The fifth annual Obelisk Awards took place on Tuesday evening with some familiar faces both in the running and on the winner’s podium with a new champ crowned.
Make that two new champs wearing crowns.
Achieving glory as the Best Film for 2016 was Antecedence, a documentary-style film of one woman’s recollections of her youth in Winnipeg as partially re-enacted by a young girl actor. The film executed with utmost simplicity and professionalism, had smart editing and clean production values.
Antecedence was co-directed by Samantha Gardner and David Konrad, both students at Bellerose Composite High School.
Konrad explained that they really worked hard to distinguish their work from that of the others in the competition, and it paid off.
“We sat down and thought, ‘OK, we don’t want to make something that everyone else makes, we don’t want to make something super funny, but we don’t want to do one of those very serious things because so often those are not taken properly.’”
The concept started as interviews with elderly people discussing modern subjects like Snapchat, something entirely different than what ended up on screen. Gardner noted how they focused in on the final product.
“We wanted to tell a real story and recreate it. We took Carol’s story … and recreated it with a little girl. It was almost like she was having flashbacks.”
The device was most effective and the proof was in the trophy that the co-directors took home.
Gardner is gaining momentum as a filmmaker. She was last year’s winner of the Best Editing for her short film, Future. The digital media design student and photography enthusiast also won first place in the Youth Photo Exhibition contest held last October at the MusĂ©e HĂ©ritage Museum. Konrad is also a photography enthusiast with a keen eye for interesting content and unique compositions.
Obelisk film entries were required to be less than seven minutes in length, a tall order for short films.
The first runner up of the evening was Mason McGuire for her snappy and tight short comedy, Air Head, about a woman who has fallen in love with a red balloon with a face drawn on it. McGuire was the 2015 Obelisk Best Film winner for her short, The Invisible Life of Criselda, another relationship film. Teresa McKernan took the second runner up position for Spark, her short film about friendship.
The evening also featured live poetry slam performances by Celine Caruso, Callum Williamson and Michael Jensen, music by Hailey Ann Coulson and Emily Flint. The event included an art display by fellow Bellerose students in the lobby and a photo exhibit and contest. That contest, held for the first time, saw Julia Taylor take home the first place prize, with Damon Comaniuk get the second place. David Konrad, the co-winner of the Best Film prize had a great night overall, taking in the third place photo spot.
Obelisk organizer Mike Larocque teaches photography and the Bulldog Film classes. He said that the new photo exhibition and contest went better than he expected with nearly 30 entries from students from different St. Albert schools.
“I tell the students I teach that they should have an intense focus on quality when taking photos, and the quality of their work and others really showed here,” he explained.
As for the films, he was also duly impressed, especially with the overall evolution that he sees occurring within the budding young filmmakers.
“We've seen the quality of films at the festival really improve each year, and I feel this year's entries really push beyond what many people imagine when they think of a student film. I've been working with many of the directors after school for the last several weeks as they edit their films, and I'm impressed by how dedicated they are to the fine detail work and the technical side of filmmaking. Many of the films come out with a very professional and polished feel to them.”
He ended by adding that he sees how the students are taking the genre of a short film as a serious art form and not just trying to fit a feature-film concept into a shorter time frame.
“We're seeing students that are putting a lot of thought into what kind of story they can tell in a film under 10 minutes, and it's producing great results.”
People can learn more about the festival at www.obeliskfestival.com.
