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NSCAD University
Film Festival

Purple circular design and text that reads NSCAD University Film Festival
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TICKETS & DISCOUNTS

The NSCAD Film Festival presented by TD Insurance is back for a second year to celebrate story-telling and filmmakers! The expanded program includes a special edition of Art Work: NSCAD Alumni Talk and a live industry panel as well as three nights of screenings. By popular demand, the event will feature one night of juried short films made by NSCAD alumni.

The second annual NSCAD University Film Festival celebrates filmmaking and story-telling. Buy your tickets below and we will see you at the movies!

Discounts

Film Festival Program

Monday, April 24 – NSCAD Film Festival Industry Panel

D440 Bell Auditorium – Fountain Campus
Session 1 – 1 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.:
Artist Talk/Interview with Oscar-winning filmmaker John Kahrs (BFA 1990), in conversation with animation faculty Becka Barker (BFA 2000)
Session 2 – 2 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
“Starting your career in Film” – filmmakers and industry panel with Stephen Reynolds (BFA 1984) from the Director’s Guild of Canada, Laura MacKenzie from Screen NS, film producer Jason Levangie (BFA 2004) and moderator Erinn Langille (BFA 2003) of the NSCAD Creative Entrepreneurship Lab.

This event is free and open to the public. Not in Halifax? The event will be recorded and posted online.

Monday, April 24, 7 p.m. Student Film Screenings at Cineplex Parklane
(live stream option through FIN STREAM)

  • Megan Currie – The Play
  • Deirdre Sokolowski – Wigilia
  • Cole McParland – Vacant
  • Grant Earl MacIntosh – Perennials
  • Alex Johnston – No Dogs Allowed
  • Deirdre Sokolowski – No Milk Today
  • Bailey Matthews – Empty Vessels Make the Most Noise
  • Margaret Harvey – Sympathy for the Devil
  • Claire Kovacs – The Evil Lurking Within
  • Kate Solar – Lost and Found, Teleplasm
  • Emma Chapman-Lin & Emma MacCabe – Protect Cherry Hill
  • Emma Chapman-Lin – Sea You

Tuesday, April 25 – Art Work: NSCAD Alumni Talk – Storytelling in Film

A special edition of Art Work: NSCAD Alumni Talks at 1 p.m. (Atlantic) by Zoom.
Join film makers asinnajaq uitaalutuq (BFA 2015) and Raghed Charabaty (BFA 2016) while they talk about storytelling in film, animation, and art; how it shapes their practices. This event is free and open to the public. Register Here

Tuesday, April 25 – 7 p.m. Award Winning Alumni Films — short Paperman (2012) by John Kahrs (BFA 1990) & feature Wildhood (2021) by Bretten Hannam (BFA 2008). Q&A with creators to follow.

Wednesday, April 26 – 7 p.m. – Juried Alumni Shorts (live stream option through Fin Stream)

Organizing Committee:
Sunil Sarwal (BDes 2002), Sam Fisher, Marco Chiarot, Dean Leland, Kathryn Toope.

Jury

Rashun Robinson

Rashun Robinson graduated from NSCAD University 2020 with a Major in Film. Since then, Rashun has been a production manager on documentaries shot in his home in Bermuda and has served on the Jury for the Bermuda Youth Film Festival. He is currently leading the initiative to build a state-of-the-art film studio in Bermuda.

Samira Eblaghi

Samira Eblaghi is a 2020 NSCAD graduate with a BFA in film studies. Since graduating, she has worked with the production sound team on season 3 of Diggstown and has collaborated as cinematographer and picture editor on documentaries with local filmmakers; most notably, Solomon Nagler and Sobaz Benjamin. She has also created content and music videos for local musicians like Behrooz Mihankhah and Ostrea Lake. In 2022, Samira directed her first short film, SABA , with co-producer Max Flint, which will be submitted to a handful of film festivals for 2023/24. Samira is currently in pre-production as co-producer for two more films, one short and one feature length.

Charles Bishop

Charles Bishop is a 30-year veteran of the international film and television industry. He produced the Palme D’Or and Academy Award winning feature documentary, Bowling for Columbine.

