Trending On Shaw Feb 26th Part 02

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.