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Actors Shine in This Year's Humber College Films

5/1/2019

 
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I attended two screenings hosted by Humber College's Film and Television Production program: the Graduate Film Showcase consisting of shorts, documentaries, and PSAs created by their final year students; and their Portfolio Screening featuring work produced in collaboration with the college's Acting for Film and Television Students. As usual, I am impressed with the calibre of talent that goes into these productions.

I thought the shorts that worked best this year came from directors who trusted their actors and gave them proper breathing room to flesh out the stories. Toronto Youth Shorts alumni, Jevon Boreland, created one such example in To Kill A Secret, starring Mark Taylor of Flashpoint and Student Bodies fame. The short doesn't explore new territory narratively but audiences are drawn into this world because of the strong performances, which also includes those by Glenn Cashin and Melissa Cultraro. Same can be said about Zac Pinto-Lobo's Where Monsters Live, a short that again doesn't tread any new waters and potentially could've been very hammy but it works because of its cast, in particular child actor Jonah Vogel. Stephanie Brister carries What Memories Hold directed by Ryan Doyle with a performance that make audiences empathetic and frustrated at the same time. 

I was even more impressed overall with the slate of Portfolio Screening films. Despite bigger constraints that included a limited run time (everything is under 8 minutes), a max of only two days to shoot, and must feature students in lead roles so they couldn't rely on experienced ACTRA performers to take the reign, the end result worked for the most part. Writer and actor, Robert Ryan Reyes, showed off his physical comedic chops in the hilarious Landed Citizen by Lara Cordiano. Matt Takatsch's Oscar did very well in creating atmosphere and building tension, scaring the theatre audiences to a point where many of them were screaming. Diego Perez Del Rio enhanced Simone DaSilva's wordless performance with his score in Staccato, which he also directed.

With an industry that is trying to more and more to satiate a young audience with over the top action pieces, it's nice to see the next generation of filmmaking talent recognize the small moments that can be cinematically compelling. 

​-Henry

First Ever Gen Zed Film Festival is a Smash

4/30/2019

 
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This was the inaugural year for the Gen Zed Film Festival, organized by students of Ryerson’s Creative Industries program and for a first-year festival prepared by students, there was quite the turnout. Almost a hundred people were munching on free pizza, candy, popcorn and snacks, and purchasing glasses of wine and beer from the cash bar. The addition of the cash bar had everyone mingling and networking before and after the films were screened.

There were nine films screened at the event and most of the filmmakers took part in a little Q&A afterward where they discussed inspirations for their work. All the filmmakers delivered intelligent answers that offered some more insight into each of their films.

Jonny Micay’s brilliant short documentary Life Via Rail was one of the standout short films screened at the festival. The film mixed live action and animation seamlessly, while telling a true and charming Canadian story. Other notable films of the night included The North Woods by Adam Bartley, a short documentary about alleged alien abductions in northern New Hampshire; Your Mileage May Vary by Hollie Olenik, a touching LGBTQ+ story that isn’t often seen depicted on screen and handled with such maturity.

The only award of the night, the People’s Choice Award voted by the audience, was given to the raunchy comedy The Heirloom by A.J. Franchi and Vincent Martino.

Overall, the Gen Zed Film Festival was a resounding success and I look forward to attending the festival again in the future. Congratulations to all the filmmakers and organizers for a memorable night!

- Vincent

Highlights at the 2019 Zoom Student Film Festival

4/23/2019

 
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This is my 8th year being on the jury for the Zoom Student Film Festival, which makes me the longest standing juror (unless someone proves me otherwise) for this event held at Earl Haig Secondary for the past 23 years. Every year I get asked by the current slate of students producing the event and despite the age gap between myself and the filmmakers growing each passing year, I love being a part of it. It's where I discover gems like Phoebe's Declassified Guide To Unwanted Pickups along with some great talent like Kassy Gascho, Max Shoham, Dylan Vogel, just to name a few.

Each year, the jury has to decide on some awards such as Best Director, Most Promising Filmmaker (one each for junior and senior grades), and so forth with a lot of contenders in the major categories. It was great to see Max Shoham receive Best Animation for Hearth, which is a strong contrast narratively and stylistically to his other piece, The Giant and the Moon, also featured at Zoom. Max Freeman is barely through halfway his high school journey but he made the audience laugh with his punchline piece, Survival.

