Community Post: Close to the Bone by Ian Foster

Posted on June 13, 2022

Ian Foster is a long-time friend of AAMP, performing in some of our earliest ARTFUSiON events. He is a singer-songwriter, writer, and filmmaker whose latest project – a film called Close to the Bone – will premiere this Saturday at the Nickel Film Festival. Here’s what he had to say about the project:

Close to the Bone is a film and album project. This all started in 2019, pre-you-know-what, and has become many things over the last several years.

I guess you could break it down into two categories: (1) difficult – Covid related delays, etc, and (2) a comfort to develop something important to me during a time of great uncertainty. Luckily, it’s been mostly (2). As I write this, we’re getting ready to premiere the film portion of the project at the Nickel Film Festival on June 18th. The album will come later this fall, so I’ll speak about the film for now.

Photo Credit: Alex Stead Image description: Ian Foster on the set of Close to the Bone. He is wearing a green hooded sweatshirt , a black baseball cap, and a protective mask with the MusicNL logo on it. He’s leaning on a stair railing, next to various film equipment

I’ve thought a lot about Springsteen in his Broadway show highlighting the juxtaposition of writing songs like “Born to Run” while currently living just ten miles from where he was born. I’m in a similar situation, but for me it’s just a few streets away. I’ve spent much of my life travelling for work, but these last years, the rooms of my life have grown more steady and similar. There is a mix of emotions in that. I’ve also spent the last few years hearing more and more stories of my mother and her mother, and how that side of my family coped with the things that befall every family: illness, how one remembers and wants to be remembered and more.

Photo credit: Alex Stead Image description: a still shot from the film, a layered image with a shadow outline of a woman in the background and a colour image of a bearded man playing a stringed instrument in the foreground overlaid on an image of a plain room with a radiator on the wall.

Suddenly, I had a story that seemed to connect the songs I’d started to write for this album. A life is a series of rooms. A woman remembers those rooms and the memories they held. Now in her elder years, the meanings have begun to evolve and change. We all come from long lines of people who have faced the same things, and made their own decisions on how to deal with them.

a still shot from the film a woman with long hair standing with her back to the camera, she has her arms extended to the sides and she is silhouetted by a bright window in the background. — Photo credit: Alex Stead. Image description: a still shot from the film – a woman with long hair standing with her back to the camera, she has her arms extended to the sides and she is silhouetted by a bright window in the background.

The film is called Close to the Bone, and premieres at The Nickel Film Festival on Saturday, June 18th in the 9:30 pm slot. Admission to all of this year’s screenings are PWYC (pay what you can).

Watch the film‘s trailer: