Our NEW WEBSITE

Hello festival goers! It's Krista here writing to you from New Zealand where I'm on a years sabbatical with my husband and family. I'm writing this blog to promote the up and coming ReFrame Film Festival. Even thought I'm half way around the world I can still send this gentle reminder. DON'T MISS THE FESTIVAL!

ReFrame Peterborough International Film Festival is being held January 29, 30, 31/2010 for the sixth year thanks to the efforts of Wanda Nanibush and the organizing committee. They have worked tirelessly to bring this incredible line up of films to you.

NEW WEBSITE: reframefilmfestival.ca

ReFrame Peterborough International Film Fesitval is excited to announce, we've launched a new website. Go to www.reframefilmfestival.ca to see this great looking site for yourself. I think it looks fabulous. Tell us what you think. Please read about the design of our website on the previous blog posting.

ReFrame Going Greener

In the effort to be greener we have partnered with B-side. B-Side is the leading technology partner for film festivals helping audiences discover films. With more than 200 film festival partners, B-Side can enable any festival to have a web presence that rivals the top festivals around the world.

The B-Side Festival Genius is an interactive festival schedule that engages audience members and filmmakers with social features such as ratings, reviews, recommendations, and blogs.

HOW to ACCESS the PROGRAM

When you're on www.reframefilmfestival.ca go to Programming and click on ReFrame.

If you're a teacher and you're interested in possibly bringing a class to REELKids, click on REELkids. Take a look at our fantastic line-up for elementary school children and tell others

PURCHASE A TICKET FOR REFRAME

If you're still looking for an innovative and inspiring Seasonal gift why not get in touch with Wanda and get an all-access ReFrame Festival Pass. Here's her e-mail wnanibush@gmail.com

We Will be Launching a New Website

ReFrame is thrilled to announce that we will be launching our new website in late September 2009. For the past four years Quidnovis (www.quidnovis.com) has provided us with space on their community website. It has been an incredible donation and we will be forever grateful to them for getting ReFrame up on the web and helping us navigate our way through it. Quidnovis will continue to support ReFrame by hosting of our website.

It was a very exciting time for ReFrame this summer when Esther Vincent from Mustang Web Design (www.evmustang.ca) agreed to share her skill and design abilities with us to create our own website. Mustang has been very patient in teaching us the ways of the web design world so we can have a nice looking but still very functional site. I learned very quickly that there is way more to web design than what meets the eye. ReFrame certainly has a new appreciation for web design. Thanks Esther you have been wonderful to work with.

This leads me to the the site graphics. We love the look of the site and we have lots of other design changes coming for our 2010 festival thanks to Brandhealth. Brandheath is now the new designer for the festival so stay tuned for whats coming out of their design room. Brandhealth (www.brandhealth.ca) has been amazing to work with over the past 10 month coming on board late last year to design our new and amazing one pager folded program to help the festival become greener. Thanks Brandhealth

We want to take this opportunity to remember acknowledge and to thank Jennifer Tiberio Designs. Jennifer Tiberio was the festival's founding designer and has provided us with outstanding design for 5 years. Her ever beautiful, creative design and attention to detail helped the festival grow to what it is today. Jennifer is a very busy designer mainly based out of Toronto. We are sad to say goodbye but we understand the time necessary to do the our design was becoming increasing difficult with all of the other work she is doing in Toronto. Thanks Jenn, you will be forever missed and we will feel forever grateful for your contribution to the festival.

So, you've got the low-down on the up and coming site and all of the design... Stay tuned for our new domain name. It will be available here in late September.

Call for Local Submissions-Peterborough and Area

ReFrame Film Festival Calls for Local Submissions for its 2010 Festival

Who are we?
ReFrame (formerly the Traveling World Community Film Festival-Peterborough) is an international film festival showcasing outstanding and compelling film and video that strive to raise community awareness of cultural, social justice and environmental issues on local, national and international scale.

When is the festival?
ReFrame: Peterborough International Film Festival will take place in January 29-31/10. The venues are Showplace, Market Hall and Peterborough Public Library

Check the 2009 line-up of films at www.quidnovis.com/reframe to see films we typically screen.

Festival Submission Check List

o production year is 2008 or 2009
o between 2-45 minutes
o works that fit into our “who are we” mandate
o Complete a Print Source Contact Information
o Film Synopsis (max 100 words)
o 1 preview DVD
o Entries must be postmarked by July 31, 2009.

Print Source Contact Information (please print clearly)
1.1 Name: _______________________________________
1.2 Affiliation with film: ___________________________
1.3 Company: ____________________________________
1.4 Street Address: _______________________________
1.5 City: ________________________________________
1.6 Postal Code: ___________ Country: _______________
1.7 Tel: (____)___________________________________
1.8 Fax: (____)___________________________________
1.9 E-mail: _____________________________________

Production Credits (if applicable)
2.1 Director: ____________________________________
2.2 Producer: ___________________________________
2.3 Production Company: ___________________________
2.4 Screenwriter: ________________________________
2.5 Cinematographer: ______________________________
2.7 Editor: ___________________________________
2.8 Animator: ________________________________

Send Entry to:
ReFrame Peterborough International Film Festival
P.O. Box 895
Peterborough, Ontario K9J 7A2

Special Notes
*There is no entry fee.
*Entries will not be returned.
*If your film is selected, ReFrame will pay an artist fee.
*If possible we like the director to be present for the Q & A following the screening at ReFrame in January 2010.

If you have questions or need more information, contact us at reframefilmfestival@gmail.com

ReFrame 2009: Showplace recap

Showplace was my place for this year's ReFrame: Peterborough International Film Festival. This is the 5th year for the festival but the first time on with a new name in an effort to shorten the former name, "Traveling World Community Film Festival Peterborough," and to distinguish itself from the model that a festival by the same name in Courtney, B.C. provided.

This year, the new program was made from scratch but keeps it activist and issue based as in previous years.

The festival was a great way to see new work by established artists on the big screen and with an audience. Veteran documentary filmmakers like Alanis Obomsawin (Gene Boy Come Home, 2007), Robert Lang (Return to Nepal with Bruce Cockburn, 2008), Nettie Wild (Bevel Up, 2007), Mark Achbar (Blue Gold, 2008) and Nick Broomfield (Ghosts, 2006) represented.

The personal documentaries stood out for me, with a couple big highlights: Searching 4 Sandeep and She's a Boy I Knew. Both films are very emotional works that is at one end of the spectrum of films shown at Showplace - hand-held and personal. The other end is the orderly and journalistic side of documentaries that can only sometimes work on a cerebral level but it can work really well like Addicted to Plastic, Taking Root and Blue Gold.

Out of all the features, I'm almost surprised to say my favorite would have to be Garbage Warrior - a portrait documentary that successfully mashes both personal and journalistic but unfortunately suffers from a misleading title. A title like Garbage Architect would have hit the nail on the head.

It's always interesting to hear filmmakers speak and answer questions after the screening of their films. It extends the experience and makes the issues they raise that much more real. Filmmakers like Ian Connacher, Tracey Deer, Robert Lang, and Bay Weyman appeared on stage to take questions.

Programing the festival was handled by a committee and was directed by Krista English. The flow of the films made sense and performers from live spoken word artists, singers, drummers were there to get the audience in the mood and, with helpful introductions from ReFrame staff and volunteers before each film, the audience knew how to receive the film they were about to see.

Here is a list of the all the films I saw...

Friday
Gene Boy Come Home (2007, dir. Alais Obomsawin)
Breaking Ranks (2006, dir. Michelle Mason)
Do Not Go Gently (2007, dir. Melissa Godoy)
Searching for Sandeep (2007, dir. Poppy Stockell)
Deb-we-win Ge-kend-am-aan - Our Place in the Circle (2008, dir. Lorne Olson)
Road to Baleya (2008, dir. Bay Weyman)
Flowers for Rwanda (2008, dir. David Munoz),
Taking Root: The Vision of Wangara Maathai (2008, dir. Lisa Merton and Alan Dater)

Saturday
She's a Boy I knew (2007, dir. Gwen Haworth)
Addicted to Plastic (2008, dir. Ian Connacher)
Club Native (2008, dir. Tracey Deer)
Return to Nepal (2008, dir. Robert Lang)
Ghosts (2006, dir. Nick Broomfield)

Sunday
Warrior Boyz (2008, dir. Baljit Sangra)
Bevel Up (2007, dir. Nettie Wild)
Blue Gold: World Water Wars (2008, dir. Sam Bozzo)
Twelve (2008, dir. Lester Alfonso)
Garbage Warrior (2008, dir. Oliver Hodge)