Sept. 30, 2020

Film looks at high school sports from the sidelines

UCalgary alumni including TV superstar Andrew Phung play leading roles in production now being featured at Calgary International Film Festival

UCalgary alumni shoot Events Transpiring Before, During and After a High School Basketball Game. Chelsea Yang-Smith

Editor's note: This article first appeared in UCalgary News on Aug. 15, 2019. The film makes its Alberta premiere on Oct. 2, 2020, during the Calgary International Film Festival. The film is available online to stream until Oct. 4. Click here to watch the trailer or unlock the livestream on Eventive. Read more about the film project and its appearance at other Canadian film festivals.

“Storytelling” is a word that gets a lot of play these days, whether it’s in print, at an indie folk festival — or at a Calgary high school.

For three weeks, in the gym at Queen Elizabeth High School (a.k.a. Queen E), we found a posse of UCalgary alumni doing just that — telling stories — for the film Events Transpiring Before, During and After a High School Basketball Game.

On a bench, under a banner that transforms Queen E into fictional Middleview High School, sits superstar Andrew Phung, BA’06, of Loose Moose fame and most recently the award-winning CBC series, Kim’s Convenience, looking glum as he watches a ragtag team of local high school kids try to play basketball. Directing Phung and the players is another alumnus, Ted Stenson, BA’09, MFA’14, who also wrote the 100-page script based on his time at this school. Alumni Nicola Waugh, BA’06, and Kevin Dong, BA’16, are the film’s producers.

“I played a lot of sports in this very gym,” explains Stenson, who graduated from Queen E in 2002. “Sure, we won one city championship in volleyball, but what I most remember isn’t the winning shot or the action of the game. It’s the stuff on the sidelines, in the bleachers . . . and, oddly, what the drama students were doing at the time."

The absence of actual basketball action in this film was very intentional.

What Stenson strove to avoid while penning this script were the classic tropes behind so many sports movies, such as the underdog who comes out of nowhere to win the final match, or the star player who gets corrupted by outside authority figures. No ham-fisted, heartstring-tugging sappy stereotypes here, says the only director in Alberta to receive funding through Telefilm’s Talent to Watch program, which helped finance this production.

Phung, who just wrapped his fourth season as Kimchee on Kim’s Convenience, says, “It was the uniquely Calgary voice of the film” that brought him back to his hometown. “Not a cowboy voice but a Calgary voice . . . one that sounds like everyday, grounded people. Plus, I was a teenager myself in the late ’90s, so I felt like I was reading myself when I first saw the script.”

As for his character — a middle-aged assistant coach frustrated by the head coach’s direction and the players’ lack of talent — Phung was searching for something different than his typical roles as Kimchee (in Kim’s Convenience) and Eddie (The Beaverton).

“I want to be sure I don’t just settle into one type of character,” explains the owner of 400 pairs of sneakers.