The Ballad of Annie Londonderry

Short film using set built at Base31

Part of one of the huge hangars at Base31 has been converted into an eclectic curiosity shop full of knickknacks as the set for a short film called The Ballad of Annie Londonderry. The film is based on a short segment of a play by Evalyn Parry called Spin, which was staged at the Regent Theatre in 2019. The play is an exploration of the feminist history of the bicycle and was inspired by Ms. Parry’s love of cycling. “It tells a bunch of stories connected to the theme of how the bike was a symbol of women’s liberation in the 1890s when the bike was invented. One of the centrepieces of the show was The Ballad of Annie Londonderry, which is the story of the first woman to ride around the world on a bicycle in 1895,” she said. The play featured a unique percussion instrument—a bicycle. “We used a bike in the live stage show. It had a couple of contact microphones that picked up vibrations, so it amplified when it was hit with a hand or a drumstick, and so we discovered this unique electro-acoustic instrument and paired it with these songs and stories and poems,” said Ms. Parry. The show toured across Canada and the US. During the pandemic, Ms. Parry applied for a Canada Council grant that was being offered for digital adaptation of live performance work that was all halted at that time. Her application was successful and she approached County filmmaker Tess Girard with the idea of a digital adaptation of Spin. The pair soon realized that it was far too ambitious a project to produce the entire show as a film, so they reduced it to just one segment of the play.

Studio space in Toronto was well beyond the budget for this film, so Ms. Girard approached Base31 with the idea of using one of their hangars. “There’s a lot of labour-intensive things and it starts to eat up a meagre budget, and we needed time to build the set and have time to play and be flexible during filming,” said Ms. Girard.

“We came up with this idea of this eclectic shop with knick-knacks and bicycles and a Rube Goldberg machine, and all these different elements to tell the story of Annie Londonderry.” She approached the Department of Illumination to build puppets for the film, and a crew comprised of County and Toronto professionals started building the set on September 25. The actual filming took place between October 2 and October 5. While the arc of the film is based on one segment of the play, the story evolved during the filming. “It’s a wildly imaginative interpretation of the story. There’s a visual world that’s the product of a lot of creative minds working on this,” said Ms. Parry.

It has been a physically demanding process for Ms. Girard, who is a co-director with Ms. Parry as well as Director of Photography. “There’s a lot of moving parts to remember all at once. The script is really complicated and there’s a cut every three seconds, and then figuring out how they all fit together. There’s a documentary quality to the filming, as well as planned events,” she said. The budget for postproduction is yet to be determined, and there is a lot of editing and sound design to go before the film will be ready. Ms. Girard would like to see the film screened at the Regent at some time, but the expected audience will be at film festivals. “Even though this story is from the 1890s, it still rings true today, and it has international appeal, so we’re hoping for some more international play with this and to bring Annie to places she’s been to before,” said Ms. Girard, referring to the original Annie’s round-the-world journey. It may be a while before this production hits the screen, but County residents will get a chance to see Ms. Girard’s cinematography when Swan Song plays at the Regent on October 22. The film follows ballerina Karen Kain’s final performance with the National Ballet, and has picked up awards at several film festivals.