Ishwar L. Maisuria leads a double life. By day, the Burnaby resident is a hairdresser at Harmony Hairworks on Sixth Street, and at night, he brings films to life.
But these two creative careers are far from being in conflict with each other. Just step into his family-owned hair salon and the evidence of his passion for both hairstyle and movies is all over the place.
The floor is black-and-white tiled, the chairs are the classic black barbershop style, with a blue, red and white-striped pole spinning in the corner, and on the walls, there are vintage framed photos of both Indian and Hollywood movie icons. A glass case in the middle of the room holds a museum-worthy assortment of old-fashioned cameras and film editing equipment.
While he cuts clients' hair, Maisuria talks film.
"This place becomes a workshop for my ideas," he said, noting he sometimes brings his laptop in for his clients to see his latest editing work and get their feedback.
"I want to pay tribute to my clients because they're my number one fans," he said.
Maisuria's parents also work at the shop every day, and are happy to display their son's movie memorabilia, and now, his own movie poster, on their walls.
"We are so proud," said Savita Lal, Maisuria's mother, of her son's blossoming career.
Maisuria's first feature-length film, called In The End, garnered an Award of Merit at the Indie Fest in La Jolla, California last fall, and has won an Excellence in Filmmaking Award to be presented at the Canadian International Film Festival in Vancouver, April 5 and 6.
The film was shot in Burnaby, New Westminster, Vancouver and West Vancouver, and was edited entirely by Maisuria himself on his laptop over the course of a year.
The plot revolves around a man whose wife leaves him for another man, and soon after he finds himself working as a photographer for a private detective who works for those who suspect their partners of being unfaithful. The plot takes a few twists and turns and pays homage to both Alfred Hitchcock's style of suspense and intrigue and to Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan's "talky" script style.
When he's not cutting hair, or working on his own movies, Maisuria says he loves to watch Hitchcock's classics on Netflix and seek out other independent films.
"I'm Canadian, so I'm exposed to all this amazing cinema here," he said.
Maisuria's interest in both hairstyling and filmmaking started early.
Born in Labasa, Fiji, he and his three siblings spent most of their early childhood hanging around their dad's barbershop. When he wasn't there, Maisuria's parents knew they could find him at the cinema right next door.
"My afternoons and evenings were spent at the movies, and I loved it," he said.
The theatre screened everything from the Hollywood classics like Star Wars to popular Indian movies, giving Maisuria an invaluable breadth of expo-sure to the world of film.
After the family moved to Port Hardy, B.C. in 1980 when he was 12, Maisuria discovered photography and became "the yearbook guy" in his first year of school in Canada.
From there, his education in photography at Malaspina College in Nanaimo led him to study film at Vancouver Film School, and later to get a Master of Arts degree at Simon Fraser University.
For all his training, however, Maisuria believes the best way to get into filmmaking is to simply get a camera, find some friends who can act, and give it a go.
Not that it's an easy road, he noted.
"I don't think anybody who's not passionate about it should even try it," he suggested. "It's a lot of hard work."
For his next film, Maisuria said he plans to do a Napoleon Dynamite-style comedy about him and his First Nations best friend as kids in Port Hardy.
For more information about Maisuria's film, In The End, visit www.intheendmovie.com or call 604-644-8365.