In 2004 Charles co-founded and became President of DHX Media, which went public in 2006. In his tenure with the DHX he was responsible for almost half a billion dollars of production and distribution revenue from shows he co-created and produced.

Charles has produced dozens of kids, comedy, docs and drama series – all going multiple seasons for BBC, CBC, PBS, Universal Kids, Netflix, Family Channel, Disney Channel, ABC Australia and ZDF, to name a few. In addition to multiple projects in various stages of development, currently, Charles is Executive Producer of the series Moonshine, which he set up at CBC, with eOne co-producing and distributing. The 2020 Nova Scotia shot one-hour dramady premiered September 2021, season 2 will air September 2022 and the series is greenlit to shoot season 3 in July 2022.

Charles has won numerous Gemini Awards as well as multiple international awards. In his spare time Charles shows his abstract art Polaroids (#charleswbishop) in various galleries across North America.

Spencer Clerk

Spencer Clerk is a NSCAD film graduate. As part of his thesis year in 2019, Spencer wrote and directed the short, Take Out. Spencer now lives in Toronto and works at Sound Dogs Toronto as a first assistant sound editor. You can hear some of his recent work on the Netflix show, Ginny and Georgia Season 2.

Presenting Sponsor
TD Insurance Logo, TD in a vibrant green box with TD Insurance in black text to the right.
Student Prize Sponsor
William F. White
Streaming Partner
Producer
Director
Cinematographer
Beverage Sponsor
Partners

Nathan Boone was born on June 3, 1989 in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. Nathan is an editor, known for TWRP: Food Bar (2017), Vandits (2022) and TWRP: Synthesize Her (2018).

Peter Sircom Bromley (signed “pbsky”) was born in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. He attended Acadia university and graduated with a BFA from NSCAD in 1970. He has lived and worked as a multimedia designer and artist in Halifax, Fredericton and Montreal. He has been a resident of Vancouver since 1996

Chuck Clark grew up almost on a farm in Potato Country, by the Saint John River, West Central N.B. took photos for High School Yearbook worked Summers in a local graveyard and graduated with a Diploma F.A. from NSCAD in 1974. favorite time at NSCAD, the Summer of ’73 (Intro Art Funk Ceramics; Intro Filmmaking). 1st Media job: Photo Lab Tech & Asst. Photographer, Fortress Louisbourg 2nd Media job: seasonal Apprentice Film Camera Operator/Asst, CBC Halifax. Chuck helped found the Atlantic Filmmakers’ Co-Op. Experimental Documentary-Short Filmmaker, recreational scuba diver / semi-professional underwater videographer.

Won Best Cinematography: The Water’s Tale, 1996 Atlantic Film Festival

Marcia Connolly is a documentary filmmaker with over 25 years experience in visual storytelling.  

Her award-winning films have screened internationally, including at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Hot Docs, the Margaret Mead Festival and at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

Connolly’s latest film, “Never Too Old”, commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, followed 81-year-old PhD candidate Olive Bryanton as she navigated through the final year of her doctoral program at the UPEI. Olive’s 10 myth-busting participants, women 85 and over living in rural Prince Edward Island, utilized photovoice to document what supported or limited their ability to age in place. 

Andrea Dorfman is a Halifax based filmmaker, artist, writer, animator, illustrator, bicyclist, seed grower, star gazer and people watcher. She is endlessly curious about all sorts of things but the only thing she knows for sure is that she knows almost nothing at all. She has directed numerous shorts and the feature films Parsley Days (2000), Love That Boy (2003), Heartbeat (2014) and Spinster (2020), often collaborating with the brilliant writer, Jennifer Deyell. At some point along the way Dorfman taught herself animation and made the Emmy nominated, Flawed (2009) and Big Mouth (2012) with The National Film Board of Canada – as well as the feature doc, The Girls of Meru (2018) which follows the human rights work of Canadian legal justice non-profit, The Equality Effect. In 2017, she adapted and illustrated, Flawed, which was published as a YA graphic memoir for Firefly Books.

Dorfman’s short live action/animation collaboration with uber talented poet-musician, Tanya Davis, How to Be Alone (2010), has garnered almost 10 million YouTube hits and was adapted into a book published by HarperCollins, illustrated by Dorfman. Their follow-up, the animated film How to Be at Home, made during the first Covid lock down, is a deeply soothing comfort for pandemical times.

