Canada has many talented actors, writers, directors, and other content creators. To help our industry grow, we would like to introduce you to some of those talented folks who have managed to capture that magic on screen.
This week, we spoke with Vancouver director, writer, performer and former model, Katrin Bowen.
HNMAG: You grew up in a Mennonite community in Linden, Alberta.
Katrin Bowen: I spent some formative years there. We moved away from there when I was about six.
HNMAG: You were quite young.
Katrin Bowen: Yes, but we would go back regularly and visit the community. I’m still friends with the family we lived with. I’m writing a script and book called “The Vision” based on my father’s disappearance when he lived with the Mennonites a decade before I was born. My dad was given a couple of weeks to live when he was in England. He went to the Mennonite community, and they nursed him back to health. Then he returned to my mother after 8 years. She thought she had seen a ghost when he knocked on her door. She slammed it on him and wanted nothing to do with him, but he became a milkman and delivered milk to her door everyday for a year and won her back. A year later,I was born.
HNMAG: Was your father religious before moving to Alberta?
Katrin Bowen: No, he was an atheist. He became religious when he was given a couple of weeks to live. He found God. He went to Alberta based on a vision. I discovered this story when I was shooting a documentary in the Mennonite community I grew up in. I always wondered why we lived there.
HNMAG: Great, that’ll be nice to see a unique Canadian story for sure.
Katrin Bowen: Thanks. I’m writing a book about my father’s story as well as the script, because films take a while to get made and I want to get the story out there. Discovering the story really inspired me to be a writer and filmmaker, because I felt I had to tell it.
HNMAG: Where did you move to after the Mennonite community?
Katrin Bowen: Calgary.
HNMAG: Then you moved to Los Angeles?
Katrin Bowen: Yes, at 16 right after high school. I went to an acting school called the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
HNMAG: That’s pretty famous.
Katrin Bowen: It was a good school. After I finished there, I heard about an audition for women 6 feet tall and over for this Amazon kickboxing movie.I’m 6 feet and after attending an open call with over a hundred women ( who knew there were so may tall women in LA?) I got the part. It was like GLOW, Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. I think one of the women I worked with wrote the series because it was so clearly based on our show.
HNMAG: I know Jengi Kohen was an executive producer on that TV series. Did you have an interest in performing before you were seventeen?
Katrin Bowen: I always wanted to be an actor when I was young. Living in the Mennonite community, there was no TV or radio so when I finally saw TV, I was just so enamored by it. I wanted to be an actor. I didn’t think about directing yet.
In LA, I did these B-movies, and I got quite disillusioned. I ended up going to the Cannes film festival when I was nineteen years old. I was doing some Troma movies, and they were sort of parading me around.
HNMAG: Lloyd Kaufman from Troma got films accepted into Cannes?
Katrin Bowen: Troma films are in the Cannes market not the festival. Troma does a lot of their business there. They have a hotel room they rent on the croisette, but they were not selected to screen at the official festival. I learned a lot from a young age about sales and distribution, because they’d have me there, promoting the films, and then I’d talk to buyers from around the world. With Lloyd Kaufman, it was quite an eye-opening experience.
HNMAG: So you were working for Troma as more than just an actor?
Katrin Bowen: More volunteering for promoting the films. They just paid me as an actor, and paid for my flight but that was about it. After that Cannes experience, I felt disillusioned, empty. I really felt the need to go back to college this time studying Archaeology. I went to UC Berkeley and studied Anthropology with an emphasis on Mesopotamian archaeology. I was really interested in biblical archaeology because of my upbringing.While I was at Berkeley, I made a film on rap music and my love of filmmaking was renewed – this time from behind the camera.
HNMAG: That had nothing to do with archaeology?
Katrin Bowen: Even though my degree was in Anthropology, they had an ethnographic film course and the film was part of that, a social and cultural look at the Bay Area. My boyfriend at the time was a film major. I talked to my ethnographic film professor, and I asked if I could actually make a film instead of writing a paper, and he said, sure. We made a film on rap music, “Spitting Reality” and it did really well.
HNMAG: Oh, that’s good.
Katrin Bowen: That was my eureka moment – I thought, my God I want to be a director. It just hadn’t crossed my mind as an option for a career, so I came back to Canada.
