Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) Offers Career Advancement, Celebrates Women Directors at the Fourteenth Annual Female Eye Film Festival

For immediate release: June 8, 2016 (Vancouver, BC). Organizers are pleased to announce the next four women directors to take part in the Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) Career Advancement Module when it returns to Toronto for the fourteenth annual Female Eye Film Festival June 13 to 19, 2016.

Selected to develop their debut feature films are award-winning short filmmakers: Geraldine Carr (Maud Mary & the Titanic) and Eva Colmers (2-57k), Winnifred Jong (The Offer) and Gloria Ui Young Kim (Flamenco). During the festival week, the directors will meet with industry experts Dan Lyon (Telefilm Canada), Gosia Kamela (Bell Media), Andra Sheffer (Independent Production Fund), John Galway (Harold Greenberg Fund), and Lesley Grant (Temple Street Productions), among others.

“The directors engage in an intensive think tank to develop specific short and long-term strategies for moving their projects and careers forward,” says Carol Whiteman, WIDC producer. “Creating a space that encourages reflection and focus – a place where, at the end of the day, after all the advice and industry input – participants can hear their own voices, that’s key to the WIDC process.”

Near the end of the festival week the WIDC program’s Board of Directors will also be celebrating the achievements of 220 director alumnae across Canada, and making some special announcements at the WIDC 20th Anniversary Launch Event, Friday, June 17^th from 5:00pm to 7:00 pm at the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen Street West). Immediately following the launch event, The Birdwatcher, directed by award-winning WIDC alumna Siobhan Devine, has its Toronto premiere at the Theatre Centre, 1115 Queen Street West. Tickets are available at www.femaleeyefilmfestival.com.

WIDC sponsors the FeFF Honorary Director Award and Saturday, June 18 from 10 am to 11:30 am. WIDC Producer, Carol Whiteman will moderate the Best in the Biz Tribute to ‘Canada’s Queen of indi-DIY filmmaking’ Ingrid Veninger. Veninger’s latest feature He Hated Pigeons opens the festival with a once in a lifetime accompaniment from Canadian musical icon, Jane Siberry.

Sunday, June 19^th from 9:30 am to 11:30 am, Whiteman co-hosts with Festival Founder and Executive Director, Leslie Ann Coles, the sixth edition of the FeFF Director’s Roundtable. Both the Veninger Tribute and the Directors’ Roundtable promise to generate valuable best practices for filmmakers at all stages of their careers.

Ninety-five women-directed films from around the globe have been carefully curated for this year’s Female Eye Film Festival; among these gems are nine films directed by WIDC alumnae. They include popular debut features by, Melanie Jones (FSM) which screens in 7:30 pm time slot on June 16th. Devine’s The Birdwatcher, an award-winning WIDC Feature Film Award-supported project immediately follows the WIDC 20^th Anniversary Launch Event as noted above. All Festival events and film screenings take place at the Theatre Centre, 1211 Queen Street West, Toronto.

Also on the festival schedule are seven WIDC alumnae-directed shorts by Christine Buijs (Divorce Photographer), Eva Colmers (2-57k), Nicole Dorsey, (Dennis), Winnie Jong (The Order), Jules Koostachin (Without Words), Gail Maurice (Assini), and Brianne Nord Stewart (Beat Around the Bush). Check the festival web site for screening details.

Boasting two hundred and twenty women director alumna across Canada over the past twenty years, the WIDC program has consistently created a space for women screen directors to hone their skills and develop their fiction projects. Over forty feature films have been directed by WIDC alumnae since its 1997 inception. Director alumnae have created eight network dramatic television series. The directors have garnered over seventy-five nominations and awards this year alone.

RSVP/Contact: Carol Whiteman, carol@widc.ca | 1.778.809.0747 | @WIDC_ca | FB: /widc.ca

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BACKGROUNDER

About Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC)
Founded in 1997 by an initial collaboration among ACTRA, The Banff Centre and Women In Film & Television Vancouver, Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) is an internationally respected Canadian professional development offering, specially designed to advance the skills, careers and screen projects of mid-career women directors through intensive workshops, out reach initiatives, and awards. Operated by a national non-profit society, with major support from Telefilm Canada, William F. White Intl., with the participation of the Canada Council for the Arts | Conseil des Arts du Canada, Tattersall Sound & Picture, SIM Digital, Clairmont Camera Film and Digital, Panavision Canada, Deluxe Entertainment Group / Encore, Technicolor Toronto, North Shore Studios, The Bridge Studios, Vancouver Film Studios, The Research House, Front Row Insurance, MELS, Actra Fraternal Benefit Society, UBCP/ACTRA, ACTRA Alberta, IATSE 669, Independent Production Fund, Creative BC, BC Arts Council, and TELUS Optik Local. Community collaborators include: WIFT Toronto, Canada Screens, First Weekend Club, Crazy 8’s, Winnipeg Film Group. Festival collaborators include the Vancouver International Women In Film Festival, Female Eye Film Festival, St John’s International Women’s Film Festival, and the Whistler Film Festival. www.widc.ca

WIDC CAM Toronto
Director Participants