Through the generous support and leadership from some of the most significant companies in Canada’s film industry, Creative Women Workshops Association (CWWA) administers an annual award valued at $120,000 in in-kind rentals including one-week studio rental, production equipment rentals, and post production services, towards a feature film project directed by a Canadian woman.
Creative Women Workshops Association (CWWA) is a national NPO whose main activity, The Women In the Director’s Chair Workshop (WIDC) is a one-of-a-kind annual professional development program specially designed to advance the leadership and creative capacities of mid-career women screen directors of fiction, presented in partnership with The Banff Centre, ACTRA with major support from Telefilm Canada, WFW Intl, Panavision Canada, CTV, Quebecor Fund, IATSE 669, Directors Guild of Canada, BC, Actra Fraternal Benefit Society, Independent Production Fund and the participation of many others.
2011 Feature Film Award winner Ana Valine
Ana Valine is an award-winning writer and director who is recognized as one of Canada’s emerging talents. She has written, directed and produced fiction, experimental and documentary short films. Most recently she directed How Eunice Got Her Baby through the Canadian Film Centre’s Short Dramatic Film Program, which has won several awards. Valine also completed the Director’s Lab at Canadian Film Centre after successfully producing three short films in three years.
In 2010, she participated in the CTV WIDC Career Advancement Module at the Female Eye Film Festival where Valine also picked up the Best Short Film Award for Eunice. Her directorial debut, alice and bastard, has also earned numerous international awards and nominations. Ana makes her home in Vancouver and Toronto, where she continues to bring those who live on the outside into view.
Sitting On the Edge of Marlene is a feature film drama told through the eyes of fourteen –year old Sammie, a clean-living but quirky survivor, obsessed with death, living with her pill-popping, alcoholic, con-artist mother Marlene in an apartment somewhere not unlike Vancouver’s downtown east side. Valine’s adaptation of the Billie Livingston novella (The Trouble With Marlene) takes us on a bittersweet, emotional journey, skating on either side of the law and Christian morals, through dysfunction, love and addiction towards a kind of deliverance for this compelling mother and daughter duo. Produced by Amber Ripley of Foundation Features.
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