HNMAG: After Berkley, your visa ran out…
Katrin Bowen: Exactly, I had to come back. First, I came back to Calgary and acted in a play. Then I went to Toronto, and I was trying to write scripts. Trying to get my foot in the game. Because of my background in kickboxing and doing Troma movies. I was able to get into stunt work. I did some stunt and photo doubling for a while and ended up doing stunt/stand-in work for Peta Wilson in the series Nikita because she’s my height. Then I came to Vancouver.
HNMAG: Why Vancouver?
Katrin Bowen: A friend of mine from LA was living in Vancouver and invited me. I also had family here. I moved, loved it and ended up staying here.
HNMAG: How long did it take you to start making films in Vancouver?
Katrin Bowen: About five years. I did a short film called Almost Forgot My Bones. I was doing some sort of experimental projects before that, just playing around and writing scripts. It took about five years to get a grant and make a film.
HNMAG: Were you still acting?
Katrin Bowen: I was doing a little bit of acting, but I was really doing a lot of stand in work and photo/stunt doubling. I doubled Uma Thurman on Paycheck and Charlize Theron on Reindeer Games.
HNMAG: Then you made Amazon Falls?
Katrin Bowen: No, actually, the way it came up was quite interesting. I was supposed to direct Random Acts Of Romance, and the money fell through. I approached Darren, one of the producers, who said he would invest $50,000, and I said, “You know that 50,000 you were going to put into Random, why don’t we put that into Amazon Falls? And he did.
We wrote Amazon Falls in three weeks, and then shot it in 12 days. We made it for $50,000.
HNMAG: Was it shot in LA and Canada?
Katrin Bowen: We shot in Vancouver, but I did some B role in LA. I just flew down to LA and hired a camera guy off Craigslist. We shot the exterior classical LA shots shooting from a convertible car I’d rented.
HNMAG: You had the idea for Random Acts Of Romance before you had the idea for Amazon Falls?
Katrin Bowen: Random Acts of Romance was already written, and we were ready to go to camera until a major piece of funding fell through so I brought the crew and some of the cast and we made Amazon Falls within 5 weeks. The story for Amazon Falls is based on Lana Clarkson who I knew from my B-movie days. It was loosely based on the Lana Clarkson and Phil Spector incident. He was arrested for her murder, and at the time we made Amazon Falls, they said that she had gone to his house and killed herself, which I couldn’t believe because the Lana I knew would never kill herself. She was incredibly optimistic.
HNMAG: Did you know Phil Spector?
Katrin Bowen: I didn’t know him.
HNMAG: How much longer did it take to get Random Acts of Romance off the ground?
Katrin Bowen: A couple of years later. After I did Amazon, it proved that I could make a feature film, so Telefilm Canada came on board.
HNMAG: Oh, that’s good. Where is Random set?
Katrin Bowen: In Vancouver.
HNMAG: Do you think we’re trending more, or is that just something that happens as an exception?
Katrin Bowen: That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to that.
HNMAG: What’s your next project?
Katrin Bowen: I wrote a script about my modelling experiences in Italy.
HNMAG: Was that before you moved to LA?
Katrin Bowen: No, it was when I was nineteen. I went to Italy for the summer to do some shows for Gianni Versace who I had done show for in San Francisco.
HNMAG: After Cannes?
Katrin Bowen: Yes, right after. I went to Italy, so the script I wrote is based on that experience, and that is the one I’m working on right now. Kate Kroll is producing it. She’s a real powerhouse of a producer. We’re getting some international interest, so that’s quite exciting, and it’ll be a co-production with either Spain or Italy, depending on who we go with.
HNMAG: Cool, you worked with Versace?
Katrin Bowen: Yes, I was fortunate enough to do some fashion shows for him.
HNMAG: It’s crazy that you had these relationships with people who were murdered.
Katrin Bowen: You’re right. I never thought of that before.
Katrin Bowen is brilliant, very creative, and prolific. She had a career modelling and acting, which took her to Los Angeles. Now she is one of Canada’s best filmmakers and an instructor at Langara College in the Film Arts Department.
We need more people like Katrin Bowen who are creating entertaining Canadian content.
