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The Canadian Film Centre's Worldwide Short Film Festival (WSFF), founded by Brenda Sherwood in 1994, was an annual film festival held over several days in Toronto, Ontario in June, at The Annex-Yorkville area venues; including the Bloor Cinema, the University of Toronto, and the Isabel Bader Theatre, among others.
Contents
- History
- Academy Awards Oscars qualifications nominations and wins
- Audience Choice
- Best Emerging Canadian Filmmaker
- The BravoFACT Award for Best Canadian Short
- The Deluxe Award for Best Live Action Short
- The Kodak Award for Best Cinematography in a Canadian Short
- Best Animated Short
- The Panasonic Award for Best Documentary Short
- Best Experimental Short
- The Deluxe Award for Best Performance in a Live Action Short
- Screenplay Giveaway
- Funding Forum Pitch Prize
- References
The WSFF holds accreditation, and is recognized as a qualifying event for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) short film awards. This means that certain award-winners at the WSFF are eligible to be nominated for the Oscars, Genies, and BAFTAs awards.
In 2012, the festival received 4,768 submissions from 113 countries, and it is currently the largest short film festival in North America. The festival has been described in the Canadian Encyclopedia as "a popular and productive meeting place for audiences, filmmakers, buyers and sellers interested in the art and commerce of making movies in short form", and this is reflected in the Short Films Big Ideas Symposium, which features master classes and panel discussions focused on professional development for those involved in the industry.
Each year the festival offers a celebrity program which has, in the past, featured films with such notables as Scott Thompson, Judi Dench, David Duchovny, Michael Fassbender, Max von Sydow, Natalie Portman, Dick Van Dyke, Don Cheadle, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Gérard Depardieu, Stephen Fry, and Anthony Hopkins, among others. The festival has also had films screen by many notable directors and celebrities, including Errol Morris, Spike Jonze, Rachel Weisz, Talmage Cooley, Courteney Cox, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In addition to the annual screenings in June, the festival also runs a monthly screening series called A World of Shorts.
History
The Worldwide Short Film Festival was founded in 1994, and operated independently under the direction of Brenda Sherwood until 2000, when the Festival was acquired by the Canadian Film Centre (CFC). The Centre brought some professional expertise to the venture: Wayne Clarkson, the CFC's executive director, who was the former head of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), from 1978 to 1985.
Brenda Sherwood was replaced as festival director by Shane Smith (2000-2006). Sherwood continued to serve on the festival advisory committee for 2001 festival season. Since 2001, under the direction of Shane Smith, the CFC-WSFF attendance doubled to over 15,000, and submissions increased to over 4,200. The CFC-WSFF also hosts the largest digital marketplace for short films in North America.
Several CFC-WSFF juried short films went on to be nominated for Academy Awards. A few, like Chris Landreth's animated documentary Ryan, won the 2004 Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, and the 25th Genie Award for Best Animated Short. Other Oscar winners include Harvie Krumpet by Adam Elliot (2003), Wasp by Andrea Arnold (2004) and The Danish Poet by Torill Kove (2006).
From 2004-to-2006, Festival Director Shane Smith, and festival researcher Peter Hasek pursued the idea of curating a 45-minute presentation of large format IMAX 15/70mm short films. This presentation was to have been screened at one of the IMAX theaters in downtown Toronto, as part of the CFC-WSFF program. The effort had support from Kodak Canada and the English Animation Department of the National Film Board of Canada. The event was to be promoted with tongue-in-cheek, but in actual fact, as "the only presentation at the Worldwide Short Film Festival that actually uses film."
With only a dozen-or-so 15/70mm short films in existence, the long-term plan was to create a boutique distribution service and "circuit" for large format short films; with each festival offering its own pro-rated "audience choice" cash award system. The goal was to create a reliable source of income for large format short film makers.
The "debut screening" of the 15/70mm large format short film platter was to have been held during the Worldwide Short Film Festival, at one of the IMAX theaters in downtown Toronto in June, 2006 followed by a screening for the Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival, at the Science North IMAX Theater in Sudbury, Ontario in September, 2006.
Following these two festival screenings, the 15/70mm platter was destined for on-going, for-profit screenings at the Western Fair IMAX Theater in London, Ontario in exchange for their help with the project. The Western Fair IMAX projection room and other facilities were to be used for print traffic co-ordination and revision work needed to assemble a 45-minute presentation of 15/70mm short films.
There were tentative plans for screening this ad hoc platter of 15/70mm short films at other IMAX theaters in Canada, and the United States, wherever the local IMAX theater had a strong partnership with their local, mainstream film festival that was similar to the working arrangement and relationship between the Cinéfest group and Science North, in Sudbury, Ontario.
This plan fell-through over time when: (1) the Western Fair IMAX Theater in London, Ontario ceased operations in September 2005, (2) the IMAX theaters in downtown Toronto wanted up-to $2000/hour in theater rental fees to prepare and host a 15/70mm short film festival event, making the event unrealistic and unaffordable for CFC-WSFF organizers and patrons, respectively. And neither downtown Toronto IMAX theater was willing or able to provide print maintenance and on-site storage for the duration of the project (April–June 2006), (3) IMAX corporate office in Santa Monica, California let it be known, throughout the "IMAX theater network", that the corporation did not support the idea of a large format, 15/70mm short film circuit for its theaters, and that the corporations current "priority (circa 2004-05) was the 're-purposing' of mainstream Hollywood feature films for use in IMAX theaters (and that) promoting short films in IMAX theaters would be a distraction" from that goal, and that IMAX had its own vision of what constituted an "IMAX film festival" that involved its theaters, (4) the loss of WSFF Director Shane Smith, who was the principal supporter of the idea of screening large format, 15/70mm short films at mainstream film festivals and, (5) festival researcher Peter Hasek was diagnosed with cancer.
In the end, it was determined that the scope and human resource requirements of The LF Project was so wide and deep, it would require the formation of a separate, double bottom line non-profit organization in order to fully develop, implement and maintain the goal, set forth by Shane Smith and Peter Hasek, of curating a traveling presentation of IMAX short films that is both manageable and financially sustainable.
Shane Smith retired as festival director of the CFC-WSFF after the 2006 festival season, and was replaced by former print traffic coordinator, Eileen Arandiga, who is currently the Director of Partnerships and Events at the Canadian Film Centre. Shane Smith is currently the Toronto Film Festival's Director of Special Projects.
In early-2013, the Canadian Film Centre began a re-evaluation of its public activities. As part of this re-evaluation process, the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival was put on hiatus.
Academy Awards Oscars qualifications, nominations and wins
Up until the 2012 film festival season, and the 2013 hiatus, the Canadian Film Centre's Worldwide Short Film Festival offered two Academy-accredited awards. Winners of the Best Animated Short award and the Deluxe Award for Best Live-Action Short qualify to be nominated for an Oscar. From 2001-to-2012, the following short films were screened at the Worldwide Short Film Festival, and were later nominated for an Oscar.