Riding the Wave!
By Jan Miller
March 4- 6, WIFT-AT launched its very first Women Making Waves annual conference! This inaugural gathering provided a wonderful forum for emerging and established women in the screen industries to come together to network, share, discover potential partners, and engage with invited guest speakers and panellists.
The weekend far surpassed the expectations of its organizers, meeting set targets for registration and exceeded expectations in terms of local and regional press and interest. In a few words – we were all thrilled and can’t wait until March 2012!
Planned to coincide with the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day, WMW partnered with Mount St. Vincent University’s Women’s Studies Dept. to highlight the contributions and accomplishments of women in the screen industry. And committed as an organization to reach out to the whole region, WMW offered “come from away” reduced registration fees and ‘gas money’ which helped a range of participants from Nova, Scotia, PEI, Newfoundland and New Brunswick to participate in the WMW’s celebration of place (Atlantic Canada) and identity (women in film, television and web based industry).
The weekend kicked off with Christine Maclean’s inspiring conversation with our keynote guest, award winning director and writer Patricia Rozema. (Check out Patricia’s bio in the WMW’s program.) The closing day’s conversation was with our very own award winning local filmmaker, Andrea Dorfman. Panels were wide ranging – from innovation in the area of web-based media presented by Stitch Media’s Evan Jones who has created multiple award winning web-series and interactive projects, to Patricia directing local professional actors in a couple of scenes from Blue Valentine, to an animated discussion with below the line female talent from across the region to an animated and thoroughly entertaining discussion among documentary filmmakers including award winning Sylvia Hamilton and Barbara Doran as well as emerging documentary filmmaker Mille Clarkes who works with crowd sourcing and social media. We can’t forget The Roar on Horror discussion on Saturday with Miriam Elchanan and Lauren Oostveen and lead by horrorista specialist Donna Davies.
One of WMW’s goals was to include and appeal to people of all ages, experience level and contact with the film industry, it was incredibly rewarding to include 20 students from the Nova Scotia Community College’s Screen Arts program who signed up for events throughout the weekend.
Perhaps though, for the organizers, one of the most remarkable aspects of this year’s event was the terrific support that we received from the entire community. Mount Saint Vincent, and the indefatigable Rita Deverell were incredibly generous in opening their facilities to the conference and to the resources the university offers including the Women’s Studies Dept. It was also terrific to have the involvement of the unions and guilds, IATSE 849, IATSE 667, the Directors Guild of Canada and ACTRA as their members participated on the panels, as delegates and also through their sponsorships and their contribution to the design of the events. WMW organizers also worked in collaboration with St. John’s International Women’s Festival in bringing LA based distributor Miriam Elchanan, a partnership that will happily continue to grow in the future.
The local film co-ops from each Atlantic province partnered with WMW to select the short films by women filmmakers to screen before the main feature screening. This was a great partnership recognizing the invaluable heartbeat that each of these organizations represent in their communities. And DOC Atlantic with the help of WIFT-AT member Teresa McInnes, partnered with WMW to present the panel spotlighting female documentary filmmakers, Two Generations, One Goal: Women in Documentary. DOC also arranged for Cape Breton WIFT-AT member, Madeline Yakemchuk to shoot 2 of our panels and one of our conversations for our brand new website designed by our web savvy maven Board member Irene Duma.
The full list of financing partners demonstrates the breadth of support received from the community with partners ranging from non-profit film co-ops to provincial (Nova Scotia Dept of Communities, Culture and Heritage and Film Nova Scotia) and federal government (Telefilm Canada), as well as private companies like Boyne Clarke and the Royal Bank of Canada.
But perhaps one of the most exciting successes of the WMW weekend was the inaugural WAVE Awards. Unlike traditional competitions, there were no categories for the awards. The goal was to recognize women from all aspects and levels of experience in the Atlantic screen industry. The Selection Committee evaluated nominations based on the nominated women’s contributions, accomplishments, emerging talent, vision, leadership, dedication and outstanding behind-the-scene support. The Committee selected four women to receive WAVE Awards, one from each of the Atlantic provinces to each receive one of the beautifully hand crafted awards in bronze and wood, designed by upcoming New Brunswick artist Kristianne LeBreton presented by the delightful award winning film and theatre actress and Truro/Bible Hill MLA Lenore Zann. Our most worthy recipients for the 2011 WAVE awards are: the equally wonderful Cat LeBlanc, Jean Smith, Ann Verrall and Cheryl Wagner.
Thank you everyone who volunteered their precious time to help make this event happen. Thank you to our sponsors who believed that we could do it the first time! Thank you to all our panelists and keynotes who opened their hearts and minds to share generously and openly with the participants. And thanks especially for all of you who found your selves with us to participate and celebrate. It was a wonderful Wave to ride on from the cupcakes and tulips to the stimulating conversations and new connections. We’d love to see everyone back next year – and by all means bring your friends!
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