by NOEMI LOPINTO

Zoe Brown’s dead-pan voice lifts only slightly when she talks about her new film. This is possibly because right now, she hates it. “Basically,” says Brown, “when I am working on something, I hate film and I don’t know why I am doing it. I get all pumped up and juicy beforehand, and then when it’s time to work I don’t give a shit anymore.”

Brown, 30, is currently working on her fifth film. She is also raising three kids with her partner, and pursuing her master’s in film production at Concordia. This year’s work, tentatively titled Liberty, is a documentary look at the children of sex workers.

Brown was an escort and a sex worker for 10 years. Sex work paid for her university degree and financed her films. Her approach to the métier was unorthodox - she and two female associates ran a brothel co-operative in an apartment on St-Urbain. The women she worked with were all artists. They shared rent, clothes, paid the bills and exchanged with prostitutes from other cities. She also trained as a kickboxer, just in case. “Sometimes it’s frustrating,” Brown says, “because people who have known me for a long time have hard time separating me from being this rambunctious, crazy chick to being a parent, just a normal person. At first the film was about my kids and how they saw the neighbourhood where I live. Then it became about prostitutes with kids, and then about me as a retired sex worker with kids. I guess it just came about because I have to talk about it somehow.”

Brown’s third film, Ruby Sister, was financed by a $16,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, and screened in Toronto in ’99. She’s since had a baby, returned to school, and begun finding women to talk to. “Making this film is vital,” says Brown. “I have feelings to express, and this is better than playing cards, or drinking in a bar and punching guys out. I just want a really personal, very innocent peek at something that is not entirely innocent. There will be a lot of issues in simply making the film, it’s a very emotional topic. Adults can’t even deal with prostitution, how are kids going to deal with it?”

One of the worries Brown has for the children of sex workers is the treatment they may receive from their community. She says she would hate it if someone wouldn’t let their kids play with hers. “But maybe that’s normal for lots of kids.” Brown reflects. “When I was little, they thought my mother was a witch because she had corn on her front door.” :

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