HIGHLIGHTS & VIDEOS: Toronto April 2017 Film Festival

AUDIENCE FESTIVAL AWARDS

Best Film: RIGHT HERE OR OVER THERE

Best Performances: THE MAN FROM THE SWIM LANE ASIDE

Best Cinematography: THE MAN FROM THE SWIM LANE ASIDE

Best Music: The music from LE BELLE FOLIE

Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Videos from each film: 

NOSTOMANIA, 2min, Canada, Experimental
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK		 festival posterIN A WARM DARK PLACE, 10min, USA, Drama/Thriller
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK
festival posterTHE MAN FROM THE SWIM LANE ASIDE, 15min, Brazil, Drama/Romance
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK		 festival posterBENDED BONDS, 6min, Belgium, Drama
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK
festival posterRIGHT HERE OR OVER THERE, 16min, France, Drama
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK		 festival posterUNBIND, 5min, Australia, Dance/Experimental
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK
festival posterLE BELLE FOLIE, 14min, UK, Comedy
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK

The FEMALE APRIL 2017 FEEDBACK Film Festival gave our audiences simply the best of short comedy movies from around the world.

The theme of the festival was “HOW MEMORY SHAPES US”.

Every film showcased was about a setting where a character was forced to go back to their past and rediscover themselves.

NOTE: Our 3rd Female Director’s festival!

The Female FEEDBACK Film Festival has been an incredible learning experience. The success it’s acheived so far in less than a year and three festival nights (2 in Toronto. 1 in Los Angeles) has been nothing short of amazing. The quality of films presented is top notch. The difficult part now is that we need to expand our festival and have more evenings because we have so many great shorts to program.

I really have nothing to do with this festival. I don’t program a single film. I don’t moderate. I don’t program any of the accepted screenplays. My job is to simply make sure the excellent team (lead by Kierston Drier and Amanda Lomonaco) have a cinema and audience to showcase the accepted works.

Kierston Drier’s rise to moderating the night has been amazing. The audience’s response to her is extremely positive and she gets the best out of them each time she performs the role. And yes, moderating is a performance. The #1 goal is to make sure the film get’s it true justice from the audience’s comments.

As our editor John Johnson says: “The less the moderator talks, the better the film festival is.” You want the audience to make the points. You want to audience to express their emotions and opinions on the film. The moderator is there to start and end the conversation and hopefully say nothing in between. And Kierston, so early in the job, is mastering that.

And the amazing succcess of Kierston and Amanda’s programming this festival can’t be overlooked. They are simply picking the right films to bring to this festival and to the entire world.

See you at the festivals in 2017.

– Matthew Toffolo

By femalefilmfestival

The irony of this festival is that its goal is to not be around in 5 years time. To eventually not be relevant because there is zero need to have a festival geared for female talent and female stories because the stories presented in Hollywood and around the world are a balanced showcase of the human experience from both sexes. Our goal is to achieve a lot of success and then fold into oblivion simply because there is no need for this festival. This festival was created by the FEEDBACK Film & Writing Festival as a simple reaction to a strong need to showcase female talent from around the world in a more profound way. When putting together the weekly festival, the administration noticed a lack of a female presence in the stories being shown at the festival. A classic example and analogy to the frustration is how the festival noticed that even the smaller roles in a screenplay were written for a man to play. There was zero reason for this in many stories. How a police officer, or a political campaign manager, for example with 3-4 lines in a screenplay was a "HE" character. Why? And these are the screenplays written by the winners! The talented one who have obtained agents and have began/beginning their careers as a writer.

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