Women’s Voice in Film and Television

Women’s Voice in Film and Television will take place within the larger context of the first edition of CCIFF. A signature event of the festival, the Women’s Voice section, aims to bring together women filmmakers and industry leaders from both Canada and China. We plan to use this opportunity for cultural and artistic exchanges as a way to rethink the notion of women’s work as a fragmented set of stories in the larger context of film history.

Instead, by creating an all-inclusive environment, the hope is to help reimagine it as an interconnected and interdependent global digital storytelling exercise that holds women’s experience at its core. Women’s Voice in Film and Television intends to view the artistic works of women artists from a new angle, in line with our artistic vision. The plan is to invite 5-6 prominent women artists with backgrounds in digital technologies and film production to draw out the contours of this special topics event series.

GUESTS

Nasim Sedaghat

Topic: “Women in Technology: Challenges And Opportunities”

Nasim is a Project Manager at IBM. For the past 8 years, Nasim has worked as a developer, a team lead, a project manager, a department manager, and a Ccnsultant in various industries such as gaming, media entertainment, health care, and banking.

Gina Hara

Topic: “Games, Films, Research”

Gina is an award winning filmmaker and artist with a background in art & technology. She is currently the creative director of the Techno-culture, Art and Games Research Centre at Concordia University. Also Gina will be soon finishing her first feature film about “women geeks”.

Ge Shuiying

Topic: “Some Reflections on Making Interactive Film”

Chinese Director of Ink Space-time and arts designer in several Cartoons. Her production has won the award of “National Animation Quality Engineering Animation Products” and the 14th China Huabiao Film Awards of Animation of the Year.

Ravida Din

Topic: “Beyond The Gender Gap: Telling Powerful Stories That Change The World”

As head of all English-language production at the National Film Board of Canada, Din innovated radical new modes of media production by opening the doors to non-traditional creators and by insisting on grounding those productions in a feminist analysis of race, gender and class.

Beverly Shaffer

Topic: “I’ll Find A Way”

Oscar winner, Beverly has directed 20 films for the National Film Board of Canada. She has garnered more than 30 international awards. Her film, Mr. Mergler’s Gift was short listed for an Oscar.

Ning Zhaoyu

Topic: “Old Story Presented With Application of New Technology”

Zhaoyu is a renowned Chinese female documentary director, who has been working in the field for nearly 30 years. Ever since she entered the documentary industry, Zhaoyu has created over a hundred documentaries. Her work Yaxin and the Shepherd was nominated as one of the screening films for Cinéma du Réel festival in Cannes.

Shelley Craig

Topic: “Sound Studio”

Shelley is a National Film Board of Canada (NFB) Re-recording Mixer for film and screen productions. Many of the films Ms. Craig has mixed are screened internationally in festivals and have won numerous awards; Prix Gémeaux, Genie Award, ANIK Award, Academy Award nominations.

Lesley Crewe

Topic: “The Pieces of My Life”

Lesley is a columnist, novelist and screenwriter. Her first novel, Relative Happiness was made into a film of the same name in 2015 and won the Screen Nova Scotia Best Feature Film Award. The film went to festivals all over the world, including Cannes and the Shanghai International Film Festival in 2015.

Joan Vogelesang

Topic: We all start somewhere

Joan Vogelesang is a seasoned consultant specialized in international business development, SME globalization and education. Ms. Vogelesang has been President and Chief Executive Officer of Toon Boom Animation Inc. from 1998 until 2014.