Five Atlantic filmmakers, selected as finalists by BravoFACT for a $35,000 grant for the most promising idea for a short film, will make their pitches to an industry jury Feb. 28, 2024, at the Women Making Waves conference in Halifax. The winner will be announced March 1, 2024, at the WAVE Awards Brunch.
Finalists and their projects:
• Every Day Janes Lora Campbell, Producer/Director/Writer An action thriller in which two young women take on the criminals that plague their city while trying to remain on the morally right side of self-prescribed justice.
• Ingrid and the Black Hole Leah Johnston Producer/Director/Writer Two children discover a black hole and imagine what it would be like to travel through time.
• Prison Music: A Fable Shelley Thompson Co-producer/Director/Writer A young man, incarcerated for an undisclosed crime, creates an extraordinary image on his cell wall, inspired by mysterious music and a distant aunt, who sends messages of love and faith on paint samples.
• The Anniversary Lara Cassidy Co-producer/Director/Writer A couple spends a romantic ‘one year anniversary’ together as they grapple with their decision to split up – before their spouses discover their affair and their families lives are impacted forever.
• The Busker Jenna MacMillan Co-producer/Director/Writer A stilted musician’s morals are tested when the talentless stonewalling busker across the street is attacked and robbed of her guitar.
About the finalists:
Lora Campbell, Producer, Organic Water Productions, Halifax, began producing films in 2024, starting with Two Penny Road Kill (with Lisa Rose Snow), which won Best Short Film at the Silver Wave Film Festival and was chosen to compete in the CBC Short Film Face-Off, and was screened across Canada. Her next short film, When Fish Fly, is in post-production, and she is working to develop multiple feature projects.
Shelley Thompson, Actor/Director/Writer, Halifax, trained as an actor at RADA in the UK; Shelley’s work as an actor has included the National Theatre of Great Britain, the West End, The Shaw Festival, The Neptune, The Globe and many more theatres. Television includes playing Barb Lahey on Trailer Park Boys and many films for TV and cinema. She’s written several plays: A Kind of Faith (2004) and Leaving Wonderland (2013). Her short Story Bowls of Cheer was included in a Nimbus Christmas Anthology, and with another Christmas Story, December 1945, broadcast nationally on CBC. She’s now working on feature-length screenplays of her short film DAWG and play Leaving Wonderland.
Lara Cassidy, President, Curve Productions, Inc., Halifax, is a leader in the N.S. film industry. In 1991 Lara created The Cassidy Group Talent Agency, which soon became (and still is) Atlantic Canada’s leading talent agency. In 1996, one of Lara’s producer clients requested that she direct a cast-heavy music video for Bravo! Television. The video quickly soared to number one on the charts and Cassidy’s directing career was born. She moonlighted heavily as a music video director until 2024, when Lara left The Cassidy Group to expand her skills and commit to a full time career as a filmmaker. Since then she has produced, directed, edited and / or written projects in almost every format and genre. Many of the projects created by Lara have been recognized for awards regionally, nationally and internationally.
Leah Johnston, Actor/Director/Photographic Artist, Truro, made her foray into filmmaking in 2024 by writing, directing, producing and starring in her no-budget short film Another Man,‘which has so far screened at Montreal World Film Festival, Atlantic Film Festival and St. John’s Int’l Women’s Film Festival. The script for her second short, Some Things Won’t Sleep, currently in post-production, received both the NSI Drama Prize and award sponsorship from Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation.
Jenna MacMillan, Producer/Director, Tiny Town Media, Charlottetown, has had short films screened across Canada, including the National Screen Institute’s Online Film Festival. In 2024, she produced a short documentary, This Is Paradise and Coastal Stories, a documentary series about western PEI. Jenna was one of the winners of the 2024 Interactive Incubator Project hosted by the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival and was also selected to attend the Story Incubation Module in Vancouver that continued into the 2024 Whistler Film Festival and the Aspects of Camera & Post Production Master Class in Banff, both hosted by the Women in the Director’s Chair and Creative Women Workshops organizations.
Since 1995, BravoFACT (Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent) has distributed millions of dollars in awards to Canadians for the production of short form scripted projects. Many of the resulting works have been honoured with awards around the world.
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