Phoenix is out on location this morning
with Denise Young right now,
who is the Picture This Film Festival Director.
Hi Phoenix.
Hey Kate, hi everybody.
Filming film is the topic of discussion today
so we brought Denise in because
there is another event, the PTFF
explain that.
PTFF is short for Picture This Film Festival
which is...we're kicking off our our
fourthteenth year of celebrating films
either made by people with disabilities
on any topic or about disability
and those may or may not be
filmmakers with disabilities.
Why is this film festival so important
to Calgarians and also to these film makers?
I think it's really important for...to get that voice out
because it isn't a voice that you get to see
on the mainstream media as much.
It gives an opportunity for people to tell their stories
and we even say we have an educational function
to educate the broader community about people
with disabilities and the reality of their lives
not…not the fictions
that are, kind of, in mainstream media.
Yeah. There's a couple of examples we're going to
show here in just a quick second.
These are amazing and it comes from all
different parts of the country as well too
not necessarily just Canada
but how many countries are being represented?
This year we had a 125 entries
from 26 different countries
and of the award winners there were
10 different countries represented.
It's a little daunting putting on something like this
even though you've been doing it for 14 years,
How are you managing?
Well, um, okay. Our real festival director
is on a long term disability leave so we have
a bunch of people standing in to replace the one.
I think you're going to talk to one of my colleagues
who is working with me, from London,
in a few minutes
Beautiful
…the co-curator for the festival, so…
and there's lots of people, just lots of people
working and lots of volunteers.
We usually have between fifteen hundred
and a thou…or two thousand hours
of volunteer time put in by, you know,
ninety to a hundred volunteers.
Come on! That's amazing!
Yeah, there's a lot of commitment to the festival.
You know, we're asking our poll question about
whether or not the film industry
IS important to Alberta, IS important to Calgary.
How would you respond to that?
I think it's very important. We were talking a bit
earlier about that new facility they want to build.
Being able to actually create works locally…
for the international audience but also for the local
audience for some of the independent film makers,
the smaller budget people,
absolutely important and probably a big employer
in the Province, I would imagine, as well.
The uniqueness of the Picture This Film Festival
is that you certain criteria for these films as well.
Yeah, the criteria really just are about who's
making the films or the topic, right? So, it's either
a film maker with a disability and as I said, those
can be on anything. We have three entries
this year from a filmmaker from Kathmandu
who has disabilities.
Wow
And one of his entries is on child labour.
So, it's got nothing to do with disability per se,
so…or as I said,
if it's on the topic of disability
anybody can enter a film.
If you're looking for something unique,
something kind of different, well, it's
the Picture This Film Festival the…
your website so that you can see these films?
Yes, it's PTFF.org
which is short for Picture This Film Festival.
Wonderful stuff.
So, all the information is on there.
Denise Young, she is the festival director,
the acting festival director.
Thank you for coming in
and let's see more of these films.
Great Stuff.