Tag: Motion Picture

VIFF Creator Talk: The Great North

The Great North, an animated sitcom premiering Feb. 14th on Fox, is created by the veteran writers of Bob’s Burgers, Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin. The series follows the Alaskan adventures of the Tobin family, as a single dad does his best to keep his weird bunch of kids close – especially his only daughter, Judy, whose artistic dreams lead her away from the family fishing board and into the glamorous world of the local mall. Featuring the vocal talents of Nick Offerman, Jenny Slate, Will Forte and Alanis Morissette, we’re in for a wild and eccentric ride with the residents of the town of Lone Moose!
VIFF is thrilled to host Emmy-winning creators, showrunners and executive producers Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin as they take us for a deep dive into writing and creating an animated tv series – from envisioning the town of Lone Moose, stocking it with eccentric residents to casting the superb vocal talents.

Presented by Creative BC
Supported by Pacific Screenwriting Program

How to (Safely) Shoot Your Indie Film During a Pandemic

Have you been chomping at the bit to get cameras rolling on your next film project, but feel bogged down by isolation and public health guidelines?

CineVic presents How to (Safely) Shoot Your Indie Film During a Pandemic — an informative panel of local Victoria talent who have tackled the challenge of film production during Covid-19 restrictions over the past several months. Five experienced filmmakers will divulge the trials and tribulations of managing a distanced cast and crew without sacrificing the quality of your cinematic storytelling. They’ll also give some hot tips on how to follow protocols and resources published by WorksafeBC, ActSafe, DOC, CreativeBC, and others (hint: it’s more than masks, sanitizer, and six feet of space!)

Wednesday January 20th 2021 @ 7:00pm on Zoom

FREE for CineVic Members
(Email us at office@cinevic.ca to get the Zoom link)

$25 for Non-Members
(Register on Eventbrite – the Zoom link will be sent in your ticket confirmation email)

Meet our panelists:

Tamara Tulloch is currently serving as a Covid Compliance Officer/Health and Safety Supervisor for Air Bud Entertainment and Lighthouse Pictures inc. With 10 years as a set medic/craft service and the last 4 years as a paramedic and dispatcher for BC Ambulance – being able to tap into “insider knowledge” in the early days was vital to understanding the path and transmission of this virus in our midst. With an extensive education background in OH&S, in May 2020 she was asked to be at the forefront of covid protocol creation and implementation for the film/television/performance art industry and by late June was boots on the ground building Compliance and Enforcement teams all over the province. She is currently completing her 17th show in the Covid Era as lead for Covid Health and Safety with 3 more productions trained, crewed and beginning in the next month.

Libby Kaul has been involved in the indie film scene on Vancouver Island since 2016. She has a background in corporate administration and education but was drawn to the intense team environment of a working film crew while chaperoning her son to film sets in Vancouver and Los Angeles. She produced her first UBCP Ultra Low Budget short MIA in 2017 which won an Award of Distinction at the Canada Short Film Festival. She also produced Bump in the Night which debuted at the Telluride Horror Show in 2019. ​Libby was Location Manager for the short film version of All-In Madonna and worked as Second Assistant Director on the feature film Open for Submissions. During the pandemic, Libby has been advising on Covid Safety Plans and monitoring on-set regulations on local indie film productions.

Lukas Hanulak is a writer and director for film & television based in Victoria, BC. He was born in former Czechoslovakia, where his longtime passion for visual and emotional storytelling began, and where he has directed a dozen crime/drama series for major film and TV producers. As a writer, he co-created the award-winning film The Good Death, a story about voluntary assisted dying, that aired on many worldwide TV markets. He is a member of the Directors Guild of Canada, and his first Canadian production – the short film Empty Spaces – was made in December 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic.

Joyce Kline is a 2017 Leo Award winning Production Designer with a passion for visual storytelling. Formally trained as a visual artist, she draws on wide-ranging experience as a writer, playwright, dancer, home stager, theatre designer and storyboard artist. Joyce has exhibited across Canada and in Finland, had theatre pieces produced and workshopped in Victoria, Vancouver, and Toronto, received Ontario, Toronto and Canada Council visual arts grants, danced in Canada, England and France and taught drawing and visual narrative at Victoria College of Art. Her short film Cancelled Stamp, which she wrote, directed and co-produced in the midst of the pandemic, is currently in post production.

