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LOOK WHAT ‘WE’ CAN DO!!!
The Third Annual Short Film Festival from Women In Film and Television International In Celebration of International Women’s Day
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Between March 5 and March 9, 20 chapters of Women In Film in cities as globally diverse as Copenhagen, Pittsburgh and Auckland presented the third WIFTI Short Film Festival to celebrate and bring attention to International Women’s Day. It was again very successful.
Over the course of the four days, a slate of nine outstanding short films, all directed by women and made in countries from Peru to France, was shown simultaneously throughout the world at venues chosen by the participating chapters. The festival is the result of an annual process. This year, 40 finalists were chosen by the film festival partners of WIFTI: Female Eye Film Festival (Canada),
NYWIFT/Hamptons International Film Festival, To The Point: Women Telling Tales Through Media (USA),
Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films (USA),
St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival (Canada),
W.O.W (World of Women) Film Festival (Australia). The nine final films were then chosen by the International Committee of Women In Film.
Paulina Abarca –Cantin, from the Montreal chapter of WIFT, believed this could be done and put the idea in place with the chapters. She has been the programmer and Producer for the Showcase since its inception in 2005. She calls it an awesome experience for women. “If you aspire to direct, you always come out of these films inspired – stylistically it’s a great lesson - and if you’re a writer, it’s a great lesson.”
And what about the lay audience? “There’s absolutely a female sensibility to them that’s very real,” say Abarca-Cantin. “What was interesting to me, I have to say, is no horror films have been submitted – no-one looking for the most commercial route. They’re personal stories and all of them have great care taken with them.”
Presenting chapters add their own touch to their events, A number add short films from their area missed by the judging system. “We had a judging committee take a look at a dozen or so films sent to us by members of WIFT Atlanta and non-members too,” says Melissa Randle, President of Women In Film and Television Atlanta. “For us, the showcase is part of our mission, locally and globally – to support women in the industry. It’s a venue to honor women and to highlight their work, which is really relevant and vital.”
Ironically,in 2006, an Atlanta filmmaker was picked for the showcase Prior to that, she wasn’t even a member of the Atlanta chapter. Now, she sits on the chapter’s board of directors. “For Atlanta filmmakers the showcase very important -- it yields a real sense of the supportive community,” says Randle.
Women in Film and Television-Toronto held an in-depth and interactive conversation with two of the international filmmakers the day before the screening event – with Denie Pentecost (Sexy Thing) from Australia
and Kate Jessop (Desires) from the United Kingdom and with Audrey Cummings (Burgeon And Fade), the Canadian director of a film that Toronto added to their screening.
The Short Film Festival as conceived by Paulina has indeed come to provide a way to connect with the work of other women locally and globally. By virtue of geography alone, the films carry both an element of uniquity to them as well as reflect on women’s experience in unity. The Short Film Festival is growing in significance and audience. It has become a fitting way to actually observe and be part of the point of Women’s Day International.
These are the films this year:
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8 minutes
Director: Michelle Hung / Los Angeles, USA
Like so many Chinese-American kids, Lucy and Grace would rather be playing outside than practicing violin in their living room. Believing they deserve a break because it's Grace's birthday, older sister Lucy goes out of her way to look out for their interests. In the end, the girls prove they'll do anything to escape violin practice.
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Bio:
Writer/director Michelle Hung, daughter of immigrants from Taiwan, earned an MFA in
Film Directing at UCLA in 2006.
Her thesis film, Chinese Dumplings, won the UCLA Best
Cinematography Award, and has screened at the Palm Springs International Shorts Festival
2007, the Shanghai International Film Festival, the Asian American Int'l Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival.
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5 minutes
Director: Valeria Ruiz / Peru / New York, USA
A portrayal of an elderly woman's grief and her memories of intimate moments. This story was inspired by the filmmaker's fear of loosing her grandmother. In the process of creating this film, she spoke with many senior women and men about death, love and sex.
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Bio:
Valeria received her BA in Visual Studies at Lima University in Peru. Post-graduation, her first short film
El Ascensor (The Elevator) was screened at international film festivals and won several awards. In Peru, Valeria worked as a screenwriter and as a freelance director for television. She was subsequently sponsored by the United Nations Volunteers Odyssey to shoot reports in Thailand, Nepal, Spain, Brazil, USA, Tanzania and Lebanon. She moved to the UK and was awarded a scholarship to the two year MA in Fiction Direction program at the National Film and Television School where she directed several short films currently touring the festival circuit. Valeria recently moved to NYC to continue developing her career as a filmmaker.