Devon Pennick-Reilly. My name is Devon, and I love to tell stories. Since childhood, I have naturally gravitated to film as a medium.  In 2015, I graduated from the NSCC screen arts program, and in 2019 I graduated from NSCAD University with a bachelor of fine arts, majoring in film. My art explores mental health, symbolism and the language of the natural world. I have a fascination with the human condition, asking big questions, and the interconnectedness of all of us. 

Kerrin Rafuse (she/her) is a screenwriter and director based in St. John’s/K’tamquk, Newfoundland. She holds a BFA from NSCAD University (2010) in her hometown of Halifax/Kjipuktuk, Nova Scotia.  Kerrin is focused on stories exploring the murky waters of becoming oneself, though she prefers them with a fantastical or sci-fi bend. She is never without comedy. Her sophomore short, False Light (2018), was part of Telefilm’s Canada’s Not Short On Talent at Cannes in 2019, and her third short, the French-language La Véillée (2021), is currently screening at festivals across the country.

Christian Sparkes is an award winning writer and director of film and television hailing from Newfoundland, Canada. He has directed numerous episodes of television and various commercials, and his films have screened at the world’s top festivals including TIFF, Fantastic Fest and Busan. An alumnus of the prestigious Canadian Film Centre in Toronto, Christian’s debut feature Cast No Shadow was nominated for four Canadian Screen Awards including Best Picture, at which point Telefilm Canada named him one of Canada’s top directors alongside Xavier Dolan and David Cronenberg. His sophomore feature Hammer starring Will Patton and Mark O’Brien debuted in 2020 and received widespread acclaim from Roger Ebert, The Hollywood Reporter, and Variety magazine, amongst others. He is currently in post-production for his third and fourth feature films, Sweetland and The King Tide, respectively.

Justin Tomchuk is a multi-disciplinary artist focusing primarily on film and music production, animation, and painting. He grew up outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and now resides in Montreal, Quebec. Justin’s career started at a young age, playing around with a Hi8 camcorder. As his interest in film grew, he experimented with stop-motion and hand-drawn animations.

In 2012, Justin graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, majoring in film production. From there, he accepted a video editing job in Quebec and moved to Montreal, Quebec with his long-time creative colleague and partner Karolina. Together, they learned to speak French and embraced their new city and culture. In 2015, Justin and Karolina founded Stereokroma Creative Service G.P. and dedicated themselves full-time to developing their Youtube channel and marketing production services for other Canadian artisans.

Their channel became widely successful, gaining attention from international publications like Popular Mechanics and National Geographic. Out of a spur of spontaneity, Justin decided to return to his roots of animation and started a new Youtube channel in 2017. Known as u m a m i, Justin’s Youtube animation channel quickly soared into cult-like popularity. With the help of his now fiancée Karolina, together they steered the channel into a lucrative animation series that caters to its fanbase with merchandise, live streams, television commissions, art installations, and media interviews.

Heather Young is a Canadian filmmaker originally from New Brunswick now living in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. After graduating from the University of New Brunswick and NSCAD University she made several short films. FISH (2016) and MILK (2017) played at festivals all over the world including the Toronto International Film Festival, Palm Springs Shortfest, Vienna Independent Shorts, the Maryland Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival and TIFF Canada’s Top Ten. MILK won Best Short Film (Canada) at Festival du nouveau cinema in Montreal. Her first feature MURMUR (2019) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival where it won the FIPRESCI Prize for the Discovery Programme and went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Slamdance Film Festival and the John Dunning Award for Best First Feature at the Canadian Screen Awards.

John Kahrs is an Academy Award®-winning animator and film director. Originally from upstate New York, John began his professional career in animation as one of the first employees of Blue Sky Studios. In 1997, he joined Pixar as an animator on A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles, and Ratatouille, among others. In 2007, shortly after Disney’s acquisition of Pixar, John relocated to Southern California and became part of the revitalization of Disney Feature Animation. John supervised the animation on Disney’s 2013 hit Tangled. He went on to direct the technologically ground-breaking and acclaimed short film Paperman, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2013. He now independently develops and directs animated projects.