Why I Hate Bees is a comedic journey into a young girl’s memories of near death, based on the short story written by Nancy Jo Cullen.

When I discovered Nancy Jo Cullen’s Short story “Why I Hate Bees” in the quarterly literary magazine Grain, it had just won an honorable mention in this Canadian publication’s writing contest. The complete text of Nancy Jo Cullen’s story serves as the narration to the film. For the accompanying visuals and sound, I play with the way memory races ahead or lags behind the stories we tell, and the tendency it has to linger on the things we do not mention in our stories. Through optical printing, use of color, animation and sound, I interpret the memory and point of view of the young narrator – sometimes touching directly on her story, other times suggesting what she might have experienced but is not telling.