Audience Award :: Best Short Film at the Brooklyn Film Festival, USA 2007
Official Selection:: NYWIFT/ Hamptons International Film Festival: TO THE POINT 2007
Sao Paolo International Film Festival, Brazil 2007
Los Angeles Short Film Festival, USA2007
Créteil Film Festival, France 2007
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17 minutes
Director: Kirsty MacDonald / Auckland, New Zealand
"Oh my God! It's a hermaphrodite!" screams the nurse, moments after Mani Mitchell is born in New Zealand in 1953. Black and White is a poignant short documentary created fifty years later, interweaving the stories of intersex activist Mani Mitchell and her potent creative collaboration with acclaimed photographer Rebecca Swan. |
Bio:
Kirsty is a New Zealand-based filmmaker who completed a Masters in Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Auckland in 2006. In 2007, she worked as Vincent Ward's assistant on the feature documentary-drama
Rain of the Children and subsequently began work as Niki Caro's assistant on her feature film
The Vintner's Luck. In March 2008, she will travel to France to begin principal photography of this film, which Kirsty will also document in a "making of" documentary. She has directed several short award-winning digital documentaries including
Good for a Girl (2005), a portrait of NZ Women's Boxing Champion and
I Can Read You Like a Book (2003). Both of these films were awarded Best Director and Best Documentary in the 2004 and 2005 AUSA/AUT 15 Minutes of Fame. She has written two features and is currently directing and editing the feature length documentary
Assume Nothing.
Winner: Best Short Documentary and Best Emerging Director –
2006 Documentary New Zealand International Film Festival
W.O.W (World of Women) Film Festival, Australia 2007
Winner: Best Short Film – Austin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, USA 2006
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17 minutes
Director: Kate Jessop / United Kingdom
Desires is based on a poem by Gaia Holmes and was originally made for the Adaptation event of the Manchester Literature Festival. Kate likes to approach filmmaking as making moving image collages encompassing various techniques in her work. Desires is a composite of stop frame and drawn animation and live action footage.
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Bio:
Kate Jessop is a Manchester based artist and filmmaker and is currently artist in residence at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her practice includes experimental film and the visualization of sound encompassing animation and live action. This has recently been contextualized within music videos for various Manchester (UK) artists/labels. She is also a co-founder of the Girls on Film collective.
St John's International Women's Film Festival (Canada) 2007
Bird's Eye View Film Festival (UK) 2007
Film de Femme (Créteil, France) 2007
Britspotting (Berlin, Germany) 2007
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11 minutes
Director: Sophie Barthes / France / New York, USA
What if happiness was for sale? One evening, after work, Iwona buys a box of happiness in a strange discount store and has to decide what to do with it. Happiness stars Polish-American screen legend Elzbieta Czyzewska. The New York Anthology Film Archives dedicated a retrospective to her career in May 2005. Elzbieta has acted in more than 40 feature films directed by Polish distinguished directors.
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Bio:
French-born Sophie Barthes grew up in the Middle East and South America. A Columbia University graduate, she co-directed the short film
SNOWBLINK with cinematographer Andrij Parekh and a Unicef documentary in Yemen on women literacy programs. Her award-winning short film
HAPPINESS played at Sundance '07 and in more than sixty film festivals. Both
HAPPINESS and COLD SOULS, her feature-length screenplay, won the NYSCA Individual Artists Grants and the Showtime Tony Cox Award for Best Screenplay. Sophie completed her residency at the Nantucket Screenwriters' Colony and the 2007 Sundance Directors & Screenwriters Labs. She is currently directing her first feature film
COLD SOULS, with Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn and Emily Watson. She lives in New York City.
Winner: Best Live Action Short under 15 mins – Palm Springs International Short Film Festival 2007
Prague Short Film Festival, Czech Republic 2007
2007 Sundance Film Festival, USA
Austin Film Festival, USA 2007
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11 minutes
Director: Geneviève Poulette / Montreal, Canada
Film director Marie-Helene and fashion stylist Zoe have been friends for a long time and single for even longer. Every Friday night, they get together to party and forget their single status. One crazy Friday, they sign up on "Meet-market.ca", an online dating site. From virtual discussions to actual meetings, the girls are faced with one surprise after another... and so are their partners!
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Bio:
Graduating with a BA in Psychology, Geneviève studied film production at the Institut National de l'Image et du Son (INIS) in Montreal. She directed the short fiction film
Jingle (2001), which won a Public Prize at the FFM, as well as being selected in official competition in many International Festivals (Toronto, Los Angeles, Namur, etc.). After receiving a scholarship in 2002, she traveled to Mexico where she wrote the screenplay and directed the documentary
El mago del Coyoacan. In 2004, she directed her second short film,
Kafarnaüm, which was selected in international festivals and sold to SRC, Canada's French language national network.
