Making Magic With Marz Gebhardt
Written by Daphne Bryant
Marz Gebhardt (she/they) is a 24 year old poet, screenwriter, and film director based in Saskatchewan,Canada. She’s a wildly inspiring creative whose whimsical work platforms and provokes! read our interview with marz below <3
Q1: Hi Marz! How are you doing, how’s life?!
A: Life currently feels like the middle chapters of a story where the protagonist is stumbling upon tools, forging allied friendships, and consistently testing their courage. My“ ordinary world” has always been academic — I started in English and Holocaust studies, where I learned the weight of narrative, the danger of erasure, and the responsibility of storytelling through the written word and photography. The“ call to adventure” then arrived when I finally picked up a camera and realized I could translate the surreal images in my head into moving pictures.
This past year I shared my work publicly in ways I never had before, such as my first solo exhibition at She Said Art Gallery in Toronto, my first public feature film pitch at the Regina International Film Festival, two international group art shows with Awita Studio in New York City, four femme and queer focused music videos, multiple poetry magazine publications, and now a continued contract as a Social Media Student Ambassador for Toronto Film School and Yorkville University. These previously inconceivable experiences exist as proof within my heart that my private visions can resonate outward, even across borders.
Right now, I feel like I’m standing at a crossroads with all my interests pulling in different directions. However, the two paths I’m most committed to adventuring upon are creating more music videos
Q2: Recently you’ve been getting into some music video work. Can you share a little bit about what drew you to that artistic medium?
A: Music videos drew me in because they feel like tiny fantastical worlds. In fact, this medium has only become more magical as I’ve aged — from early mornings of watching VEVO’s visual hits in elementary school, to binging hyperpop trippy visuals during my first undergrad degree, to my current side hustle brought to life - the creation of condensed visual spells where music transforms into imagery and whole worlds bloom in just a few minutes thanks to a bright idea, a camera, and some editing. Music videos are fairly short, but they can be wild enough to hold contradiction and truth: they can be funny and devastating, satirical and sincere, messy and precise all at once.
In the past year I’ve directed and shot Heroin(e) Hypocrite, Baby Back Bitch, Dry January, and Clean. Each carries its own strange fable -a heroine caught between ecstasy and despair, a clown-painted housewife poisoning her burlap-doll husband in pastel suburbia, an explorer’s journey accompanied by unsettling birds, and three girls’ separate rituals of purification that twist until the very idea of “clean” becomes uncanny. These aren’t just videos to me — each project is a fairy doorway where camp and critique coexist, where characters become larger than life. Most importantly, I am truly grateful to be able to focus on two communities that are historically, overlooked, misconstrued, and silenced.
I’ve only been in the film and music video industry for about a year, and I’m not afraid of failure - not in the sense of moral or technical mistakes or deadlines, but in the sense of being unseen, misunderstood, or dismissed. That risk is inevitable in art, and it is simply what makes each project feel alive.
Q3: One of the MVs,“ Baby Back Bitch”, was recently put under journalist fire by the Canadian Tax Payers Association and was quoted as a“ weird passion project.” What is your response to that?
A: If any viewer calls my work a “weird passion project,” I am easily able to flip what was intended to be critical as encouraging confirmation that I am on the right path!“ Weirdness” interrupts the ordinary, and passion is the only individualistic treasure worth pouring into any art form. As a collective, the label of “weird passion” gives a project the spark that brightly displays the work’s refusal to play it safe.
Baby Back Bitch was never designed to be palatable for general audiences. It revolves around a satirical fairy tale set in saturated suburbia, where a clown-painted housewife poisons her stitched burlap husband over dinner. That image isn’t just grotesque humor; it is a blatant critique- a surreal reflection on the absurd roles particularly femme individuals are still expected to perform in domestic life.
If the piece unsettled or confused people- good! I do not believe art is meant to soothe everyone at all times. Comfort does not create change. What always interests me is creating music videos that provoke, delight, and simultaneously disturb- work that insists on being too much rather than not enough.
Q4: Why is it important for you to continue making art that centers femmes and queer musicians?
A: Because I know what it feels like to look for yourself in various artforms and not find even a shadow. Growing up, femmes and queer people were often missing or misrepresented in the stories I consumed, and that kind of absence leaves a strange scar upon my heart, no matter how fulfilled I feel in my own understanding of my identity. To center those voices now is both reclamation and celebration – I refuse to let us be erased. Instead, I seek to place femme and queer storytelling right at the heart of the frame, and hopefully aid with fading the scars of those with similar childhood experiences.
