A handful of new filmmakers will screen their works on Friday—or, in Variety-speak, Digitial Doc Denizens Drop Debuts—as part of a journalism school workshop taught by noted local movie maven Sylvia Hamilton.
“The one that I did is about band names,” says King’s student Karley Tabak of the tentatively titled Name, which she made with Trevor Murphy, “and how some people see a band name like Gunt and refuse to go see the band.”
The six-week workshop’s 12 students paired up to produce a half-dozen 10-minute documentaries shot on digital video. The class was taught from a filmmaking perspective, not from a news-gathering one, and the subject matter was unrestricted, resulting in a varied and diverse program.
“There’s one about adult literacy,” says Tabak on her last day of post-production, “one about activism with food—Food Not Bombs; there’s one about hair colour—how blondes are perceived as opposed to brunettes; one about ghosts in Halifax, and one about gay-straight alliance in Halifax.”
The free screening is on April 7 from 3:30 to 5:30pm in Alumni Hall at the University of King’s College.
Quid pro cool
Halifax author Vicki Grant has nabbed a nomination in the Best Young Adult category for her book Quid Pro Quo at the 60th annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards, given out by the Mystery Writers of America. The Halifax-set “legal thriller” follows a 13-year-old boy as he searches for his mother, who has mysteriously disappeared. Insert Silence of the Lambs joke here.
Kids’ stuff
The Atlantic Film Festival announced the line-up for its ViewFinders film festival for the young and the young-in-their-own-minds this week. The opening gala on April 18 will be the Danish film We Shall Overcome, about a teen who fights his school’s unlawful punishment. The fest will wrap on the 22nd with Akeelah and the Bee, a coming-of-age story (our favourite!) starring Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne. In between will be a bunch of other films (more than 70), school programs and workshops.
This is the fifth annual ViewFinders, and it’s an important event—in a town off the distribution path and with no rep cinema—that we need to help foster some freaking taste among filmgoers in this city. You know the old cliche about getting them while they’re young? Hello!
The box office is located at the Bayers Lake Cinema, or you can ring the VF ticket hotline at 422-6965.
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