Vic Sarin: The Art of the Possible

“My whole journey has been to experience life and I don’t know of any other profession as rich as mine that allows you to do that. I’ve travelled the world a million times over and lived in so many places. So, it’s been an amazing, amazing journey.”

Sitting in his Sepia Films office in mid-town Vancouver, director, cinematographer and screenwriter Vic Sarin reflects on his lengthy career: 18 feature films, 33 TV movies and countless documentaries. His trophy case is overflowing with eight international awards, including a prime-time Emmy, two Geminis (Canadian TV) and a co-shared Leo for Best Screenwriting in a Feature-Length Drama. At 72, he shows no signs of deceleration.

Vic mulls a feature-length script. Large posters promoting his movies lie propped up against the wall. He explains his operation. His wife, producer Tina Pehme, and entertainment lawyer Kim Roberts line up Sepia’s many ventures including mid-budget TV movies for specialty channels like Lifetime while Vic primarily focuses on the topics that interest him, passion projects, you might say. It’s not a stretch to say Tina and Kim allow the boss to do his own thing.

“Sometimes he’ll say, ‘I just want to go off and do this documentary,’ and he just does it,” says Tina. “We’ll help him fund it and get it out there. It’s his own thing. We back him, and we provide all the support structure.” That’s not to say his partners don’t entertain other projects, as well. “We also do a lot of television,” says Tina. “We try to balance the commercial and the human stories and, if it doesn’t resonate with him, then we’ll develop things with other directors because as a company, we can’t be just single focused.”

“I’m a bit isolated from that and I want to be isolated,” Vic says of the pre-production process. “You have to work with people’s strengths, not weaknesses, and I know my weaknesses. I’m not good at those things, to schmooze and talk to people. I’m not a committee guy. I’m very independent and maybe a little pig-headed, in a sense, but I know what I want, and I just do it.”

“He’s very focused on human stories,” says Tina.

“I grew up in a culture that is very black-and-white, a bit more emotional,” he continues. “You feel it, you do it. In our western society, we’re very much conditioned to analyze everything. We dissect everything. There’s nothing wrong with that but, at the end of the day, this wins,” he says pointing to his heart. “Not this,” he points to his head. “At the end of the day you must touch people.”

Vic enjoys a rarified position, to be sure. King of the castle, master of his own domain. But then Vic has always marched to his own tune, driven by curiosity and a deep-seated belief in hard work and the art of the possible.

“I’m a seeker,” he says. “I’m always seeking something. From the time you’re born ’til you die, you seek. You go and explore what the issue is,” he says assuredly.

Vic was born Vicjay Sarin in Kashmir, India. As a child, he experimented with the family’s 8mm movie camera and watched pre-Bollywood movies. “It was magical, it left a wonderful impression on me,” he says.

His father was a diplomat for the Indian government and, when Vic was 12, his parents moved the family to Canberra, Australia. At 17, he enrolled in the University of Melbourne. When his father asked him what he wanted to do with his life, Vic replied, “Dad, I really don’t want to go to school. And he said do you want to be a bum? I said I want to make films. And he said well, go make films then but be good at it. That was the only instruction he gave me. What will make this life interesting I asked myself? And the answer was very simple. The experience of life will make my life interesting. So, consciously or unconsciously, I went for that.”

He dropped out of university and got his “ticket” at Melbourne’s Royal Technical College, which led to a job with ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He eventually became a news cameraman. A workmate suggested he move to Canada and, in 1963, he landed in Vancouver, entranced by the mountains, the ocean and snow. He loved the snow.

“I don’t like the heat, never did. So, I said I want to go where the snow is. That’s what brought me here, the weather. The first time I saw Vancouver, the sun was shining off Grouse Mountain. Wow! This is the city I’m in?”

He loved the city but couldn’t find work, so he moved to Toronto, where he was hired by the CBC. It was a busy time; CBC was producing a plethora of original programming, dramas, comedies, current affairs and kids’ shows, and as a director of photography, Vic was its golden boy. Awards followed. But he wanted to direct. You’ve Come a Long Way Katie, a three-hour CBC mini-series, which he also photographed, was his 1980 breakout calling card.

“I got so many calls. I got so many agents following me,” he says of his successful directorial debut. He began taking freelance directing and cinematography jobs with independent TV and movie producers before leaving the CBC for good in 1987. He and Tina also married that year and they returned to Vancouver to build and grow Sepia Films.