I like to think of my projects as spellbooks where overlooked stories can come alive. When I work with femmes and queer musicians, the screen becomes more than a mirror; it becomes a stage where we are allowed to be excessive and mythic. A femme can poison her stitched-up husband in one project, and in the next, a queer ballad can transform into a tender confession in the middle of a lake. These aren’t side plots; such stories are the whole narrative.
To me, it’s not just about femme or queer representation in the media, because the stories I direct exist as a microscopic fraction of perspectives within both of these highlighted communities. These music videos are about building cinematic worlds where the artist is impossible to ignore- they are too loud, too strange, and too luminous to be dismissed. That insistence feels like both responsibility and joy, like weaving an archive of voices that history tried to quiet but never succeeded in silencing.
“I seek to place femme and queer storytelling right at the heart of the frame, and hopefully aid with fading the scars of those with similar childhood experiences.”
Q5: What’s been your favorite project so far? What are you looking for in your next big collaborators?
A: I don’t measure projects by favorites so much as by the points where they cracked something open within me! Heroin(e) Hypocrite will always be one of those moments – not because of the recognition it received in film festival circuits, but because of how online and in-person responded. Most especially, I will never forget the tearful joy upon the song’s vocal artist's face after the resounding applause the project received in the packed Toronto Independent Film Festival theatre.
Ever since that project, I’ve been able to incrementally develop larger and larger projects, with more and more folks involved,and that is my absolute favourite aspect of filmmaking: meeting individuals who want to go bigger and get risky together.
As for collaborators, I want to create with like-minded adventurers who are eager to weave stories in that in-between space- musicians who will chase ideas even when they seem too much, too odd, or too delicate to discuss. I don’t want to conduct“ safe” storytelling. I invite those who treat risk as their personal compass, and those who know that whimsy and critique can live in the same breath to reach out; I look forward to meeting you!
Q6: I know you are currently studying at Yorkville University. How do you balance your work/school life and artistic pursuits? Are they intertwined?
A: Within my brain, balance doesn’t look like a scale constantly threatening to tip. Rather, it looks like a bow. Each ribbon strand of my life could unravel if left alone, but tying them together gives them both tension and shape. This visual is truly fitting, since a bow is also the logo for Martian Mail, my whimsical creative hub where I house all of my projects, including poetry, screenplays, visual art, short films, creative shoots, and music videos.
One ribbon is my full-time work at the Globe Theatre, where I manage Patron Services operations. This position is constantly teaching me that leadership can be its own quiet art form: the choreography of welcoming, improvising, and creating a space where audiences feel part of something larger. Another ribbon is my studies at Yorkville University, where I’m focusing on the business side of creativity: the knot that keeps everything from falling apart, even if it isn’t always the flashiest. Then there’s the flowing ribbon loops of my art- screenplays, music videos, paintings, and poetry- the part that spills outward in a saturated gingham pattern.
The bow does not have to be perfect. Sometimes the loops are uneven, sometimes the edges fray, but that is what makes it mine. Together, these strands tie into a shape that holds contradictions without hiding them- a pretty and personalized reminder that my messiness is part of my method.
Q7: In your opinion, how should an artist set themselves apart while still maintaining their authenticity?
A: I think an artist sets themselves apart not by trying to stand on a pedestal, but by carrying their weathered story forward with all its knots and tangles intact. Nothing we make will ever be seamless, and that’s the beauty of it. The loose threads, the frayed seams, and the strange mismatched textures of our individual ribbons are what give each bow its signature design.
You cannot decide to be“ different” from someone else’s bows. Instead, you can fashion your own folds and ruffles as your experiences and interests grow. The obsessions you circle back to, the motifs you can’t let go of, the failures you would rather bury- these are the discovered allies that no one else can replicate, because they are snipped from your own life.
In the end, if you look around the table and see that other creative adventurers’ bows resemble yours in certain folds, then you can choose to celebrate those shared patterns, because they only make your own ruffles all the more authentic. A bow is never just decoration; it is the flourish that seals a story, the visible knot that says: this is mine. And each project, however crooked or uneven, becomes a gift you place into the hands of your world.
Q8: Are there any exciting new projects coming up for you?!
A: I’m most excited for the release of Clean, my newest music video made with the lovely band Sadie Hawkinz. It takes the idea of purification and twists it until it becomes uncanny and ritualistic: perhaps my most intricate collaborative fable yet!
Alongside that, I am actively building Martian Mail into something bigger: into a place where my paintings might start living on fabric- a new loop in the bow, branching into unique clothing and wearable art, so stay tuned! Finally, I always see Martian Mail not just as a hub for my projects, but as an open mailbox for others, so if you’re a musician, filmmaker, or dreamer, don’t be shy about reaching out!
