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VAFF 19

MAMM 10 Judges & Prizes

Suzette Laqua Headshot

Suzette Laqua, Executive Director/Founder, Vancouver Web Fest

Suzette Laqua is an Entrepreneur, Executive Producer, Producer and Writer of TV, Web Series and Short Films. She is a graduate of Simon Fraser University and has had a number of successful businesses. Suzette has also given back to the community as a Volunteer Mentor with PLEA – KidStart; working with teenage girls at risk in the Vancouver area since 2003. Suzette has traveled extensively and has been fortunate to live in other countries, including the United States, Holland and Australia. These experiences have been invaluable in developing Suzette’s appreciation and understanding of the Global Village. By bringing Vancouver and Canada a Festival that honours web series from around the world, Suzette is aspiring to create an awareness that will be beneficial for web series creators and their teams and will help the web series evolve forward as an entertainment medium unto itself.

Tracy D Smith Headshot

Tracy D. Smith, Board of Directors, Crazy8s Film Festival

Tracy D. Smith is a writer/director whose credits include the feature film “Everything and Everyone” (which screened at the 2011 Seattle Film Festival, the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Women in Film Festival BC where she won best director and best picture) and “Taming Tammy” (her debut feature film which screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2007 and received a nomination for the CityTV Western Canada Feature Film Award). Her first short film, “Sandra Gets Dumped”, part of the 2005 Crazy8s Film Competition, won Leo Awards for best screenwriting and best female performance in a short drama. She has since directed over 40 short films many of them award winning and screened internationally. She received an MFA in creative writing from UBC in 2002 and has since taught as guest instructor of screenplay for the program. She was a script reader and development executive for Brightlight Pictures for several years where she read over one thousand screenplays and assisted in story editing and producing several feature films. She is a professional story editor, has written more than eight feature length screenplays and is currently in development on “Finders Keepers” an urban thriller set in Vancouver.

Al Yoshizawa Headshot

Alejandro Yoshizawa, Professor, Dept of Theatre and Film, UBC

Alejandro Yoshizawa – Rogers Teaching Fellow is a filmmaker from Vancouver, British Columbia. He was the lead filmmaker and director for the Chinese Canadian Stories web series which was nominated for a Leo Award for Best Web Series in 2013. His films have been shown across Canada at various exhibitions and film festivals including Ethnographic Terminalia (Montreal) and the Vancouver Asian Film Festival. His latest films include A Storyteller’s Story (2011), Covered Roots: The History of Vancouver’s Chinese Farms (2012), A Degree of Justice (2012), and The Hunt For Matsutake (2012). Academically, Yoshizawa is interested in oral history, digital storytelling and the use of film as a pedagogical tool. He received the Edgar Wickberg Prize in Chinese Canadian History in 2010.

Prizes

Narrative Category

First Prize (adjudicated):

  • Lighting and Grip Equipment Truck Package, Pacific Backlot 
  • Aired on NovusTV in Fall 2014
  • Cash prize – $350
  • Screened at Fourth World Poetry Canada International Peace Festival, October 2014 and filmmaker interview boardcast at the radio channel (CFRO 100.5 FM)
  • Screened at VAFF 18, November 2014

Second Prize (adjudicated):

  • Two Day Basic RED Epic Rental, Black Tree Pictures 
  • Aired on NovusTV in Fall 2014
  • Cash prize – $150
  • Screened at Fourth World Poetry Canada International Peace Festival, October 2014 and filmmaker interview boardcast at the radio channel (CFRO 100.5 FM)
  • Screened at VAFF 18, November 2014

“Best of the Best” people’s choice award: