In this program of work largely by women filmmakers from out of the province, Moderator Danielle Sturk will discuss making short films with the following guest women filmmakers: Alex Ateah, Erin Hembrador, JJ Neepin, Lasha Mowchun, Alison Burdeny and Nicola Baldwin. JJ Neepin regrets that she is unable to attend.
Moderator / Danielle Sturk
A recipient of multiple arts awards from national, provincial and municipal arts councils, Danielle Sturk is a bilingual multi-disciplinary artist and film-maker. She began her career as a dance artist and choreographer. As filmmaker, her combined films have been screened at over thirty film festivals and broadcast on most major Canadian English and French networks, such as CBC, Radio Canada, APTN, UNIS, TV5, MTS TV, Vision TV and for the National Film Board of Canada.
Erin Hembrador is the current recipient of the WFG’s Mosaic Woman’s Film Fund. Erin has worked as a sound editor/mixer and PA on a handful of projects by Saira and Nilufer Rahman of Snow Angel Films. She also edited and mixed sound for MTS Stories from Home documentary on the Cornish Library directed by Frank Adamson. Her film, Piece of Mind follows the day of an elderly man living with early onset Alzheimers and his an unlikely lunch guest. The film features an all Filipino cast and is in both English and Tagalog.
Alex Ateah has a BFA Honors from the U of M and was an RBC Emerging Filmmaker Competition Finalist at the Gimli Film Festival in 2017. Her short films have played at the Winnipeg Underground Film Festival and WNDX where she won the WNDX Festival of Moving Image Jury Prize: Best Prairie Work, 2016 for Other Half Dating Service. She has a very sharp comic sense and regularly performs at clubs in Winnipeg and created a unique cult cable series with Kylie Friesen called Yolo Fashion Divas.
Alison Burdeny is an independent Queer and Trans filmmaker and composer from Winnipeg. Her film practice grew out of WFG workshops, a teenage obsession with cinema, radical politics, and a desire to make reality more vibrant, alive, and empowering for others. Presently, Alison’s film work is concerned with community empowerment, anti-capitalism, and DIY values. She recently created a short documentary about the Mondragon collective.
Lasha Mowchun’s film are informed by her deeply committed work as an environmental and feminist activist. As a filmmaker she uses the worldview of her characters to inform style, color and atmosphere; creating unique and sometimes flamboyant aesthetics for her films. Lasha has directed numerous narrative and documentary films that have screened locally, as well as in Europe and the United States.
Nicola Baldwin is a recent graduate from the University of Winnipeg’s Film and Theatre program and also pursues her love of song writing and performing as an independent musician. She has embarked on training through the DGC as a TAD, IATSE 856 as a lamp op, and through IATSE 669 to become a 2nd Camera Assistant. According to a recent article in The Uniter on Women in Film in Winnipeg she is the only female camera assistant in Winnipeg. She has shot two documentaries and participated in two local 48 hour film contests and was a recent winner of the RBC Emerging Filmmakers Competition with a pitch for a co-directed film project called ‘If It Ain’t Got.
The Argument (with annotations), Directed by Daniel Cockburn, 2017, Canada, 20 min
What begins as an enquiry on things that mean other things itself becomes a thing that means otherthings, too. And whatever exactly that thing is, the latest by one of Canada’s most ingenious auteurs is another astounding feat of cerebral and cinephilic dexterity.
Threads, Directed by Torill Kove, Canada, 2017, 8 min
In this spellbinding hand-drawn odyssey by celebrated, Oscar-winning animator Torill Kove, a bustling urban habitat becomes an enchanting web of human connection. Threads explores how fundamental attachment is to the experience of being human.
The Botanist, Directed by Maude Plante-Husaruk, Maxime Lacoste-Lebuis, 2017, Canada, 20 min
This startling documentary by Montreal-based Maude Plante-Husaruk and Maxime Lacoste-Lebuis draws us deep into Tajikstan, where a delightfully iconoclastic botanist uses everything and anything around him to make life for his family a little less difficult.
The Drop In, Directed by Naledi Jackson, 2017, Canada, 13 min
On a night like any other, Joelle is closing up her hair salon when a mysterious visitor appears asking too many questions about her citizenship. Nothing is what it seems in this fierce and stylish genre-bending allegory on immigration and belonging.
Milk, Directed by Heather Young, 2017, Canada, 14 min
A reticent young dairy farm employee struggles with the news of an unexpected pregnancy. A methodical cycle of calf births and milk extraction becomes an incisive meditation on the implications of reproduction and the anxiety of impending parenthood.
Now in its 17th year Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival™ highlights the best features, shorts and student shorts from across the country. The breadth of programming selected by filmmakers, programmers, critics and industry professionals represents the creative strength of the country’s best cinema.
Generously sponsored by IATSE 856 and the Toronto International Film Festival .