Justus Lowry was born to independent filmmakers and grew up exposed to cinema and making videos. After a Computer Animation program at The Centre For Digital Imaging and Sound (now the Art Institute of Burnaby), he spent half a decade doing freelance graphic design and photography before starting his own freelance media company in 2007, producing websites, advertisements, music videos, corporate videos, and TV commercials. Since then, he’s produced a variety of short culinary documentaries and two short documentaries about cacao. In early 2020 the international production of his first feature film about the chocolate industry was interrupted due to the pandemic, but he pushed through and the project is currently in post-production.

Feature Documentary “4 Dancers’ Dreams” Directed/Produced/Narrated/Lyrics by Nancy J Lilley

4 Dancers’ Dreams is a Canadian Feature Documentary that is an inspiring story of 4 dancers’ dreams to go professional and the trials and tribulations it takes to get there. It not only teaches all about the dance world , it wows, entertains and inspires with spectacular dancing, while telling the intimate stories of these 4 friends. It was shot over 2 years as it followed these girls in their last year of dance school and where they ended up after graduation. We are taken into the rehearsals, around BC in local competitions, as well as Seattle, WA. at the Semi-Finals of the Youth America Grand Prix and Germany for the World Tap competition by the International Dance Organization. Principal photography of the film started in the fall of 2015 and was completed in June of 2017 with a re-edit done in 2020. In August, 2017 it had it’s World Premiere in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA and travelled all over North America and Europe including Italy and Spain in the film festival circuit of 2018/2019. It won many awards including Best Documentary Feature, Best Director, Editing, Narration, Cinematography, Ensemble Cast, a Scientific and Educational award and a Rising Star Award from the 2019 Canada International Film Festival. There is a lot of wonderful music to go along with the tap, ballet, lyrical, contemporary, hip hop, musical theatre dancing including 3 original songs written for the film.

As of November 8, 2020 “4 Dancers’ Dreams” will be streaming on Amazon Prime for one year in Canada and the USA only.

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

DOXA Documentary Film Festival, Western Canada’s largest documentary film festival, returns to Vancouver to present the 19th annual Festival, now streaming online June 18 through June 26, 2020.

Originally scheduled to take place May 7-17, DOXA was one of many cultural events interrupted by COVID-19. After weeks of careful consideration and consultation with a variety of partners, the DOXA team has decided to launch an online edition of the festival. The online festival will feature over 64 films (shorts and features) from across Canada and around the world streaming online, as well as special live events.

DOXA kicks off their online festival edition with Wintopia, directed by Mira Burt-Wintonick. Wintopia traces the enigmatic footsteps of iconic Canadian documentary filmmaker Peter Wintonick through the lens of his daughter, Mira, as she tries to decipher the map he has left behind. Reverberating with emotion and whimsy, the film guides us on a journey through possible worlds in pursuit of reconciliation, both between artist and family, and between dreams and reality. A live moderated Q+A with Burt-Wintonick and special guests is scheduled for Saturday June 20. Audience members are encouraged to stream Wintopia in advance.

A special British Columbia spotlight will feature several Vancouver-based filmmakers including Greg Crompton’s Eddy’s Kingdom which recounts the story of businessman Eddy Haymour, and the extreme methods he used to construct a Middle Eastern-themed amusement park in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley in the 1970s. The world premiere of Tony Massil’s The End From Here profiles three reclusive men who live in the geopolitical anomaly of Hyder, Alaska (which straddles the B.C. border). In addition to the feature documentaries, DOXA also offers a selection of short films including Josephine Anderson’s On Falling (recently premiered at Tribeca Festival in New York City), which profiles three professional women mountain bikers.

Co-presented with DOC BC, DOXA is excited to host a masterclass with renowned cinematographer Iris Ng on Sunday June 21, 2020. Iris Ng is one of Canada’s most prolific documentary cinematographers, working on multi-award winning films such as The Stories We Tell (2012), Shirkers (2018), Toxic Beauty (2019), Migrant Dreams (2016), Nuuca (2018), and many more, including the popular Netflix docu-series Making a Murderer. This moderated conversation will take a deep dive into the unique creative process of a documentary cinematographer, drawing excerpts from her own work and notes from the field. A must-attend event for directors, cinematographers and all creatives, on the power of visual storytelling.

