Archive for the ‘alice & bastard’ Category

Article in The Western Sandard

May 21st, 2007

The biggest little film fest

Short films have a long impact thanks to Yorkton’s unique film and video festival

Sheila Thistlethwaite – May 21, 2007

“Vancouver filmmaker Ana Valine says winning the best emerging filmmaker and best fiction director awards “opened a lot of doors.” Her Alice & Bastard has since won at other competitions in Spain and North America. She says the casual atmosphere at Yorkton makes everybody more approachable. “There’s a high calibre of people, but the established film people take it as seriously as the emerging ones do.” As a result of a pitching session at last year’s festival, Telefilm Canada accepted Valine’s latest project.”

for the complete article:

http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/article.php?id=2522

alice & bastard – Best of the Northwest

November 27th, 2006

alice & bastard was involved in the “Best of the Northwest Tour” at the Northwest International Film Festival in Portland, OR.

alice & bastard at Northwest Film Festival, Portland

November 22nd, 2006

“Trailer trash, a TV repairman, strip joints, and a four year-old girl who sees beyond the grime with an innocence that is at once blissfully free and devilishly pert.” Steve Seid, Northwest Film and Video Festival

People’s Choice Award for alice & bastard

July 22nd, 2006

alice & bastard brought home the “People’s Choice Award” at the Mas Sorrer Short Film Festival in Spain!

Nomination for alice & bastard

June 22nd, 2006

alice & bastard was nominated for “Best Short” at the Female Eye Film Festival

alice & bastard in the Toronto Star

June 17th, 2006

It’s a long way to Wonderland, Alice

Good karma directed film of latchkey kidDarren Plester as Bastard, Kalyx Malek-Parker as Alice in "alice & bastard".

A contender at Female Eye Film Festival

Jun. 17, 2006. 01:00 AM

SUSAN WALKER

ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER, TORONTO STAR

When making her first film, Alice & Bastard, Vancouver writer and director Ana Valine counted her good fortune in having friends in the industry, a healthy margin on her credit card and good karma. Chosen to screen in the Female Eye Film Festival, which opened Thursday, Alice & Bastard began with an insistent little voice. “There’s not an ounce of fact in this story. I guess I have an over-active imagination. I was hearing this kooky little character. And I wondered what this little person would do in the world.”

The character was 4-year-old Alice, a trailer park resident, circa 1977. She lives with her mother, who has been getting it on with the TV repairman, and a much older brother, a layabout known only as Bastard. The movie is shot entirely from the little girl’s point of view, often from the floor to about waist height of the adults.

Alice sees a lot during the short’s 18 minutes. She accompanies her brother on his daily visits to a strip bar, and is left for hours alone in their mother’s old car; she pours her mother gin during a noisy card game with two trailer park girls; and she overhears mum’s noisy coupling with the repairman. “That TV is always breaking down,” she tells herself.

Valine, 39, shot the movie on digital video in a trailer park in Langley, B.C., not far from Vancouver, for $5,000 — mostly the retro costumes and sets — on her credit card.

Valine says she didn’t want to hire a child actor for the part of Alice. ” I wrote a letter to a daycare and basically asked, `Do you mind if I come in and stalk your children?’ I found her in 10 minutes.” This was Kalyx Malek-Parker, whose parents were supportive of Valine’s project, despite the sometimes off-colour content of the script.

She cast Darren Plester, a crew member from one of her special events jobs, as Bastard. Vancouver actor Tammy Bentz plays the mother. Her production designer, Robyn Badger, is one of the card-playing friends, while the other is played by the manager of the trailer park where the occupants of one home lent her their digs for the three-day shoot, free.

“I was so blessed with the whole shoot. Everything and everyone we needed came when we needed them. It was sort of, `Hey, you come here, put this on.'”

Alice & Bastard started on the festival circuit last fall in Vancouver, and won one of B.C.’s Leo Awards this spring for best production design. “People either really love it or they just don’t get it,” says the filmmaker.

At Saskatchewan’s Yorkton Film Festival, it won for best fiction direction and best emerging filmmaker.

Alice & Bastard is now up for a prize at the Female Eye festival, where award-winning films will be re-screened tomorrow night at 7 p.m. in the National Film Board Cinema, 150 John St.

Today’s screenings include a program of shorts directed by women; the documentary Rosita, by Barbara Attie and Joan Goldwater; and a dramatic feature, End of Silence, by Anita Doron. Tickets to screenings are $5.

For information, go to http://www.femaleeyefilmfestival.com

“alice & bastard” in the Yorkton Leader Post

June 3rd, 2006
Saturday » June 3 » 2006Saturday » June 3 » 2006
Soroka’s debut film collects award

Calvin Daniels
Special to The Leader-Post

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

YORKTON — Regina’s Jayden Soroka is the Best of Saskatchewan.

The first-time director earned the $750 Best of Saskatchewan Award for his film Under the Skin: Drugs, Dreams and Demons at the Yorkton Short Film and Video Festival.

“It’s an incredible experience to stand up there receiving an award,” said Soroka, who was feted during Saturday’s festivities at the Gallagher Centre. “It’s a humbling thing to be up there.”

As a rookie director, Soroka said the award put a stamp on something about which he already felt strongly. He said the story of prostitutes and drug addicts in Regina was one he felt needed to be told.

“I wanted to show they’re not just disposable people,” he said. “The people who have watched it have saw that, and that gave me confidence it was good.”

Soroka said the film is one that was hard to shoot at times, but the story pushed him.

“I experienced things I would never want to again, but I am glad I was there to capture it,” he said.