Vic and Tina share everything: the business, homes in Vancouver and California and three children, Maya, Jasmine and Jaden. They met 30 years ago on The Burning Season, an independent Canadian feature. Tina came from a marketing background and served as the production co-ordinator handling logistics, while Vic was the director of photography.

“I was incredibly impressed,” says Tina. “He was like a light bulb when he was working. That was the attraction. He was so passionate about what he was doing.” Even today, his wife remains transfixed. “When I see him working, to me, he’s doing what he’s meant to be doing on this planet. He’s fully alive, fully engaged.”

They continued working together on various projects, laying the groundwork for what would later become a lasting personal and professional partnership.

“We have very different skill sets,” says Tina. “We don’t tread on each other’s terrain that much. There’s a fit. He wants to tell the world what we are as people, who we are as people, how we’re not so much different from one another. Creatively, I trust him with anything. I’m creative, too, but I’m also the person that can go in and do the funding and handle the political side of it. I’m a big-picture thinker. I try to protect Vic from the politics.”

Vic’s films reflect a range of topics and locales. “Each film I do takes me into an area I’ve never been before,” he says. His documentary Desert Riders looks at child camel jockeys in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, a practice fraught with physical and emotional abuse.

Another documentary, The Boy From Geita, profiles young Tanzanians born with albinism and shunned by their peers. Partly as a result of his films, and international pressure, child camel jockeys are now banned, and Tanzanians are more tolerant of albinos. Vic says his films are not political – they’re humanistic – but they definitely have a point of view.

A Shine of Rainbows, the feature film for which he co-shared a screenwriting award, is about the transformational power of love as a curmudgeonly Irish widower finally accepts an orphan who has been left in his care.

Partition, a romance between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman set in 1947 when Pakistan separated from India, addresses the issue of religious intolerance.

“I wrote the script right after [Richard Attenborough’s] Ghandi,” he says. “It’s a sequel to Ghandi because Ghandi dies at the end. My film begins at the start of partition, but it’s not about coming and going,” he continues. “It’s about what you do when you’re living. What kind of footprint you leave behind.” His message is one of tolerance. Why can’t we all get along?

“From conception, there’s only one thing certain, we’re all going to end. So, why are we so obsessed with possessions and obsessions and hierarchies? I’m the king and you’re the beggar. No, no, we’re all the same. It’s common sense.”

November 2017. Friends, colleagues and well-wishers file into the Vancity Theatre in downtown Vancouver to help Calgary editor and publisher Lorene Shyba launch her book Eyepiece: Adventures in Canadian Film and Television. Shyba has compiled Vic’s adventures into a 200-page paperback and has produced a highlight reel screening of his films to promote it.

“I became enchanted,” says Shyba. “He put me under his spell. The stories just kept rolling.”

“Is this the end of the line or something?” Vic teases the crowd hoping it doesn’t mistake the screening with an end-of-career, end-of-life retrospective. “Never,” a fan shouts out. “There are a few more films I want to do and hopefully the Man will allow me to do that,” says the man of the hour.

One of those projects, Jack of Diamonds is the true story of Canadian geologist Jack Williamson, who took on the DeBeers diamond monopoly and won. Vic has co-written it. Tina and Kim are raising funds; Vic will direct. Slated for a 2018 shoot, Diamonds is a David and Goliath kind of story and has all the hallmarks of a Vic Sarin film: intelligent, emotional and hopeful.

“I always feel you have to connect on a human level and you must give hope. If you have no hope, what is the point of making films or anything for that matter? You need an anchor and that anchor, to me, is very important.” Film is the means by which he expresses his belief in tolerance, compassion and family.

“Of course, we’re going to entertain people, but let’s bring in some substance so there’s a reason for doing what we do. It makes for a much fuller film. We’re all part of this mosaic called humanity and I cherish that,” he continues. “What makes life rich is not the fame. It’s not the money. It’s the experience of life, so at the end of the day, for all of us, I think what matters really is whose hand are you holding? The rest means nothing.”

SNAPSHOT

If you were to meet your 20-year-old self, what advice would you give him?

“I wish I had spent a little more time perfecting English. Vocabulary is very important. The right word expresses everything.”

Who or what has influenced you the most? And why?

“My uncle who was American. He was very curious about everything. That element of curiosity and the element of joy I learned from him. And the human side, I learned from my parents.”

What does courage mean to you?

“Follow your own conviction and just deal with it. Don’t be swayed. There are so many distractions all the time.”

What does success mean to you?

“Peace of mind. It’s not the money, it’s not the fame. My fight is not with the world; it’s with myself. How can I do something interesting and better?”

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