Guerrilla filmmaking gets a spotlight
Little films on the big screen at the NSI Film Exchange
Ryan Simmons Volunteer Staff
Two Winnipeg films are the winners of two major prizes at the annual National Screen Institute’s National Exposure Amateur Movie Contest. The 12 short film finalists ranged wildly in style and subject, from macabre stop-motion animation to slapstick live action comedy. The films were in competition for seven jury-selected prizes worth $100, a Best Overall Prize worth $500 and two grand prizes worth $1,000 that were decided by audience voting.
The grand prizes were selected by the audience present at the contest screening on March 4. A new award, the Short Film Channel Viewer’s Choice Award, was selected through an online poll by people who viewed the shorts on Moviola, a specialty channel. The shorts were viewed by close to one million people on Movieola, and the poll drew 10,000 voters. Starting next year the shorts will be made available on cell phones and other portable media devices.
The Movieola prize and the Best Film from Eastern Canada award both went to the Halifax slacker comedy My Name Is. Director Megan Wennberg self-deprecatingly thanked her family and friends for a vigorous voting campaign.
Million Way Exchange, a Goodfellas-esque drug-deal-gone-bad flick directed by Biron Guthy-Kerr and set in (implausibly, but endearingly) Golden, B.C., took home the award for Best Film Under 18.
Pugilistic buddy movie The Violent Comedy, by Kelvin Redvers from Hay River, North West Territories, won both Best Director and Best Film from Western Canada. The movie stood out as the most skillfully constructed comedic short in the competition. The director pointed out that the sound effects produced by the multiple slaps he delivers to co-star Tyler Provincial were all actually captured on set.
Nosepickers Anonymous, a gross-out comedy with some excessive sound and make-up effects directed by Cory Kinney from Vancouver, won the prizes for Best Screenplay and Best Actor (Anthony Ingram).
The familial tragedy Shark Hunting by Jimmy Bustos, starring his father and brother from Edmonton, won the Jury’s Best Overall film award.
The contest’s climactic honor, the audience award, went to the winner of The Best Film from Manitoba award: the Winnipeg film Transition. Director John Wilson was surprised by the win, claiming that comedies usually gain the greatest audience support. Transition is anything but a comedy; it’s an artfully shot meditation on mortality. Wilson quipped that had his film been shown paired with Paradise Hotel (a grim stop-motion film involving zombie animals devouring people) the audience may have been “driven to drink.”
None of the shorts were made for much money at all, so it really takes a lot of determination and effort to succeed in this contest. As if to drive this point home, one of the highlights of the contest was the screening of a short entitled Nine Times Eight, which was made two years ago and thus was not eligible for this year’s competition. The most remarkable thing about it: it was made by a 9-year-old and could easily stand beside the other entries in terms of quality. In fact, it topped many of them.
So if you want to try your hand at filmmaking and would like some exposure next year, get busy.
