About Reel Shorts

The Reel Shorts Film Festival celebrates short films and the filmmakers who make them by screening gems of storytelling brilliance from around the world, across Canada, and here in the Peace Region. We entertain audiences, and inspire, develop, and showcase Peace Region filmmakers, thus helping to grow a filmmaking community in northwest Alberta and northeast British Columbia.

In 2006, Terry Scerbak attended the Edmonton International Film Festival and came back to Grande Prairie inspired to share some of the great short films she’d seen. As a volunteer with Grande Prairie Live Theatre, one of Canada’s largest nonprofit community theatres, she founded the Reel Shorts Film Festival in 2007. The festival team has grown over the years and now includes:

• Mike Bass
• Chris Beauchamp
• Laura Beauchamp
• Eric Durnford
• Gail Littleton
• Greg Scerbak
• Terry Scerbak
• Mark Shpur
• Adrian Tanasichuk
• Dave Watson

The school program is a big component of the film festival and has been a part of it since the first festival in 2007.  It consists of screenings, filmmaking workshops, and class visits.  School screenings introduce students from Grades 2-12 to short films from around the world that help to broaden their world view while providing a platform for further classroom discussions related to the curriculum and other issues (bullying, self-image, racism, etc). The Youth Filmmaking Challenge workshop introduces students from Grades 8-12 to the most collaborative art form in the world and gives them the experience of sitting in an audience while their film has its premiere.  Class visits allow students to get to know a filmmaker, watch his/her short film, and participate in a discussion afterwards.  Meeting someone who’s passionate about what they do and finding out how they got to where they are gives them the confidence to follow their own dreams.