The heavy hitter of the night goes to Cole London's My Fair Robot, picking up Best Cinematography, Best Picture, and Audience Choice for being a charming, hilarious, and one of the few well-produced shorts that featured a traditional story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Not everyone could make it out to North York on a week night to take in a high school screening of student films but if any of the above titles interest you, keep your eyes peeled because you never know what could end up screening at Toronto Youth Shorts 2019.

-Henry

*still from My Fair Robot by Cole London

RUFF Was Anything But Rough

5/29/2018

 
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The Ryerson University Film Festival (RUFF) was clearly punctuated by an overwhelming sense of companionship and community. From the number of repeated names in the credits of each film to the genuine gratitude and appreciation of their peers in awards acceptance speeches, it is clear that the Ryerson class of 2018 have found a way to work together and support each other, hopefully continuing for years to come. Skimming through the filmmaker bios in the back of the program guide, many artists worked on up to 11 or 12 of the short films presented over the course of the night in many different capacities, and the special thanks sections of the credits were long lists of community members stepping in to deliver each unique vision.

Examples of this teamwork that really stood out were the two big award winners of the festival. Guion, directed by Sagi Kahane-Rapport, and winner of Best Cinematography, Best Production, Best Directing, and Best Screenplay at the awards portion of the evening, brought a variety of creators on stage to accept each award and thank their fellow graduates for their help and support.

The Magic Lantern, written and directed by Youp Zondag, and winner of Best Editing and Best Production Design, felt equally as ambitious of a production in scale. Stop-motion animated using 3D printed puppets and punctuated with musical numbers, many students worked over many hours to construct the immersive, sometimes macabre, carnival world.

We are excited to see what new, hopefully equally ambitious content, comes from this graduating class.

-Katie

Young Filmmakers Telling Old Stories

5/29/2018

 
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It's always interesting to see what common threads I come across when watching films made by young people. In my ten years of running Toronto Youth Shorts, I can usually find a recurring theme for each year. Sometimes it could be something as identifiable as the growing pains of young people. Others, it could be how young people tackle a variety of “taboo” subjects. One year it was dogs. No really, we literally received more submissions than we thought we'd ever would in a year about dogs.

This year in particular, a common thread seems to be stories centred on an older generation. From Ryerson thesis films to Humber documentaries, a significant collection of films centred around older protagonists was produced. Even in this year's TYS180 microfilm showcase, which recently played at Doors Open Toronto, many pieces examine the familial relationships filmmakers have with their parents or grandparents.

Some of these are works of fiction, such as Lauren Thomas' Step One from Humber College about a single mother dealing with her son leaving home to go to university, and Valentina Laudari's Queen of the Bums from Ryerson University revolving around a homeless woman who proclaims herself with such a title. Not all films will depict our fellow seniors with compassionate humanity like Tom Gigliotti's Walter's Way, which won the Audience Choice award at Ryerson this year. Dexter Benson-Barnett's Road Home and Nick Alberelli's Birdsong shows us two father figures with major personality flaws that deeply affect their children. On the non-fiction side, there is Shivi Silva's Finding Family depicting familial prejudice upon a gay couple and Sylvia Nowak's 206 Carlton centred around internationally infamous Holocaust denier, Ernst Zundel.

Stories about the older generation are not anything new, and it certainly wouldn't be the first time a young filmmaker tackled stories based on an older generation. Tyler Schrieder's I Love Rhonda took home the 2013 Achievement in Film Direction: Fiction award based on his love stories set in a retirement home. While we like seeing youth-based stories, it is also just as interesting to see stories on a group of people with vastly different experiences from the youth perspective. Who knows, maybe one of the films this year might see similar success as I Love Rhonda.

-Henry

Humber BFMP Films Show Range and Emotion

5/17/2018

 
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Among thousands of students who persevered to finish their degrees during the Ontario college strike this year, the Humber College Bachelor of Film and Media Production class of 2018 had many reasons to celebrate their hard work and achievements. The night’s program showed an array of talent along with diversity of technique, and a room full of young filmmakers eager to continue to create and collaborate.

Short films in the program spread across a range of emotions and genres. Many, such as Megan Gaspar’s animation about a family vacation, Ohana, or Isaac Alfie’s exploration of growing up with Multiple Sclerosis in Tiny House, delved into personal themes and social issues while others, such as Samantha Chalmer’s The Coggler, focused on love and mortality in dystopian, sci fi worlds. A few documentaries were splattered among the fiction pieces, and the majority of films looked at variations of the ever resilient and important themes of growing up, moving on, and finding your place in the world.

