Valhalla Film School 2010Valhalla Fine Arts Main Page Housing VFS Contact Us
Two dynamic and talented filmmakers, Catrina Longmuir and Martin Rose will lead adult film students in two days of intense, creative animation and digital storytelling skills. Participants will create a short digital story or animation piece based on the history or experience of the Japanese Canadian internment in New Denver.
Location: @ Lucerne School, 604 - 7th Avenue, New Denver, BC To register, print and fill out Registration Form. Please register by May 31, 2010 Questions? Email us at vfs@valhallafinearts.org Resources:
Film Screening Attend the VFS film screening on June 6 at 7p.m., Bosun Hall, New Denver:
FACULTY: Catrina Megumi Longmuir Catrina is an independent producer in documentary film & media arts. She graduated from Concordia University (BFA Fine Arts & Anthropology) in 2000. Catrina worked at the National Film Board of Canada as Outreach Coordinator for CitizenShift and then as Associate Producer for Finding Farley, Kids in Jail, and Our World. Our World was a 'digital storytelling' workshop working with First Nations youth living in remote communities. The youth would learn how to create their own short film within a week, and in the First Nation language (that they often do not speak). By working with elders they would translate the pieces, and have a community screening at the end of the week. Our World and the other similar community-oriented social issue projects that Catrina led were often quite challenging due to the sensitive nature of some of the content. She was able to handle and execute things with diplomacy and grace, and continues to have close ties to many of the people she worked with. Catrina is currently completing co-producing 13 short films about First Nations language revitalization efforts, commissioned by Knowledge Network in partnership with the First Peoples Heritage Language & Culture Council (due to air summer 2010). Her passion lies in working with diverse artists and communities to create aesthetically, socially and culturally informative films & art. Art that can promote social change. When filmmaker Moira Simpson told Catrina about the multi-generational project documenting the last remaining Japanese Canadian former internee elders in New Denver, BC, she could not contain her excitement. Catrina is a great fit as a mentor for this year's VFS focus having a strong relationship to her Japanese roots. She looks forward to working with youth and elders and will be an asset to this project because of her professional and personal background. Martin Rose Martin Rose is an Associate Professor in Animation and has been an independent animation filmmaker in Vancouver for two decades. Martin Rose has contributed creatively to auteur animation projects at the National Film Board for two decades. As a producer, he was involved with How People Got Fire, The Trembling Veil of Bones, and Animate Everything. He directed Trawna tuh Belvul, a short film produced by Svend-Erik Eriksen. The film is an interpretation of a sound poem written and performed by the noted Canadian poet Earle Birney, and depicts a train and its array of occupants traveling between Toronto and Belleville, Ontario. The animation was created with cut-out paper puppets and filmed on a multi-plane camera. Exhibited internationally, the film opened the 1994 Ottawa International Animation Festival, and won a Silver Plaque for Short Subject at the Chicago International Film Festival and Best Animation at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Martin has participated with many other animation productions. They include Joe, a 5-minute film directed by Jill Haras at the NFB Pacific & Yukon Centre, and When the Day Breaks. Produced at the NFB Animation Studio in Montreal, When the Day Breaks is a highly-acclaimed work created by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis. In addition to his projects at the NFB, Martin Rose is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Design & Dynamic Media at the Emily Carr University of Art & Design, where he has taught animation for 15 years. Moira Simpson Moira Simpson's work as an award-winning freelance director, cinematographer and editor spans 30 years and encompasses many National Film Board of Canada, independent and television documentaries. Simpson has often combined filmmaking with teaching, giving workshops throughout BC as well as the Western Arctic, Newfoundland and Alberta. She has also taught at the University of British Columbia and regularly teaches part-time at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Simpson has been honoured with receiving the best student evaluations one year at Emily Carr. She currently gives workshops regularly and has mentored a number of developing filmmakers. Simpson's National Film Board productions examine social and political issues from personal perspectives. Early directing credits include Turnaround: A Story of Recovery; At the Crossroads, one of five one-hour films from Reckoning: The Political Economy of Canada shot in Canada, France, Japan and Sweden; To Canada with Love and Some Misgivings and the internationally acclaimed Feeling Yes, Feeling No. In 1997 Simpson directed and was co-Director of Photography of the one-hour television documentary Marker of Change, the story of the creation of a national women's monument remembering the 14 women murdered in the Montreal Massacre. In 1999 Simpson directed, wrote and was additional camera on the NFB's Flipping the World, a disturbing and honest exploration into the world of youth and drug addiction, told by kids who have been there. Winning multiple awards it has been broadcast a number of times on CBC Newsworld's The Passionate Eye. In 2002 Simpson was director/writer and DOP on the NFB documentary Kosovo: fragile peace. Simpson spent two months in Kosovo on the frontlines of an international peacebuilding mission during Kosovo's first ever free election. Shot over two years, Simpson was DOP and location sound recordist on the National Film Board's feature length documentary, Finding Dawn on the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women across Canada. The winner of the Gold Audience Award at the Amnesty International Film Festival in Vancouver, 2006, Finding Dawn has been screened in numerous festivals throughout Canada, the USA and Eastern Europe. It has also been screened at the United Nations in New York How can aid be delivered with justice and dignity? In 2007 Simpson travelled to Chad in Africa as Co-director/writer, DOP and editor on Bear Production's independent documentary From Under the Bushy Trees, featuring a feisty Canadian woman from Powell River, who is working, along with the Chadian people, to establish a school and accompanying essential services in the small village of Manda. In the fall of 2008 Simpson gave a joint NFB-UN Habitat workshop in Nairobi, Kenya with young media activists from three grassroots video groups in Nairobi's vast slums. They have become models of self-empowerment in a society besieged by political disillusionment. Last year, as a filmmaker-in-residence in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Simpson helped marginalized residents cross the digital divide as they began to tell their own stories using mobile phone video technology. In 2009 Simpson received the Kodak Image Award of Excellence from Women in Film and Television. This past year she completed shooting, editing and co-producing Under One Sky, a doc that explores the physical and spiritual nature of the martial arts as practised by women. It premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Simpson is currently telling the story of the Nikkei Internment Camp on a community based project in collaboration with the Kyowakai Society and the youth of New Denver BC. Valhalla Fine Arts is a presentation of the Valhalla Summer School of Fine Arts Society |
