|
The Victoria Film Festival is bringing notable and emerging film and television personalities to Victoria to talk about their experiences and their art. The selected guests will each give a 15-minute talk on a media related topic of their choice: how they see their art, the new trends that affect their work, or perhaps insights that will provide a better understanding of the medium. These are talks meant to move, inform and inspire.
Join us in celebrating the art and industry of Canadian film as we present the SpringBoard Talks.
At press time these were the confirmed speakers, please note more will be confirmed so please check the Festival web site for updates.
Saturday, January 30th - 1:15 - 4:00
Sunday, January 31th - 1:15 - 4:00
Location: Empire Theatres Capitol 6 – Theatre 1
Click here for complete SpringBoard Talks schedule.
Tickets for the Saturday or Sunday Talks are now available for $30 each. Click here to go to the box office and purchase your tickets to this event and more!
Emcee: Richard Crouse is the host of Richard Crouse’s Movie Show on the Independent Film Channel. From 1998 to 2008 he was the host of Reel to Real. He is the author of six books on pop culture history including The 100 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, Reel Winners, and Son of the 100 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen. He is the regular film critic for CTV’s Canada AM
SpringBoard speakers will include:
Todd Allen
Todd Allen is an award winning Comedian and Writer and has worked as a writer for This Hour Has 22 Minutes. In 2008, he won a WGC Screen Writers Award for his work on 22 Minutes. Currently in Los Angeles, developing a show with the Merv Griffin Company.
Angie Burns
VP of Publicity & Promotions at Maple Pictures Corp., Angie has driven publicity and promotional efforts behind such films as Crash, The Hurt Locker, Precious and the entire Saw franchise. Additionally, she has handled national efforts promoting non-theatrical releases such as the hit television series Weeds and Mad Men.
Michael Claydon
Executive Producer, Independant Docs. Claydon programs series and specials -all in HD- for CBC's flagship Doc Zone, a mix of Cancon and international copros. He's looking for 'on agenda' stories and the issues everybody's talking about.
Charlotte Engel
Began at CHUM working as a development officer, for documentaries and reality programming. With CTV’s acquisition of CHUM in 2006, Charlotte has continued working with Producers across the country looking for quality work for Bravo!, BookTV, StarTV and Fashion TV.
Rob Merilees
In 1998, Rob Merilees co-created Infinity Features, a top independent film company. In 2008 Merilees completed the film Stone of Destiny, his second feature with Charles Martin Smith. Merilees has recently created Foundation Features, a new company comprised of the former Infinity Features team. In 2008, Merilees was voted Canadian Producer of the Year by the CFTPA.
Lyle Pisio
Started out as a musician. He has since made several films including The Unholy (2004), Another Lost Soul (2006), and Visages (2008) which won best animation at the WTOs International Film Festival in Norway. His films have been screened in many different countries at festivals and broadcast on Canal.
Madeleine Sherwood
A Canadian actor of stage, film and television. Widely known for her portrayls of Mae/Sister Woman and Miss Lucy in both the Broadway and film versions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She starred or featured in 18 original Broadway productions however, she may be best remembered as Reverend Mother Plaseato in the Flying Nun. Sherwood’s talk will be preceded by:
Madeleine’s Method: Recipe for the Actor
by Miriam Laurence
Ontario • 24 minutes
The story of Canadian Madeleine Sherwood’s journey as an actor during New York’s ‘golden age’ of theatre.
Robin Smith
KinoSmith is a distribution, production and marketing consultation company for both foreign and domestic films, providing marketing advice to productions in development and in the can, as well as acting as Executive Producer on a variety of upcoming Canadian feature film and television product.
Warren Sonoda
Award-winning director Warren P. Sonoda is one of this country’s most accomplished and prolific music video directors and might be its busiest, in-demand, and versatile feature filmmakers. Playback Magazine declared Warren one of the Top Filmmakers to Watch. his filmography includes Ham & Cheese, 5ive Girls, and Coopers' Camera (declared ‘Destined to Become a Holiday Classic’ by the Globe & Mail). Warren won Director of the Year and Music Video of the Year at the 2009 CCMA Awards.
