WIDC Announces Career Advancement Module Vancouver Director Participants:
Supported with the participation of TELUS Optik Local

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – February 2017: Four western-based women directors have been selected to partake in the next edition of the WIDC Career Advancement Module (CAM) slated to take place March 7 to 12, 2017 during the Vancouver International Women In Film Festival. Aiming to generate career momentum while they develop pitch materials for their next screen projects are BC-based filmmakers Jessica Bradford whose short films have won CSA and Leo awards, doc filmmakers, Shannon Walsh and Brit Kewin, and Alberta-based filmmaker, Paige K. Boudreau, whose recent short Up In Smoke was funded through TELUS STORYHIVE, rounds out this CAM cohort (pictured above).

Telefilm Canada, which turns fifty this year, provides major funding support for WIDC. This session of the CAM, which runs in collaboration with the Vancouver International Women In Film Festival, is presented with the participation of TELUS Optik Local.

Other Canadian directors that have spring-boarded their careers forward through the CAM include Jordan Canning, whose WIDC Feature Film Award film Suck It Up! recently premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival; Siobhan Devine, who won ‘Best Direction’ awards for her debut feature film The Birdwatcher and television series Package Deal; Karen Lam, whose Leo award-winning web series Mythos was supported by TELUS; and Winnifred Jong, whose comedic web series Tokens was recently selected to be WIDC’s nominee for the Telefilm Canada MicroBudget program.

Award-winning WIDC co-creator and producer, Carol Whiteman facilitates the CAM, with MCE executive producer, Marina Cordoni as lead mentor. Beginning with intensive master classes in Vancouver during the Vancouver International Women In Film Festival, WIDC director participants meet with industry experts from TELUS and Telefilm Canada, as well as WIDC alumnae directors who offer insights into navigating career paths. At the end of the week, each director sets strategic career goals then meets for one on one coaching once a month for the three months following the workshop to keep up the momentum generated during the festival.

The next deadline for director applications for a CAM session will be April 15, 2017. That session will take place at the Female Eye Film Festival, June 19 to 24, 2017, in Toronto.

ABOUT WIDC – Founded in 1997, and celebrating its 20th anniversary, Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) is an internationally respected Canadian professional development offering, specially designed to advance the skills, careers and fiction screen projects of women directors. With 200 director alumnae across Canada, who have earned over 100 awards and nominations for their work this year alone, over the last twenty years WIDC has fostered the development of a generation of women screen directors. WIDC is presented with major support from Telefilm Canada, Harold Greenberg Fund, and ACTRA, and with the participation of the Canada Council for the Arts | Conseil des Arts du Canada, Actra Fraternal Benefit Society, ACTRA National, TELUS Optik Local, Creative BC, UBCP/ACTRA, Independent Production Fund, ACTRA Alberta, IATSE 669; WIDC appreciates community collaborations with 1st Weekend Club’s Canada Screens, National Film Board, WIFT Vancouver’s International Women In Film Festival, Female Eye Film Festival, St John’s International Women’s Film Festival, WIFT Toronto, WIFT Atlantic, Film Fatales Toronto, Black Women Film-Canada, Women In View, New York WIF&T, Alliance of Women Directors, Tangerine Entertainment, Crazy 8’s, TIFF, and the Whistler Film Festival. The WIDC Feature Film Award is supported by Bell Media’s Harold Greenberg Fund, William F. White International, Tattersall Sound and Picture, Panavision Canada, SIM Digital, Clairmont Camera Film and Digital, Encore Vancouver, Technicolor Toronto, Skylab Vancouver, North Shore Studios, The Bridge Studios, Vancouver Film Studios, The Research House Clearance Services Inc., MELS Studios, Front Row Insurance, White Hart Post Production, and Descriptive Video Works

WIDC Contact: enquiries@widc.ca | www.widc.ca | facebook.com/widc.ca | @WIDC_ca | #WIDC

***

WIDC CAM DIRECTOR PARTICIPANT – Vancouver 2017
(in alphabetical order)

PAIGE K. BOURDREAU, having started her career at a tender age, and graduating the youngest in her class at SAIT, in 2010, Alberta-based filmmaker, made the move from editor to production coordinator and post supervisor at Jump Studios where she subsequently wrote and co-directed broadcast and commercial projects as well as her first professionally-made short film: SKYLINE. Moving over to Spotlight Productions, Paige show-ran 120 episodes of the Rogers/OMNI series Let’s Talk English. In 2015 she had the opportunity to write the third season of FishCamp, an outdoor adventure series, story consult on the comedic pilot The Willmore Boys and co-produce an indie feature film, To The Mountain. 2016 found Paige moving solidly into the director’s chair with the production of a collection of films, including the CSIF/Herland supported Mallory Memphis; the TELUS Storyhive funded Up In Smoke; a short art piece about urban decay titled Nostomania; and a micro-documentary entitled Grandma’s House. She continues to seek opportunities to meet new people, work on dynamic projects, and most of all: direct.

JESSICA BRADFORD is an award-winning writer and director based in Vancouver, Canada. She is a graduate of Canadian Film Centre and alumna of the Women In the Director’s Chair Banff program. Jessica’s films have won numerous awards including a Gemini, several B.C. Leo Awards and WIFTV’s Kodak Image Award for Excellence in Visual Storytelling. Her films have been invited to festivals around the world and have screened on CBC and Showcase, Canada. Jessica has spent over 15 years in the industry as a writer, director and producer. Her award-winning films include: When I Was Seven, The Telescope, Winter Sun and The Restlessness of Water. Jessica also teaches in the Writing Department of the Vancouver Film School and is a Program Associate for the Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth. She is past-president of Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society. Jessica grew up in Cambridge, England, which resulted in a love for choral music, riding bicycles and drinking beer – but not necessarily in that order, though possibly all at the same time. She is currently in post-production on her latest short film, She Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven. Jessica is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at UBC.

BRIT KEWIN, as a Vancouver-based multi-disciplinary filmmaker and artist, Brit is constantly in search of ways to push her creative boundaries. Brit is a documentarian at heart who trained as a Visual Anthropologist at the prestigious Goldsmiths, University of London. She subsequently worked to document the lives of our society’s most subjugated as an embedded filmmaker for the Toronto Homelessness initiative InWithForward. Brit has taken her study of humans and the stories that we create to new levels in recent years as she ventured in to the world of narrative film. She has written and directed two short films to date, one of which (Burn the Tapes) was selected to screen at the Canadian Film Festival, Toronto Short Film Festival, Toronto Underground Film Festival and National Screen Institute Film Festival. Her most recent short film, Welcome Stranger, a rumination on life and love with sci-fi undertones, is currently in postproduction and is slated for release in January 2017.

SHANNON WALSH is an award-winning Canadian documentary filmmaker based in Vancouver. Her theatrical documentary, Jeppe on a Friday, screened at the 56th Venice Biennale, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and film festivals around the world. Her first feature documentary, H2Oil, was recognized as one of the top ten independent documentaries of 2009. She followed with St-Henri, the 26th of August co-produced with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). Her work has shown in over 50 film festivals and museums, and has been theatrically released in cinemas, as well as screenings on Can-West Global, Canal-D, Netflix, CBC Documentary Channel, Discovery US, Al Jazeera, and Tele-Quebec amongst others. Walsh brings a background in ethnography and a keen sense of social justice to her filmmaking work. She is currently working on a feature fiction and documentary project. Walsh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Film, University of British Columbia.