White Rock Sun: Local Budding Filmmakers Win Awards at Vancouver Film Festival
On Saturday, May 14th, at the Rio Theatre in Vancouver, BC, the following filmmakers from White Rock were recognized for their achievements:
Ashley Elliot-Orsetti, Julia Bicknell, Liam Johnson, and Taylor Snider, from White Rock Elementary School, for their film “Rob or Be Robbed” for Outstanding Achievement in Early Teen Filmmaking.
The 16th EyeLens Film, Video and Animation Festival was attended by film lovers, film makers and film mentors from around the province. The large crowd got to enjoy the production on one of western Canada’s rare big screens.
Entered into this year’s festival were 129 short videos, all produced at The Gulf Islands Film and Television School (GIFTS) during the year 2010. The winning film in each of the 23 award categories was chosen from among five nominated entries and judged by industry pros. The Galiano Island school is celebrating 16 years of providing North Americans with the unique and comprehensive experience of making a film in one or two weeks sequestered on one of Canada’s most beautiful islands.
The over 300 guests at the Rio laughed and cried at this year’s winners, as well as took part in an invaluable workshop on ‘How To Make It As An Indy Canadian Filmmaker’ presented by Andrew Naysmith, an award-winning Canadian cinematographer and director. George Harris, GIFTS co-founder, remarked that this was ‘one of the most vibrant festivals we have ever had. I think there was just so much buzz around it this year because of last weeks historic launch of over 2100 films onto YouTube. It took nearly a week to upload them all, but digitizing our entire student film library - 16 years worth of films - led to reconnecting with all our alumni online as well. And many of them we had lost touch with, so it was a great reunion: both the school reconnecting our students, but also our students reconnecting with their past films and now sharing them for the first time ever on sites like Facebook.’
These are an up-and-coming media artists who braved the rigours of a GIFTS media intensive and produced stunning work in a short period of time. For many of these students, it’s their first production. They are people to watch out for! Their films will be featured online atwww.youtube.com/giftsfilms during the month of June and will be screened during the 2011 Reels on Wheels Tour - GIFTS’ travelling film festival and seminar - visiting highschools and communities around BC.
