cheesy, but it’s true … We really leaned on each other in those times, and that was how we went through high school together.”
The idea came to Anderson when she herself took up the sport of curling in her late 20s.
“I fell in love with a sport but also was very bad at it, so as I was kind of slipping and sliding around on the ice, I had this thought of kind of remembering my teenage awkwardness and thinking, ‘Hey, what would it be like to make a coming-of-age film within the context of this weird and wonderful subculture of curling?’ So that was the beginning,” said Anderson, now 33.
Anderson reached out to Curl B.C. and inquired about curling teams made up of teenage girls. That led her to the Golden Ears Winter Club in Maple Ridge and the 4KGirl$ team.
“I was interested in finding a team of teenagers somewhere in the realm of 13 to 15, who might be open to me following them through to their high school graduation,” said Anderson. “I wanted to do a longitudinal film that was … baked in their pursuit of curling and their ambitions as curlers, but also rooted in their adolescence as well.”
Anderson brought the team members and their parents together and outlined her plan.
“I explained that I wanted to film on the ice, off the ice, the ups and the downs of their personal lives and I wanted to be … in their homes, as well as on the ice for their entire teenagehood,” said Anderson. “I just laid it all out that it’s quite a big ask. And luckily, everyone was supportive and excited about the prospect.”
The film was shot in two-to-three-month blocks over a 3 1/2-year period.
“They followed us around for a year-and-a-half or more before I think they started getting into those really sensitive areas,” said Diane Dezura, one of the team’s coaches and mother of Ashley. “So, there was so much trust built up, and the film crew became like another family to us. They came to Thanksgiving dinners, and they came to birthdays, and they came away on long weekends. So … they became a secondary family to us, and they’re still so special to all of us.”
Dezura, a self-professed theatre kid, was excited to sign onto the project. She said the experience was positive but sure, sometimes it felt “weird” when their tougher times unfolded in front of a camera crew.
“It was all a really positive experience,” said Dezura. “They never, made me feel uncomfortable. I never felt like I was going to be exposed or like they were going to try to make us look bad.”
Those intimate times captured on film include crisis of confidence and body image issues, serious illness and mental health.
“I just feel I have no f—ing clue who I am,” Wheatcroft says in the film as she talks about anxiety.
And, of course, there is the good old-fashioned “girl talk,” that often includes what to do about boys.
“I wish it never happened because now I am being ignored,” says Aleksic about a kiss from a boy, which she describes in the film as feeling like a suction cup.
When asked about her life being caught on camera, Miley is introspective about the experience and sees the whole thing as a wonderful, historical record of her and her friends’ formative years.
“It totally feels like a time capsule of that period of my life. And it’s so special, and we’re all so grateful for it,” said Miley, who is studying geography at the University of the Fraser Valley. “If I ever have kids, the girls on my team will be aunts to my kids, and I hope I will be the same to their kids. So, yeah, it will be great for (my kids) to see that relationship of me and their aunts when they were younger.”
While the film is a unique keepsake for those who took part, it’s also a wonderful and honest reminder of the importance of human connection and what it means to have some true ride-or-die pals in your corner.
“I really hope people take away the friendship aspect of it,” said Miley. “And I really hope that they go and hug their friends and family afterwards and have a little bit more of an appreciation for them. Because, I think that is such an integral part of the film. Our friendship and our sisterhood that we shared, I really hope that people are able to take that away.”
Diane Dezura, who along with fellow 4KGirl$ coach Georgina Wheatcroft, Amy’s mom, won a bronze medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and the 2000 World Championships with the Kelley Law rink, said that while the team didn’t meet its championship goals, the point of pride for her is the deep bond the girls created.
“Being a competitor, it was very disappointing that we weren’t successful as a team. But in watching the film, the gift the film has given me is seeing that it wasn’t really about being successful, and there’s so much more to life in general than winning at any kind of sport or game,” said Diane Dezura. “The memories and the shared experiences and the love that we all have for each other, being able to see that and being reminded of that, is something that is just so amazing. So yes, this film has been become a gift to all of us.”
It should be noted that the film’s distributor, Sherry Media Group, is going to give five per cent of its profit from theatrical ticket sales to the Curling Canada program called Girls Rock, which offers girls between the ages of nine and 16 the chance to try curling for free.