Trending On Shaw Feb 26th Part 02

Phoenix catches up with the Picture This Film Festival director, Denise Young to learn about the festival that focuses on disabilities.

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 Picutre This Film Festival, which isÉweŐre kicking off our fourth year of celebrating films either made by people with disabilities on any topic or about disability and those may or may not be film makers with disabilities.

Why is this film festival so important to Calgarians and also to these film makers.

I think it's really important forÉto get that voice out because it isn't a voice that you get to see on the mainstream medias 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 livesÉnotÉnot the fictions that are kind of in mainstream media.

Yeah. There's a couple of examples that 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 toÉnot necessarily just Canada but how many countries are being represented?

This year we had a hundred and twenty five entries from twenty six different countries and of the award winners there was ten different countries represented.

It's a little daunting putting something like thisÉeven though you've been doing it for fourteen 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.

Éthe co-curator for the festival, soÉand there's lots of people, just lots of people working and lots of volunteers. We usually have between fifteen hundred and a thouÉor 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 locallyÉfor the international audience but also for the local audience for some of the independent film makers, the smaller budget people. Um, 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 Katmandhu who has disabilities.

Wow

And one of his entries is on child labour. So, it's got nothing to do with disability per se, soÉor 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 theÉyour 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.