For me, there were two pieces which particularly stood out in the program:

Sweet Spot, directed by Kaitlin Kealey, is an intimate, first-person documentary which explores the filmmaker’s own struggles with long distance love. Kealey’s first-person footage and narration is captivating and unique and brings a personal touch to examining long distance relationships, and more generally relationships and love at a transitional, pre-grad period of one’s life.

More lighthearted in tone but no less heartfelt, Un Pièce, directed by Kennedy Salloum, is an adorable, raucous short that follows two young siblings who, inspired by the French New Wave, endeavour to write, create, and perform an absurd, heavily stylized, play for their single mother in French -- a language neither of them understand. The production design is quite charming and a little Wes Anderson-esque (meets French New Wave of course) and both child actors give convincing and comedic performances.

Congratulations to Humber’s graduating class -- we hope to see more of your work very soon.

-Katie


The Bloody Truth about Student Filmmaking

5/17/2017

 
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After another spring of university and college screenings, I’d like to report the obvious: student filmmakers love fake blood. And it’s easy to see why. From Psycho (in which chocolate syrup was used – since it popped better on black and white film stock) to Carrie, fake blood has been ingrained in the visual grammar of film since the end of the Hays Code era. But is it always worth the mess?

One of the questions that comes up again and again among the TYS programming staff is, “Was it necessary?” The “it” in this case isn’t always the blood itself, but rather the on-screen violence.

As a rule, we don’t shy away from including graphic imagery in the TYS programmes, but we do consider depictions of strong violence through the lens of whether or not they serve their films in an artistic way. Admittedly, as with the rest of film criticism, that’s a vague criterion, but we apply it with the best of intentions. Some of the questions we ask are:
  • Does it make narrative sense? Is it a logical development to the story, or is it merely an easy (though messy) way to wrap things up?
  • Does it have an emotional purpose beyond shock value?
  • Does it fetishize a particular type of violence? Who is on the receiving end, and how does the film ask us to feel about that?

These are all difficult questions for us as programmers to address, so we nearly always err on the side of giving filmmakers the benefit of the doubt.

But, before your next climactic scene turns into a bloodbath, ask yourself whether all the corn syrup is necessary. Your actors will thank you.  
 
-Paul

Tis the Season of Student Screenings

5/3/2016

 
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iOne of the perks of being a Festival Director for a youth-based film festival is gaining access to a lot of work made by students over the past year. Myself along with our programming team have been attending different screenings these last few weeks to see what we can expect to come our way for this year's festival. It’s always interesting to see the distinct styles that those from each school employ. Here are some thoughts based on the screenings I've been to this year.

University of Toronto
The film community at U of T is thriving thanks to the Hart House Film Board and the Raindance on Campus groups. Though they may not have the same resources as their film school counterparts, their productions have no lack of heart. While the premise is a bit out of left field, there was chemistry in Edy Garfinkel's Blowdryin' Sunday. Carla Veldman's Uncle Antlers memorized audiences despite some faulty playback on the Hart House computers. I was hoping to see more from those in Mississauga due to their partnership with Sheridan College. Perhaps at Toronto Youth Shorts this year!
 
York University
I attended three screenings at York and some of these films really made that trek on the Finch bus worth it. From their second year, I found the documentaries to be strongest with The Friendly Giant by Mariah Enarson, Yes I Can by Lalo Nixon-Pasten, and Salamander by Aidan Cheeatow being exceptionally notable for presenting engaging characters with a vulnerability that audiences can empathize with. Same goes for Last Step by Rachel D’Ercole, produced from the third year group. Salmonella by Michele DesLauriers showed a lot of charm with its art direction, colour palette, and kooky characters.
 
The content coming out of 4th year truly impressed me, with Tidal Waves by Kristina Wang being amongst one of my favourite dramas across all the film screenings I’ve attended so far. Emmerek Van Leur’s Tinder Dad rightfully solicited laughs from the crowd and it was crazy to see how much they were able to get away with. And despite being 18 minutes long, there was no lull in the bittersweet story of Christian Harrison's Moods Like Jazz.
 
Humber College
I had the pleasure to see work from the graduating classes of both their Film and Television Production diploma program and their Film and Media Production degree program at the Bloor Cinema. This is the first time in years that I was able to directly compare the work between the two. Some of the best films from both programs are stories based on being an outsider or being different. Both Stall by Ramon Lapshin and Distance by Roya Edalatmand are effective relationship dramas that hit the right emotional notes. Interestingly enough, both programs ended on films about someone who is terminally ill. Both Jacob is Ready by Tatevik Galstyan and Severance by Katie Hill feature beautiful landscape photography to parallel the inner character conflict.
 
