By ROBYN SHANKS

Montreal director Karen Cho brings three extraordinary Canadians into your home this fall. Citytv, OMNI Television and The Biography Channel are airing a 12 week series, Extraordinary Canadians, featuring some of the country’s most influential people.

Cho, who directs three of the 12 segments (which profile Norman Bethune, Nellie McClung and Lester B. Pearson) spoke with us recently to talk about Canadian women in the arts, and what it was like collaborating with the likes of Adrienne Clarkson and Andrew Cohen.

iVillage: How did you get involved in the Extraordinary Canadians series?
Karen Cho: It was producer Kenneth Hirsch of PMA Productions who approached me about the series. When he explained the concept of the show, right away I was interested. I was really excited to be a part of a series that took a contemporary look at those who have shaped our country and identity.

I loved how Extraordinary Canadians situated Canadian figures within a global context. Be it the suffragette movement, the Suez crisis, or the communist revolution in China, discovering how Canadians joined, influenced, or participated in these world historical events really opened my eyes to our place in history.

iV: As a Canadian woman, how important to you is it to features others like yourself?
KC: History is often the recounted by the “victors” or by those who hold the positions of power and privileged within a society, and I think it is important to constantly challenge this. It is the voices and histories of those we rarely hear from that I’m interested in exploring.

It was certainly refreshing to see women like Nellie McClung, Emily Carr and Lucy Maud Montgomery included in the Extraordinary Canadians series. I was inspired to learn about what these women achieved despite the obstacles they faced.
It was also an honour for me to work with Charlotte Gray and Adrienne Clarkson on the episodes. They offered fresh perspectives and female insight that really deepened our understanding of both Nellie McClung and Norman Bethune’s lives.

iV: What was the most surprising thing you learned through directing these videos?
KC: I think the most surprising thing I learnt from working on the series is how much these people achieved and how their actions really helped shape Canadian. Norman Bethune revolutionized medicine but gave up a life of pomp and privilege to join revolutions half-way around the globe, Nellie McClung’s use of humour to fight for women’s rights was an ingenious political strategy, Lester Pearson gave us peacekeeping and instituted bilingualism, Medicare and pensions despite his minority government.

iV: How closely did you work with the celebrated writers to conceive each piece?
KC: It’s a challenge to direct a show that is about an author’s take on a famous person’s life story. In a way, each episode of the series had many levels of storytelling: the biography subject, the author and the filmmaker.
Each episode was a collaboration. The authors were very generous - essentially giving me a story they had spent years researching and writing and then trusting me to interpret how the story should be shaped for the screen. I would read the book beforehand to familiarize myself with the story and get a sense of the author’s unique “take” or angle on the biography.

iV: What are you hoping Extraordinary Canadians shows audiences?
KC: I hope that for audiences the series will be like holding up a mirror to themselves. I think the series can show Canadians that we can dream big, have influence in the world, and that our stories matter. Hopefully the series will inspire people to look at how they can change the world around them as well.

Extraordinary Canadians airs Saturdays at 7:30pm ET/PT on The Biography Channel.

Karen’s episodes include this week’s:
Episode 2: Adrienne Clarkson on Norman Bethune
Episode 7: Charlotte Gray on Nellie McClung
Episode 8: Andrew Cohen on Lester B. Pearson

The series will also air in Mandarin, Hindi and Italian language on OMNI Television in spring 2012.

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