Nicholas Tabarrok
A prolific film and television producer, has produced over a dozen films including Jailbait!, The Limb Salesman, The Life And Hard Times Of Guy Terrifico, Weirdsville, Hank And Mike and Coopers’ Camera, a dysfunctional family comedy starring The Daily Show’s Jason Jones and Sam Bee. Nicholas’ most recently completed production is Defendor starring Woody Harrelson. Nicholas was recognized by Variety Magazine as one of the “Top Ten Producers to Watch in 2008”.
Charles Martin Smith
Charles is an American film actor, writer, and director. After a few years of working in film, he landed the role of Terry "The Toad" Fields in the George Lucas' 1973 film American Graffiti (1973). He gained further notice in The Buddy Holly Story (1978), Never Cry Wolf (1983), and the successful Starman (1984). Since the mid-1990s, Smith has increasingly focused on his work behind the camera. He directed the feature film Air Bud (1997) (Disney), and two TV miniseries for Hallmark Entertainment, Roughing It (2002) (TV) and Icon (2005) (TV). He also he wrote and directed the feature film The Snow Walker (2003) for Lion's Gate Films, based on a story by Farley Mowat, which marked a return to the Arctic for Smith. Now residing in Canada, Charles continues to add production, directing, acting, and writing credits in a career that has spanned over 35 years. His entry to last years Victoria Film Festival, Stone of Destiny, was an extremely popular ticket and sold out quickly.
Dennis Heaton
Dennis has worked as a writer on 17 different TV series and movies. He directed 26 episodes of the show "Kink" and in 2006 directed the short film Head Shot which got nominated for 5 awards, winning 1. He may be best known for writing the knock-out feature zombie film gone funny, Fido. His recent web series My Pal Satan is a very funny, deliciously twisted and delightfully bent sitcom that has garnered him lots of attention by online film fans.
Yung Chang
Yung is a Canadian filmmaker based in Montreal. He has a degree in film production from Montreal's Concordia University and has studied the Meisner technique at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. He has lived and worked in the United States and traveled extensively throughout China. His first documentary film, Earth To Mouth, produced by the National Film Board of Canada, won praise for its beautifully crafted meditation on food production and migrant labor. He displays a remarkable sense of cinematic storytelling in his first feature-length documentary, Up the Yangtze, in which the contested Three Gorges Dam forms an unsettling backdrop to a richly detailed narrative of life inside contemporary China.
Matt Frewer
Matt has appeared as an actor in over 100 films and TV shows through his career. He was raised in Peterborough, Ontario, and trained at the famous Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Matt graduated from its three-year acting course in 1980. In 2009, Frewer played the retired villain Moloch the Mystic in the film adaptation of the comic book series Watchmen, and appears as the White Knight in the December 2009 Syfy two-part miniseries Alice, based upon Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Starring alongside Edward Furlong and Billy Zane, Matt helped make Uwe Boll's newest film Darfur the politically powerful movie he intended. In addition to his long list of fine comedy and dramatic roles, Frewer will always be remembered for his groundbreaking work, and his creation of pop-culture icon Max Headroom.
Chris Landreth
Chris is an an American animator working in Canada, best known for his 2004 film, Ryan. Three years after acquiring a degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the University of Illinois, he experimented in fluid mechanics research, until he made baby steps into the world of computer animation. In 1994, he was hired to define, test, and sometimes even abuse computer graphics software products. This resulted in the productions of The End and Bingo. The End was nominated in 1996 for an Academy Award for best Animated Short Film. Afterward, he met Ryan Larkin, a renowned animator in the 60s and 70s, who had fallen in a spiral of excessive drinking, cocaine abuse, and homelessness. This resulted in the 2004 production of Ryan, which won an Oscar the same year. Landreth's 2009 film The Spine won the Best of the Festival award at the Melbourne International Animation Festival. The Spine depicts a man who's physically and figuratively spineless and the breakdown of his marriage. Chris uses standard CGI animation in his work, with the added element of what Chris calls Psychorealism. For instance, in Ryan, as people get distraught, their faces distort. At one time in the interview Ryan gets so upset he literally flies apart. Psychorealism is a style first put to words by Chris Landreth to refer to what Karan Singh describes as, "the glorious complexity of the human psyche depicted through the visual medium of art and animation."
More to be announced
|
