LEGACY AWARD
After a careful screening process by WIFFBC's Submissions Jury, a select group of films will then be screened by WIFFBC's Special Jury and one individual will be chosen to receive the Legacy Award.
This award honors a person's body of work throughout their career as well as their contribution to the industry.
WIFFBC 2009 SPECIAL JURY
Women In Film & Television Vancouver is pleased to announce the special jury for the 4th Annual WIFTV Women In Film Festival:
TAMARA BULL
Tamara Bull was born into the Northwest Coast Haida Nation, and has attended Emily Carr and Toronto Schools of Art, UCLA as well as both Vancouver Film School and Capilano College for film studies.
Tamara Bull spent her formative years in Hong Kong and Vancouver, B.C. After high school she studied in Australia, California and Toronto. In 1990, Ms. Bull opened “Pow Wow”, the first native owned art gallery in Toronto. Her interests in audio-visual arts led her to direct and produce her first short production, THE HUNT.
Since then, Tamara Bull has won awards at the Dreamspeakers Film Festival and produced news and current affairs programming for CTV, BCTV and APTN. Mrs. Bull has been producing broadcast quality shows for over ten years and has developed a history for producing compelling narrative documentaries. Although she works primarily in digital media, she has experience in all aspects of production.
Tamara Bull can currently be seen on APTN with a educational/cultural TV series called THE CREATIVE NATIVE. As Executive Producer and host, Mrs. Bull conceptualized the idea as a way of maintaining and exploring aboriginal history and culture.
GWEN HAWORTH
Born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, Gwen Haworth is a transgender filmmaker, editor, and instructor.
After graduating with a degree in psychology in 1995, Gwen went on to complete undergraduate and graduate degrees in Film Production at the University of British Columbia. She has trained as a director's intern with the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television and served as a programmer and board member for Out On Screen, which holds Vancouver's Queer Film & Video Festival.
Critical of the construct of objective filmmaking, Haworth's films embrace a point of view approach that strive for empathy and collective storytelling. Her first short film NOT KOKURA re-examines the WWII bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, questioning the use of weapons of mass destruction on primarily civilian targets. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and received recognition at a number of North American festivals.
Between 2000 and 2004, Gwen came out as transsexual to her friends and family and transitioned genders from male to female. During this process, she became painfully aware of the media's marginalized depictions of trans individuals, often as victims of discrimination & violence or objects of fetish. In SHE'S A BOY I KNEW, Haworth turns the camera on her own family, capturing an intimate, complex, and emotionally ground-breaking account of their journeys through this experience.
When not making films, Gwen divides her time teaching film production at post-secondary institutions, working at an emergency homeless shelter, and DJing for fundraisers and non-profit events in Vancouver's Eastside.
JULIA KWAN
Julia Kwan is a Vancouver-based filmmaker who studied film and psychology at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto.
She was also a resident director at Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre, where she made her award-winning short, THREE SISTERS ON MOON LAKE. In 2005, Ms. Kwan made her feature film debut with EVE & THE FIRE HORSE, based on her Writer's Guild of Canada award-winning script. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and its International premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize for World Cinema.
In 2007, Kwan won the prestigious Claude Jutra Award for Best First Feature Director for EVE AND THE FIRE HORSE. The film also received five nominations, including Best Supporting Actor and Actress, at the Genie Awards.