NSCAD University
Film Festival
The NSCAD University Film Festival, presented by TD Insurance and in partnership with the NSCAD Alumni Association, is back for a third year to celebrate story-telling and filmmakers. Running from April 30 – May 2, 2024, the program includes three nights of screenings, showcasing documentary films by our alumni, an alumni panel, and a celebration films made by current NSCAD students.
2024 Program
SHORTS
Three Thousand
asinnajaq weetaluktuk (BFA 2015) , 14 minutes.
Mary & Myself
Sam Decoste (MFA 2015) , 6 minutes.
Flawed
Andrea Dorfman (BFA 1995) , 12 minutes.
Avenuers
Roberto Santaguida (MFA 2011) , 27 minutes.
feature
Spring and Arnaud
Katherine Knight (BFA 1980) & Marcia Conolly (BFA 1995), 1h05min
Art, love and mortality intertwine in this portrait of Canadian Artists Spring Hurlbut and Arnaud Maggs.
Arnaud Maggs, turning 85, embarks on a series of self- portraits that wryly depict his life’s work. Spring Hurlbut, at 60 is creating haunting works that evoke mortality while harboring the certainty that Arnaud’s time is limited. Together and alone, each grapples with the nature of an artist’s creativity where the drive for invention and discovery resists life’s finite reality.
Co-Director and Producer: Katherine Knight Co-Director, Cinematographer, Producer: Marcia Connolly Producer: David Craig Cinematographer, Visual Designer and Editor: Jared Raab Composers: Justin Small and Ohad Benchetrit
Funded by the Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts and the Toronto Arts Council
TOP TEN AUDIENCE FAVORITE, HOT DOCS 2013
GOLDEN HARE AWARD, FILMS ON ART PORTUGAL 2016
Screening follows with Q&A with Katherine Knight (BFA 1980) & Marcia Conolly (BFA 1995).
TOTAL RUNTIME: 2h4min
SHORT
Annie Pootoogook
23:50 minutes, Colour
Producer: Katherine Knight (BFA 1980)
Director: Marcia Connolly (BFA 1995)
Producer: David Craig (BFA 1977)
Annie Pootoogook’s artwork and individual creative process of making and doing are the core of this intimate film. Images of her drawings anchor the film in her art. The transitions, challenges and risks of her life are reflected in her drawings. The shamans, myths and land-based adventures prevalent in the last generation’s prints and drawings are less evident. Annie drawings depict today. Local and global collide in her images: a seal hunt on TV; a video play station dominates a sparsely furnished room, walrus meat is eaten on the floor with a modern kitchen visible in the background.
“Marcia Connolly has created an extraordinary documentary on Annie Pootoogook’s work and life. Her camera has found a beautiful way of implicating itself into Pootoogook’s community in Cape Dorset, creating an intimacy and sense of spiritual kinship which is profoundly touching and rare. This is one of the finest portraits of an artist I have ever seen.” – Atom Egoyan
feature
The War Room
1h36min, Colour
Director: Chris Hegedus (BFA 1973)
The 1992 presidential election was a triumph not only for Bill Clinton but also for the new breed of strategists who guided him to the White House—and changed the face of politics in the process. For this thrilling, behind-closed-doors account of that campaign, renowned cinema verité filmmakers Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker captured the brainstorming and bull sessions of Clinton’s crack team of consultants—especially James Carville and George Stephanopoulos, who became media stars in their own right as they injected a savvy, youthful spirit and spontaneity into the process of campaigning. Fleet-footed and entertaining, The War Room is a vivid document of a political moment whose truths (“It’s the economy, stupid!”) still ring in our ears.
TOTAL RUNTIME: 1h59
Related events
Alumni Panels, May 1
1 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. – Talk with a special guest and Chris Hegedus (BFA 1973) moderated by Stephen Reynolds (BFA 1984).
3 p.m. – Alumni film panel moderated by Darrell Varga, with Katherine Knight (BFA 1980) Heather Young (BFA 2009), Marcia Connolly (BFA 1995).
Alumni panels
Bell Auditorium, Fountain Campus
NSCAD, 5163 Duke St., Halifax NS
1 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. – Talk with a special guest and Chris Hegedus (BFA 1973) moderated by Stephen Reynolds (BFA 1984).
Chris Hegedus (BFA 1973)
Chris Hegedus has been making films as a director, cinematographer, and editor for nearly 40 years. She and her husband, filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker, founded the company Pennebaker Hegedus Films. In 2001, she was awarded the prestigious Directors Guild of America Award for STARTUP.COM, an intimate buddy story filmed during the first Internet boom/bust. She was nominated for an Academy Award for THE WAR ROOM, a behind-the-scenes look at Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. She taught filmmaking at Yale for eight years and received their Film Studies Award. In 2016 she directed Unlocking the Cage, the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival was nominated for an Emmy Award. At NSCAD Chris studied photography and experimental filmmaking.
3 p.m. – Alumni film panel moderated by Darrell Varga, with Katherine Knight (BFA 1980) Heather Young (BFA 2009), Marcia Connolly (BFA 1995).
Somewhere real
Kate Solar
Anwar
Anna Abi Daoud
Thirsty?
Myles Robichaud
Lost Thread
Jack Sanders
SYLA
Arin Rains
Pan & Syrinx
a. laurel lawrence
Cycles
Mitchell Webber
Mika
Esly Tan
Not My Children
Grace Whiffen
Eye piece
Kate Solar
Annie, Are You OK?
Deirdre Sokolowska
Curators
Liz Cowie (BFA 2000)
Liz Cowie was part of the inaugural VBT.tv team, which preceded vice.com, working closely with Vice founders Suroosh Alvi and Shane Smith, along with Director Spike Jonze and DP Lance Bangs producing various television and digital documentary series, music videos, advertising campaigns, commercials, and larger, feature length projects. Cowie became Senior Manager of Development & Alternative Programming at VICE TV. She developed and oversaw a variety of original series for the network such as The Devil You Know, Betraying the Badge, Devoured, and the Emmy-nominated series, Fringe Nation. She now works with NFB as a Producer, for the Quebec & Atlantic Studio.
Ray Charabaty (BFA 2016)
Raghed (Ray) Charabaty is a filmmaker based in Toronto. Ray’s films have won at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival): Canada’s Top Ten, Festival du Nouveau Cinema and the Starfish Awards. Ray is an alumnus of the CFC Director's Lab 2023 (Canadian Film Centre). Ray holds an MFA in Film from York University (2019) and a BFA with a minor in Art History from NSCAD U. Charabaty is a two-time fellow of the Netflix-Banff Pitch Program, as well as the BIPOC TV & Film x Warner Bros: Episodic Drama Writers Lab 2022.
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