Women in Film Festival 2010

This weekend is the 20th annual Women in Film & Television Festival. Each year there are screenings, workshops, and plenty of social opportunities to mingle with movers and shakers from the West Coast.

Photo credit: wexnercenter on Flickr

As proven by Kathryn Bigelow’s Academy Award for Best Director on March 7th, women thrive in front of and behind the camera.

The festival features a weekend of short films from 35 first time and veteran female filmmakers produced in countries such as New Zealand, Egypt, USA, Saudi Arabia and Canada. This stellar line-up of short documentaries, animation, drama, and a feature film also includes the presentation of two major filmmaker awards, pitching sessions, free filmmaker industry panels, and exhibitor showcase with networking lunch presentations from local industry companies.

Things kick off Saturday April 17th at 7:00pm with Opening Night at the Vancity Theatre. Earlier in the day there will be an exhibitor showcase from 9:30am – 4:30pm and then again on Sunday from 9:30am until 3:00pm. There will also be panels from 4:00pm – 5:30pm on Saturday and again on Sunday April 18th from 10:00am until 11:30am.

Let’s not forget the actual film screenings as well, which will take place both Saturday and Sunday. The rest of the festival is open to the general public all weekend and the exhibitor showcase is free to the public (register at the door).

Ticketed events include the screenings, the panels, the opening reception and the awards ceremony. You can purchase tickets for these events online or pick up a full festival pass.

I have two Festival Passes to give away which will get you and a friend into all of the film screenings this weekend. If you would like to enter to win the passes, please leave a comment or re-tweet the following:

This will be a quick contest and the passes are getting printed up for this weekend as we speak. I’ll run this until tomorrow morning at 9:00am.

Update The winner of the passes is Brenda, congratulations! Unfortunately I didn’t have a working email address for the 1st winner drawn.

Fine print: Approximate value of each pass is $45.