Against the backdrop of increasing global uncertainty, made even more poignant by the recent pandemic (potential economic recession, rising global wealth inequality, ongoing climate crisis), DOXA offers a selection of timely films from the international film festival circuit including: My Darling Supermarket, a musical ode to grocery store clerks in Brazil; Elegance Bratton’s Pier Kids, documenting homeless and queer youth on New York’s Christopher Street Pier; Lucie Viver’s Sankara Is Not Dead, an exploration into the backgrounds and landscapes of the rarely depicted African country of Burkina Faso, through the perspective of a young poet named Bikontine; Softie, which tells of long-time political activist Boniface “Softie” Mwangi, and his decision to run for office in a regional Kenyan election; Sky Hopinka’s małni – towards the ocean, towards the shore, spoken almost entirely the near-extinct Indigenous language of chinuk wawa and rooted in the origin-of-death myth from the Chinookan people in the Pacific Northwest; Landfall directed by Cecilia Aldarondo offers a visually striking, kaleidoscopic portrait of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria; and finally, Michèle Stepehenson’s Stateless takes an unflinching look at the legacy of systemic anti-black racism against Haitians in the Dominican Republic and one lawyer’s fight to protect the rights of citizens.

Committed, more than ever, to cultivating curiosity and critical thought, DOXA 2020 delivers some of the very best in contemporary documentary cinema over eight days. DOXA Documentary Film Festival runs June 18-26, 2020, offering an exceptional selection of films, filmmaker Q+A’s and live streaming events. Films will be available to stream for the duration of the above festival dates. Films are geo-blocked to British Columbia and virtual tickets will be limited. Select screenings will include pre-recorded filmmaker Q+As and extended discussions. Tickets are available online at http://www.doxafestival.ca.

SIGGRAPH Now: Procedural Approach to Animation-Driven Effects for “Avengers: Endgame”

On Wednesday, 13 May, join us for a complimentary webinar covering the SIGGRAPH 2019 Talk, “Procedural Approach to Animation-Driven Effects for ‘Avengers: Endgame’” followed by live Q&A with the presenters.

Weta Digital’s Gerardo Aguilera (FX supervisor) and Tobias Mack (software engineer) will take a deep dive into the workflow for delivering real-time FX elements to animation in an omni-directional way and discuss their procedural approach to solving some of the challenges around “AnimFX.”

Chasing Steve World Premiere Launch Party + Q&A | Zoom

The Q&A discussion will include Filmmakers Leah Mallen and Jess Fraser, as well as an expert panel including Chris Ratzlaff, the founder of the Alberta Aurora Chasers group of citizen scientists, Dr. Eric Donovan, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary, and Dr. Elizabeth MacDonald who is the founder of the citizen science project Aurorasaurus, a science communicator, and a NASA scientist. The discussion Q&A will be hosted by SciStarter.org and moderated by Canadian host/performer Alexandra Staseson.

NBC’s Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist | CTV

If there’s a song in your heart, it will get in her head. Jane Levy stars in this high-concept drama as Zoey Clarke, a whip-smart computer coder forging her way in San Francisco. After an unusual event, Zoey, who always preferred podcasts over pop songs, suddenly starts to hear the innermost wants, thoughts and desires of the people around her – her family, co-workers and complete strangers – through popular songs.

The first season of the new NBC comedy series was filmed in B.C.

Meat the Future | CBC

Watch Hot Docs at Home on CBC, a multiplatform festival-at-home experience providing Canadians with front-row access to titles from the 2020 Hot Docs Festival premiering Thursday nights starting April 16.

Meat the Future chronicles the birth of a revolutionary industry, and the mission to make it delicious, affordable and sustainable. Documented exclusively from 2016-2019, by award-winning filmmaker Liz Marshall (The Ghosts in Our Machine), the film follows the victories, struggles and motivations of the pioneers who are risking everything to bring their product to market in the near future.

Stream 6 Pack of BC Shorts | VIFF Online

Not only do these shorts showcase the talent of filmmakers who call this city home, they also take us into areas of the city, suburbs and province that currently lay beyond our reach. Whether it’s a retelling of a Langley schoolyard scuffle, a journey to an industrial ghost town, or a ride along with Vancouver taxi drivers, these are films – and filmmakers – deserving of discovery.