Filmmaker wins award to explore racism, mental health in North Preston

Growing up as a young black boy in North Preston, N.S., filmmaker Tyler Simmonds was taught plenty of life lessons from his loving parents.

They included tips on how to not appear threatening when walking in a white world.

"Make sure you look white people in the eye if you walk into their store, make sure that your hands aren't in your pockets," he said about his lost childhood innocence.

"You're like, 'Oh, I'm a target and I'm just a kid.'"

Those early experiences, coupled with the knowledge of his hometown's history ancestors scarredby slavery, settlingon rocky land that's isolated geographically and socially, and beingdenied property ownership on land they've lived on for generations bears a burden on its descendants.

Depression, anxiety and ADHD are what Tyler Simmonds calls his 'superpowers'

5 years ago

Duration 5:26

As a black man from North Preston, N.S., Tyler Simmonds, 29, knows what it's like to experience racism. He also lives with mental illness. He's exploring both subjects in an upcoming film.

And that's the subject of hisnext film, There's Soul in Our Soil. Simmonds, 29, who now lives in Halifax, intends to examine intergenerational trauma caused by racismand how it affects mental health. He believes they're linked.

"We have a lot of soul and we dig deep,"said Simmonds."We believe in a higher power. We've had to because of the amount of things that we have been through historically."

For that project, he received an awardthis week at Halifax city hallfrom the JRG Society for the Arts to help him develop the film. The award is given to filmmakers with a disability. The prize covers the rental of filmmaking equipment and post-production services.

The award is in memory of Justin Grant, a CBC Nova Scotia cameraman who died ofamyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2015.

Simmondshas come to regardhis disability as a "superpower."

"Working with my depression, working with my anxietyand ADHD, and figuring out how I can use these different things to create something beautiful, so cool, it's really empowering," he said.

Simmonds's first short film, In My Mind, also looked at mental health in the black community.

His mental illness symptoms started when he was in early teens. He would come from school crying and feelemotionally exhausted from trying to be happy and social at school.

When he was about 17 or 18, he Googled, "Why am I always sad?"That led to professional help, and a journey into introspection that he finds therapeutic through public speaking and filmmaking.

Simmonds plans to dedicate the new film to his late grandfather, Victor Simmonds.

"I want to explore the masculinity in the community and how that affects mental health and also why that masculinity is the way that it is," he said.

Simmonds said his granddad was a gentle, peaceful soul.

"He just loved me so much and made me feel understood and not alone."