Meet-market.ca is her third short film to date.
Winner: Gold Remi Award – WorldFest Houston USA, 2007
St. John's International Women's Film Festival (Canada) 2007
Official Competition: Off-courts Trouville, France 2007
Official Competition: Newport Beach Film Festival USA
Official Competition - Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québécois, Canada, 2007
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5 mins, 20 secs.
Director: Susan Jacobson / United Kingdom
Kate is a talented photojournalist. She risks her life to deliver powerful images to the waiting world until a photograph of a Girl changes her life forever. |
Bio:
Susan grew up in South Africa and Australia before settling in London. She worked in a variety of areas including production, cinematography, script development and sound before starting her career as a director. She has since successfully directed shorts, music videos and commercials that have won awards, attended over 40 festivals and been broadcast in the UK and around the world.
One Hundredth of a Second was inspired by the bravery of the photojournalists covering the crime in post-apartheid South Africa, as well as a strong interest in the role of the media today. After writing and directing several short films, Susan is currently writing her feature film,
A LOVE STORY, which is in development with Metlab in the UK and which she will also direct.
Official Selection – Palm Springs International Shorts Festival 2007
Winner - Special Jury Prize :: Funchal Film Festival, Portugal
Winner - New Producer's Alliance Film of the Month, UK
Winner - Best Short Film :: Manhattan Short Film Festival, USA
Nominated – BBC most promising new talent – Bird's Eye View Film Festival, UK
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18 minutes
Director: Bryce Dallas Howard / Los Angeles, USA
Beatrice is an amateur photographer who leads a simple, solitary life, content to hide behind the lens of her old camera. She spends her afternoons taking photographs in the garden of a lavish mansion near her home, and speculating on its inhabitants. When she stumbles upon a mysterious personal ad left in the mansion's front lawn, Beatrice recognizes a golden opportunity to appease her insatiable curiosity. She decides to answer the ad. Thus begins her bizarre acquaintanceship with Cliff, a wealthy, middle-aged recluse whose eccentric behavior is as off-putting as it is endearing. As Cliff and Beatrice struggle to overcome their doubts and insecurities, an unlikely romance blossoms. |
Bio:
Bryce Dallas Howard recently starred in SPIDER-MAN 3 for director Sam Raimi. She also starred in Kentheth Branagh's adaptation of
AS YOU LIKE IT, in which her performance as Rosalind opposite Kevin Kline and Alfred Molina earned her a Golden Globe nomination. Howard recently wrapped production on the feature film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play,
THE LOSS OF A TEARDROP DIAMOND. Howard's additional film credits include the M. Night Shyamalan film,
LADY IN THE WATER and the Lars von Trier film, MANDERLAY, the filmmaker's follow-up to
DOGVILLE. She made her feature film debut starring in the M. Night Shyamalan film,
THE VILLAGE. ORCHIDS is her directorial debut, a project she took on as part of Glamour Magazine's Reel Moments program. After leaving the Tisch School of the Arts Program at New York University, Howard began working on the New York stage, including the role of Marianne in the Roundabout's Broadway production of
TARTUFFE, Rosalind in the Public Theatre's AS YOU LIKE IT, Sally Platt in the Manhattan Theatre Club's production of Ayckbourne's
HOUSE/GARDEN and as Emily in the Bay Street Theater Festival production of
OUR TOWN.
Official Selection – Palm Springs International Shorts Festival 2007
Glamour Magazine: Reel Moments 2006
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14 minutes
Director: Denie Pentecost / Australia
Producer: Heather Oxenham
On a dry, suburban day, one child's secrets can be seen forever…
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Bio:
Denie started her creative career studying sculpture and photography at the Australian National Art School in Sydney. She completed a three year diploma in fine arts and transferred these skills into her first job as a standby props person on an Australian television series. Over the past six years, she has expanded her experience by working on films such as Jane Campion's
Holy Smoke; Garage Days; Mission Impossible II and
Matrix II and III. During this time, she completed a number of director's assignments and courses, namely at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. Sexy Thing is her debut as a writer/director.W.O.W (World of Women) Film Festival, Australia 2007
Official Selection – Shorts Competition :: Festival de Cannes, France 2006
Seattle International Film Festival, USA 2007
Creative Excellence Award - Melbourne International Film Festival 2006
Best Cinematography Award - Flicker Fest, Australia 2007
Best Emerging Screenwriter Award - Adelaide Shorts Festival
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