If you still haven’t seen it, you can catch writer-director Mina Shum’s Meditation Park when it opens the new season of the CBC television series The Filmmakers, on Saturday (July 28). 

Chinese screen legend Cheng Pei-pei stars in the Hastings-Sunrise-set feature as Maria, a woman forced into independence by her 65-year-old husband’s affair with a younger woman. Sandra Oh and Tzi Mah co-star.

In an interview preceding the film, Shum talks about the success of Meditation Park and offers her perspective on the industry’s evolving gender parity, setting the tone for an eight week series focused on Canadian women filmmakers.

“For the first time in my life time, people are looking to say yes to a woman with a different perspective,” Shum tells co-host Amanda Parris. “I’m getting access that I never had before.”

Joining Shum’s longtime cinematographer Peter Wunstorf and actor Lillian Lim in a panel discussion with Johanna Schneller, Wexford Plaza director Joyce Wong describes the Vancouver-based filmmaker as a “trailblazer.” We’re not inclined to disagree.

The series continues with Patrica Rozema’s superb Into the Forest (August 4); Ann Marie Fleming’s Window Horses (August 11); Louise Archambault’s Gabrielle (August 18); Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s Angry Inuk (August 25); Sadaf Foroughi’s Ava (July 28); Rebecca Addelman’s Paper Year; and Stella Meghie’s Jean of the Joneses.