Enjoy several award-winning films from past Reel Shorts Film Festivals that are available to watch online! They were selected for the Audience Choice Award, Youth Audience Choice Award, or the juried awards for best animated, documentary, and live action shorts. There’s also a fest-produced youth film that won awards at two other festivals! Shown in…
Yeah, yeah Valentine’s Day sucks. But short films do not! Here’s a little something for everyone whether you’re a die-hard romantic, a cold-hearted cynic, or you simply like to have a giggle. These films show why love is the best, why it’s the worst, and why it can be downright weird. 1. Best Tribute to…
‘Tis the holiday season and time to show our love for one another. Here’s a selection of films that reveal the power of giving. 1. Bird Food The lesson here is don’t be too generous: you might turn out like this guy. 2. A Fistful of Presents There’s hope for those of you on the…
Halloween is just around the corner and ’tis the season to leave your lights on, sleep with a teddy bear and wear extra-absorbent underwear. Check out this selection of our top horror short films to put a little spook in your life. Warning: do not watch alone. Some films may contain violence, gore, sexual content and/or…
George Lucas in Love is such a wonderful spoof of how the script for Star Wars was created that I included it in our 2008 fest even though it was nine years old at that point. Directed by Joe Nussbaum and produced by Joseph Levy, both USC School of Cinematic Arts graduates, the film was based…
With less than 3 weeks remaining until our submission deadline of Dec 16 for the next Reel Shorts Film Festival May 7-11, 2014, we’ve received 282 submissions. There’s usually a big batch that come in just before the deadline and our programming team is eager for more! New this year is that we’re accepting online…
The Calgary International Film Festival opens Thur, Sep 19 and closes Sat, Sep 29. Our own festival-produced HB, created during the Youth Film Mentorship Project with the support of Encana and the Stanford Hotel, is competing in the Youth by Youth Competition at 2:15 pm on Sunday, Sep 22 at the Cineplex Odeon Eau Claire…
CONGRATULATIONS to Michelle Davidson, Writer/Director of A Senior Moment which won the 2013 Reel Shorts Film Festival Audience Choice Award. After HB, the film created during the Youth Film Mentorship Project, led off the Best of the Fest film package, the countdown of the top audience choice films began with Kidnapped (Gekidnapped) at #5, The…
If you’re looking for something completely different from the sentimental sweetness of Valentine’s Day, here’s one of the blackest comedies I’ve ever seen. It’s so dark that I cried the first time I saw it, and yet 2 months later, while I was telling someone about it, I found myself laughing as I told the…
In honor of Valentine’s Day, here’s a wonderful film from Sweden that was in our 2009 fest. It’s not a typical love story, but it’s a perfect fit for Valentine’s anyway.
The Banff Centre recently announced a National Film Board/Banff Centre Work Study that involved working with Cam Christiansen, a filmmaker who produced, directed, and animated I Have Seen the Future which was in our 2008 festival. Applicants needed the following qualifications as quoted from the website: Education and training in digital visual effects and computer…
A friend asked me to blog about my top ten films because he wanted to watch them. I didn’t think people would have time to watch that many in a row, but here they are – my top ten picks from the last six festivals that are free to watch online: 1 from Canada, 3…
Monday is the submission deadline for the 2013 Reel Shorts Film Festival. Even though the submission form says that submissions must be received by 4:30 pm on Monday, there’s no need to panic if you haven’t submitted yet. Just get your screener DVD in the mail or couriered by Monday and we’ll include it in…
Das Tub is a delightful 4-minute short film from New Zealand that screened in the junior high package at our last fest. Director James Cunningham is the instructor of the Advanced 3D Productions course at Media Design School in Auckland and his students created 35 visual effects for this film. For a look at how they…
Many schools in Grande Prairie will send kids home with report cards today which means many teachers will face two evenings of parent-teacher interviews next week. Special Ed is a film from our 2012 festival that the teachers on our programming team particularly enjoyed.
With Remembrance Day almost here, I’d like to share an Academy-Award winning film from Germany that we screened as part of the Oscar-Nominated Live Action package in 2009 and in the school program (both the junior high and the high school Social Studies packages) in 2010 – Toyland (Spielzeugland). It came in third in audience…
The first of this winter season’s line-up of feature films in the GPLT Movie Series is Beasts of the Southern Wild which won 4 awards at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, 2 awards at Sundance including the Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic) and the Cinematography Award, and a long list of awards at other festivals including…
Scott Belyea, Scooter Corkle, and Michael Bourree have done an amazing job again this year leading the Youth Filmmaking Challenge workshops which showcase the filmmaking talents of the junior high and high school students who participated. In only 2½ days, they created these films which we premiered in the Best of the Fest film package.…
Good music is such an important part of a good film, but when the music exists before the film is shot, does that make it a music video? This was a distinction that one filmmaker made to me when I referred to her submission as a music video. She said that it wasn’t a music…
For the 13th year, Jodi and Jason Henry of Valhalla Pure Outfitters will be bringing the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour to Grande Prairie at 7 pm on Sunday and Monday, January 15-16 at the Douglas J. Cardinal Theatre at Grande Prairie Regional College. Each night has a different line-up of films and it’s…
With Christmas less than a week away, I’d like to share my favorite film from the 289 we’ve screened over the first 5 years of the fest. It’s from Belgium, 14 minutes long, and it was the first Oscar-nominated film that we had as an Official Selection. It was 2008, and the film is Tanghi…
With our submission deadline of December 15 less than 2 weeks away, the number of short films I’ve looked at since our last fest has just passed the 500 mark and we’ve received over 100 submissions so far from 26 different countries! As can be seen from these numbers and from reading my Film Selection…
Traditional storytelling using one particular medium may soon be overtaken by transmedia storytelling which Henry Jenkins defines as “a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding…
The easiest way to illustrate why filmmaking is the most collaborative art form is to look at one of my favorite films from past festivals: The Passenger. It’s a 7-minute short that was entirely self-funded and self-produced, as well as written, designed, modelled, textured, illuminated, animated, composed, recorded, mixed, edited, and directed by Chris Jones. …
With Halloween over, Christmas is right around the corner. For Star Wars fans, what could be better than the Blu-ray set Star Wars: The Complete Saga? Some changes have been made to the original movies which has infuriated die-hard fans, but the special features (deleted scenes, featurettes, spoofs and docs) have made it a huge…
Most people can rattle off a long list of famous actors, a much shorter list of famous directors, but maybe only a few producers.  What does a producer do, particularly when it comes to making films in Canada? Apparently, even producers can have a difficult time answering that question as can be seen in Anneli…
The beautifully animated One Rat Short from our 2007 festival won several awards at other festivals including Best Animated Short Film at the 2007 Cleveland International Film Festival. Written and directed by Alex Weil, it was the first short film produced by Charlex, the New York-based digital design and production studio he founded. At 9…
Of the 16 National Film Board films we’ve shared with audiences over the course of our first 5 film festivals, the one that screened at our first festival Mar 23-25, 2007 was the most critically acclaimed, winning the Academy Award that year for Best Animated Short. Torill Kove wrote, directed, and produced THE DANISH POET, a…
During the Youth Filmmaking Challenge workshops, which started in 2009, the students brainstorm ideas and then pitch them to the workshop leaders – Scott Belyea, Scooter Corkle, and Michael Bourree – who then pick the most feasible idea and help the students shape it into a script and shoot it. Scott edits the footage and…