It’s a case where the film comes with a message.

“People need to know what’s happening in their community, so they can do something to change it,” he said.

Ville Fantome took home the coveted Golden Sheaf Award of Excellence, after previously capturing the Best Performing Arts/Entertainment Award, and the $500 Antoinette (Nettie) Kryski Award.

The film from director Raymond Saint-Jean, who also co-wrote the script, was made in Montreal.

First-time director Ana Valine was awarded the Golden Sheaf for Best Director Fiction. Valine also captured the inaugural presentation of the Emerging Film Makers Award, sponsored by the family of the late Grant McLean.

“I feel very small in the universe,” Valine said as she accepted the Emerging Film Makers Award.

She added it was an amazing moment to be accepting an award at North America’s oldest festival when it was her first directorial effort. Valine said the moment was special, just part of the unique feeling of being a filmmaker.

“It’s very magical the process of making film,” she said. “You take this little piece of your imagination . . . and you make it something tangible and project it on the wall.

“Then other people can see that piece of our minds. That’s incredible.”

Big Sugar was the night’s big multiple award winner. The Quebec-produced film by director Brian McKenna which “explores the dark past of 18th-century sugar plantations, and reveals the political power of today’s reigning sugar cartels,” according to the video catalogue, walked off with four Golden Sheafs. The film was named the Best History Documentary of the festival, and also earned awards for Best Research, Best Script Non-Fiction and Best Direction Non-Fiction.

Other films to each pick up multiple awards were: Dark Patterns: A Documentary Investigation Into the Death of Tom Thomson, Burnt Toast, and Patterns.

© The Leader-Post (Regina) 2006

Copyright © 2006 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.

Great Run for alice & bastard at Yorkton

May 30th, 2006

alice & bastard had a great run at the Yorkton International Film Festival, being nominated for “Best Short Drama”, and bringing home the “Golden Sheaf Craft Award for Direction – fiction” and the “Emerging Filmmaker Award” for Ana Valine!

News Release – Golden Sheaf Awards

May 29th, 2006

Vancouver filmmaker takes home gold at

Yorkton Film Festival

Ana Valine wins two at Golden Sheaf Awards…

– For Immediate release-

Vancouver, BC, May 29, 2006, – Vancouver’s Ana Valine has won two prestigious film awards at the Yorkton Film Festival’s Golden Sheaf Awards.  Taking home the prize for Best Direction in a Fiction, sponsored by the Norman Jewison Foundation, she was also recognized as one of Canada’s top new talents capturing the first ever award given out for Emerging Filmmaker.  Her short film, ‘alice & bastard’, is the story of four year old Alice and her twenty-something brother Bastard, living in a trailer park with their single mom, who’s involved with the TV repairman.  It was also nominated for Best Drama at Canada’s longest running film festival and stars Kalyx Malek-Parker, Darren Plester and Tammy Bentz.

The Golden Sheaf awards mark the first big prize for Ana Valine and Rodeo Queen Pictures, her up and coming film production company. Says Valine, “I am very grateful that I had the opportunity to work with such a talented cast and crew and that I am being recognized in this way for my first short film.”  Crew credits include Leo award winning designer, Robyn Badger (Better than Chocolate) and Genie award winning film editors, Lisa Binkley and Lisa Jane Robison (Human Cargo, The L Word)

‘alice & bastard’ was produced in Vancouver in 2005 and premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival that same year.  It garnered two Leo nominations and will screen at Toronto’s Female Eye Film Festival in June where it is also up for best short film.  Ana Valine is currently hard at work on her second short film, as well as scripting a documentary and feature length film.

Yorkton Press Release 2006

May 28th, 2006

YORKTON SHORTFILM & VIDEO FESTIVAL
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 28, 2006
The Yorkton Short Film & Video Festival 2006 Golden Sheaf Awards
The 2006 Yorkton Short Film & Video Festival concluded a stellar week this Saturday evening with the annual GOLDEN SHEAF AWARDS.
Actor/performer JEFF DOUGLAS hosted a night of comedy, reverie and surprises. The Golden Sheaf Awards is revered and respected as one of the most prestigious industry awards to receive in Canada. Filmmakers and film enthusiasts alike came out to the awards to honour the fantastic work done in the Canadian film industry this past year.
The coveted GOLDEN SHEAF AWARD OF EXCELLENCE, for the best film in the festival, went to Montreal film VILLE FANTÔME, also winning BEST PERFORMING ARTS/ENTERTAINMENT and ANTOINETTE (NETTIE) KRYSKIE AWARD OF $500. BIG SUGAR was a multiple award winner, taking home BEST DOCUMENTARY HISTORY and BEST RESEARCH as well BEST DIRECTOR – NON-FICTION and BEST SCRIPT – NON-FICTION for BRIAN MCKENNA. First-time filmmaker ANA VALINE found herself lost for words when she won both the EMERGING FILMMAKER and the BEST DIRECTOR – FICTION awards.
For a complete list of all winners and nominees please visit our website at www.yorktonshortfilm.org.
The Yorkton Short Film and Video Festival is Canada’s longest running film festival. Home of the prestigious Golden Sheaf Award, the Festival offers a unique opportunity for established and emerging filmmakers to meet face-to-face with industry decision makers and enjoy a relaxed atmosphere in the heart of the Saskatchewan prairie. Visit www.yorktonshortfilm.org for more information.
For more information please contact:
Fay Kowal Executive Director Email: [email protected] Telephone: (306) 782-7077 Web: www.yorktonshortfilm.org