OCAD University
Event organizers and filmmaking collaborators, Sanchita Mitra, Jessica Sinopoli, and Molly Shears produced the Next Exit Film Festival, giving me a taste of OCAD's Integrated Media program. In addition to three narrative films that they collaborated on in different roles, the screening featured a lot of video art. Stylistically speaking, they stand out from the rest of the film schools due to the differences in their curriculum and resources. Father’s Story by Sook Jung features still images that are hauntingly beautiful, with a direction that is very different compared to the work seen in industry-based animation schools. As expected of OCAD, a lot of the work do not adhere to traditional formats and artists are more free to experiment. Now that our good friend, Jamie McMillan, is back from overseas to run Augmented Cinema again, I can’t wait to see what other OCAD U projects are out there.
 
I’ll be going to RUFF this week as well and they definitely have some shoes to fill when it comes to my expectations. But if the quality of past content is any indication, I’m sure it’ll be just as amazing. Hopefully we can show some of these films to you at Toronto Youth Shorts this year!

-Henry

Sia Goes to York

4/26/2016

 
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York U's Finish Line took place the past two weeks. Julia and I were there for one of the 4th year screenings.
I was very pleased to see this year's graduates show up with a strong lineup of films, including as always, a variety of documentary, fiction and experimental. This was one of the few times for me that I enjoyed a programme in its entirety. The films were, across the board, well crafted, compelling, and most importantly when it comes to short films, never longer than they needed to be.

There were four standouts for me this year:

Lina Evans’ documentary, My Cradle and Tomb, which followed a Villa Rica resident in Colombia trying to save his community's only source of potable water. 

Heliana 101, by Daria Savic, is a colourful romantic comedy that was just the thing for those of us who loved Pushing Daisies.

Connor Johnstone's documentary, White Circus, on Manitoba's wildlife tourism of which the subjects were the hardcore, off-center, and foul-mouthed tour guides.

And finally, Grozata by Taras Hemon, a captivating taut drama in which a father and his gay son come to a head at the family dinner. 

A fantastic closing for York's 2016 class! I sincerely hope we have the opportunity to offer you a chance to see some of these films this year. 

-Sia

Spotlight Charity Film Festival

4/14/2016

 
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The Bloor Cinema is one of my favourite spots in the city to catch a movie. Inside and out, it feels like the kind of authentic, old-school cinema that is becoming increasingly rare. It’s definitely a throwback, which, as it turns out, unexpectedly made it the perfect home for this year’s Spotlight Charity Film Festival.

Now in its third year, Spotlight celebrates the best of local high school filmmaking, handing out awards in the categories of documentary, narrative, and experimental. Spotlight also has some serious philanthropic heft, with this year’s festival raising $8000 for Sketch.

Apart from the social good aspect, though, Spotlight also has a lot of artistic merit to offer. This year’s award winners – picked by a judging panel of industry professionals – were all maturely executed and high-quality offerings from such young filmmakers.

I’m not sure exactly what I expected when I walked into a screening of films made by high school students, but it definitely wasn’t an experimental animated documentary about vintage Hollywood starlet Eartha Kitt. But indeed, James Perry’s You Must Think About That One Again was a standout of the night, bringing Kitt’s fiery and still-relevant monologue on female independence to life through elegant typography and an arresting animation style.

Elsewhere, I saw films that prominently featured Super 8 home movies, old family photographs, and even an old stereo receiver with magical time-traveling abilities. Maybe I’m just a jaded 20-something who will soon be rambling about “the good old days”, but I did find it heartening to see a lot of these young filmmakers looking back and celebrating technology and art that is several decades older than they are.

However, the night wasn’t all about odes to analog technology. One of the other highlights was Carol Nguyen’s This Home is Not Empty, a stunningly filmed examination of intricate 3D paper models that rightfully won the experimental category. Elsewhere, Tristan Surman’s stylish A Dying Man Named Steve tied for first in the narrative category and proved to be an audience favourite thanks to its biting, blackly comic story of a terminally ill young man who just wants to find a home for his unlikeable dog once he’s gone.

In terms of raising money for a great cause and celebrating the next wave of Toronto filmmakers, the night was all-around fun and hopeful. It’s always great to see so much young talent on display.

-Colleen
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