Last weekend’s Women Making Waves conference, a coming-out of sorts for the Atlantic branch of the 37-chapter Women in Film and Television organization, began early Saturday at Mount Saint Vincent University with about 75 writers, directors, actors, crew and interested parties attending a series of panels and workshops.
The day began with the headliner Patricia Rozema revisiting her 20-year career writing and directing features and television. New Brunswick journalist Christine McLean began with Rozema’s breakthrough I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987). “I like stories based on humans,” Rozema said. “You know how they speak and you know how they dress, something tangible, and then you put them in a situation that’s consistently compelling.” McLean also touched on Rozema’s adaptation of Mansfield Park (“On the plane over I watched Date Night. I love people who are straight-laced and trying to be groovy, people who are out of their element but don’t have the tools for it.”), the excellent children’s film Kit Kittredge and 2009’s unnecessary version of Grey Gardens, which McLean didn’t seem to know was based on a documentary.
Later that afternoon, Rozema led four local actors—Anthony Black, Jim Fowler, Lise Cormier and Kristin Langille—through a handful of scenes from Blue Valentine, showing how tossing the script away can result in fresher performances (sorry writers) and culminating in Black’s scaling of some auditorium scaffolding.
A pair of panels stirred up some interesting conversations, starting with the Sylvia Hamilton-moderated doc talk with Newfoundland’s Barbara Doran, who lamented the loss of public funding for documentaries, and PEI’s Millefiore Clarkes, who pushed the contemporary model of crowd-sourcing and consumer camera shooting. “What we don’t have time for anymore,” said Doran, “is wanking and whining about how we’ve been hard done by as women.” The conference day wrapped up with Lauren Oostveen and LA sales agent Miriam Elchanan discussing women and horror with Donna Davies, whose Pretty Bloody anchored the evening’s screening at Park Lane.
On Sunday, the first WIFT awards were handed out to Halifax filmmaker Ann Verrall, Cat LeBlanc from New Brunswick’s film co-op, NIFCO‘s Jean Smith and PEI’s Cheryl Wagner. For more info on WIFT-Atlantic visit wift-at.com.
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2011.
