Tamara Black On Female Representation In Filmmaking And Directing ‘The After School Club’

This filmmaker is so inspirational!

A talented producer and director, Tamara Black is setting the standard for bringing a story to life. Her newest project is high school drama ‘The After School Club’, which premiered at the 2025 Whistler Film Festival.

We had the absolute pleasure of speaking with Tamara about female representation in filmmaking, her television-making dream, and more!

When did you first realize that you wanted to pursue a career as a director?

T: “I took a film class in high school and absolutely loved it. Even though I didn’t pursue it as a career until a decade later, it was always in the back of my mind. After starting in the industry as a production assistant and moving into the assistant director role, I took my first try at directing a music video. Right away, I knew it was something I wanted to move towards more substantially, however I could.”

Congratulations on “The After School Club”! How did this amazing project come to be?

T: “Thank you! I feel very lucky to have made this project. Many rewrites and applications later, the Canada Council for the Arts granted us production funding. Alex, our writer and lead cast, and I had been working on a few different concepts and decided this was the best one to move forward with at this point in our careers. We are so thankful to the Canada Council for being both artist-forward and granting funding proportionate to what we were trying to make.”

This short was filmed in just three days! What was the filming experience like? Any favorite moments?

T: “Honestly, every moment of it. This was one of the most memorable sets I’ve been a part of. We had to switch our dates to shoot at the amazing University Women’s Club and, serendipitously, most of our original crew was still free. Production is always tricky in the early stages, but once we had our location, it felt like all the puzzle pieces fell into place. 

We had a party scene on the last day, and I was so paranoid that something would spill on the antique furniture. We filmed what we needed to, had our wrap cheers, and comically enough, I was the one to spill the fake beer (thankfully, not on anything expensive). I just stood in the grand hall to pause after the chaos of it all. After you’re so worried something will go wrong, once you pull it off, it’s important to take a moment of gratitude for the team and what you accomplished. A reminder outside of the doubts, that “no, I do have the skills to make something happen.”

This is the school drama that we needed. Were there any classic film or TV school dramas that you used as inspiration?

T: “We love a high school drama! It’s a classic format that you can really experiment with and make your own. Our main references for this were ‘Heathers’, ‘Election’ and the more recent show ‘The Politician’. We really wanted the dialogue to be punchy and “gasp, did they really say that?” and I think we achieved this. Quinn, played by Gabrielle Kaur Cheema, especially. My favorite quote is from our story editor: ‘I hate her, but she’s my favorite character.’ That’s exactly the reaction we wanted from Quinn.”

How important do you think female representation is behind the camera?

T: “Extremely important. How can you engage in any art form without different perspectives? I don’t want to be in any room where everyone looks and sounds like me, and representation in the mainstream should be no different. Filmmaking is such a unique process where you’re bringing the vision in your head to life so tangibly. We get to step into stories and lives we’ve never lived ourselves, and that’s what makes it so exciting and informative. The more voices we bring to the table, the more we stretch the boundaries of genre and what we see on screen. I think we’ve made a lot of progress recently, although there is still a lot of work to be done.”

From podcasts to short films, you’ve worked in several creative mediums. Is there a style of project you haven’t taken on yet that you’d love to in the future? 

T: “I’d love to direct narrative episodic TV. There’s this notion of the auteur in our business, but there’s something unique and exciting about the way television is made. The number of voices and teamwork that roll up into a core vision is incredible. You have the showrunner, the lead cast, the producers, and each episodic director, interacting differently than they would in other formats, and this process has always intrigued me.”

Photo Credit: Noah Asanias

Je’Kayla Crawford– Founder and Director– Je’Kayla has been a journalist for years and decided to start a publication of her own, New Scene Magazine, back in October 2020. When not helping her team and working on their print issues, you can find her watching a movie on Netflix or baking using a viral TikTok recipe.