BLUE BURROW, 14min., USA
Directed by Leah O’Donnell
Blue Burrow is a short movement based film fully immersed in the sun, sand, and water of Lake Huron. The shore is the meeting place for characters of different species, while the world underwater comes to represent the subconscious. Perspectives shift from fish to human to sun, and metaphors about our relationship to the natural world emerge.

https://www.leahfayeodonnell.com/
https://www.instagram.com/_leahfaye/

Get to know the filmmaker:

Growing up in Michigan, the Great Lakes were a prominent element of my childhood memories. They are the largest fresh water source in the world, with waves and views that could easily be mistaken for the ocean. Several years ago, I became interested in site-specific dance and began dreaming up images of a live performance on Lake Huron, where I have swam many times with my family. The idea to make it a film came once COVID hit. Live performances were being rapidly shut down and I realized that not only would a film be safer for the performers, but we would be able to share the work with more people. Because the camera became the audience’s eye, we were able to more deeply immerse ourselves into the water, showing more intimate perspectives of the landscape and the choreography.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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NINA, 7min., USA
Directed by Jessica Mei Gershen
Over continuous text messages through time, the connection between two women in a long distance and long lasting love may or may not ever be again.

http://jessicameigershen.com/

Get to know the filmmaker:
There’s a lot of truth behind this story. So it was very cathartic to make… I wanted to tell a story about something so many of us live through while we’re trying to succeed in a relationship.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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JOINTS, 12min., USA, Horror/Comedy
Directed by Hadrian Lynn

Get to know the filmmaker:

I was and still am obsessed with the zombie genre, and have always wanted to do a zombie film. When the opportunity rose to make a 10-15 minute short film, I gladly took it and created this film! Other than my love of zombie movies, some other sources and motivated/inspired me were the movie 12 Angry Men and my own personal life.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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FREEDOMTOWN: NOT SO BLACK AND WHITE, 15min., USA
Directed by Morteza Rafiei
Freedom Town: Not So Black And White takes viewers on a journey to explore the tension between activism and police forces around George Floyed’s death amidst the 2020 pandemic chaos. Through two filmmaker lenses, we follow an activist and former cop over 2 years as they navigate their respective worlds.

Get to know the filmmaker:
As a Middle Eastern individual and my creative partner is African American, we embarked on creating a movie that sheds light on our country’s challenges during the pandemic and the impact of George Floyd’s tragic death. Coming from the Middle East, where I sought freedom upon arriving in this country, witnessing how the police treated their own citizens was truly bewildering. It was astonishing to see the similarities between some of the protests in America and those I had experienced in Iran. With our film, we aimed to delve deeper into the reasons behind the mistreatment of African Americans while also giving voice to the perspective of the police.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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FRENCHIE, 6min,. USA, Documentary

Directed by Franklin S Riley

This is a short documentary of Darryl Francis. Darryl is a ex-convict turned screenwriter after spending 20 years in prison for a murder he didn’t do. His story comes with twist and turns and ends with triumph.

https://www.instagram.com/theknueworld

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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FLOWERS DIE FIRST, 17min,. USA
Directed by Gwyn Newcomb
Romance ensues when an orange packing girl, in 1940s California, receives a response to a letter she sent to deployed soldiers. Now she must chose between duty to her family or to herself.

https://flowersdiefirst.wixsite.com/flowersdiefirst
https://www.instagram.com/flowersdiefirst/

Interview with actor/producer Gwyn Newcomb & director Christina K. Caralis

From Christina K. Caralis

I wanted to tell a story about what it means to be a “good” daughter and how that shapes the choices we make in life. My love for history and fashion allowed me to explore how this affects women throughout time.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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VELA, 15min., Canada, Drama/Horror
Directed by Esteban Powell
Young Xime hopes to restore her family by arranging a Día de Los Muertos altar – meanwhile a looming presence closes in.

https://www.instagram.com/vela_shortfilm/

Get to know the filmmaker:
A: What motivated me to make this film was my personal experience with grief, and contextualizing it with my Mexican heritage. Merging the deeply personal subject matter, with the folk tale I grew up hearing felt like the right way to process and share how something seemingly dark can transform in our minds into something positive – no matter how painful. And how better to (re)explore that than through the eyes of a child protagonist again? Vela became a cathartic way to portray a short chapter in the tale of an immigrant Mexican family in Canada, and how through reconnecting with their roots, they can find a spiritually fulfilling transformation.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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The Great Basin! Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Desert, 15min., USA
Directed by Eric Weeks
The Great Basin! Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Desert is a film, book and print project that addresses climate change, the severe drought in the Western United States, gun culture, the military’s use of the basin and range of Nevada for atomic testing, cultural stereotypes, my own personal history, and my experiences in this mostly remote area. In the 15 minute short film I am creating complex collages of my still and motion captures made in Nevada with appropriated short clips from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, recent weather footage, The Lone Ranger, as well as John Wayne’s and other historic films, cartoons, and many other cultural artifacts, in order to speak to the place and its significance.

https://ericweeksphoto.com/the-great-basin-2

Get to know the filmmaker:

In early 2022, I applied to a unique residency through the Montello Foundation (https://www.montellofoundation.org/) in Montello, Nevada. The residency is designed for one person to spend two weeks completely off of the grid in the basin and range of northeast Nevada. I was fortunate to be awarded a residency for that summer. While there I captured moving and still images, and did a deep research dive about the area. Two out of the twenty plus books that I read while there were instrumental in my conceptualization of my film The Great Basin! Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Desert. They were Rebecca Solnit’s Savage Dreams and John McPhee’s Basin and Range. While there in that peaceful and contemplative environment, I realized how so much of the human activity that has taken place in Nevada has affected my experience. Climate change, gun culture, atomic testing, cultural stereotypes, and my childhood came bubbling up for me, and I needed to make my film. I understood that I couldn’t tell this story with my images of the basin and range alone, so when I returned to New York City after the residency, I began to appropriate clips from classic films, TV commercials, cartoons, etc.

• You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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ANGEL NEGRO, 8min,. USA, Drama
Directed by Eduardo Zamora
In “Angel Negro,” Eduardo Zamora plays a skilled hitman who specializes in taking out troublesome husbands at the request of their wives. Based in Los Angeles, California, Angel is a highly sought-after assassin who operates in the shadows and has built a reputation for his discretion and efficiency.

https://instagram.com/silkroadstudiosmia

Get to know the filmmaker:

A: I wrote this film in a my LA flat where I was catching vibe one night and I played the butterfly song by crazy town and I wrote the short in about 45 mins , Then I made a shot list and I told myself “if I came up with this this fast and down all this in one night I must shoot it” and I did. I wanted to tell a story using my surroundings as a backdrop.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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FROM MY EYES, 98min., USA
Directed by Darrick Landreneau
When a freshman embarks on a journey to film everyday of college, he discovers that growing up might be harder than he ever imagined.

https://instagram.com/frommyeyes/

Get to know the filmmaker:

Honestly it was a mixture of my love for film and a God idea. I’d been suffering from a real lack of ideas during my first month of my Freshman Year at LSU. I had a camera (Sony NEX-VG10) and a lifetime supply of inspiration and drive… but no ideas. So I’m a Christian and one day on my way to math class I started praying for an idea, a big idea. I can take you to the exact spot where this thought just infected my brain, “Why don’t you film college?” My initial thought was, “yea right”, but over the next week God opened doors and provided a way for me to start filming. On October 16th, 2012 I picked up a camera not knowing what the story would be but curious enough to find out.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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KEEP MOVING, 17min., USA
Directed by Colin Harabedian
a journey through grief

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU-VlgKN8Bh2UQbAPnpo6xw

Get to know the filmmaker:

I think there are quite a few different motivations for this film. In September of 2021, my aunt passed away very suddenly. It shocked our family and was a very strange time for all of us. We had not all been together since pre-pandemic, so we hadn’t gotten to be very close in quite sometime. It was a very strange way to get the family back together, but all acted as a way for us to reconned and restrengthen us as a group. It was also at this time I was rehearsing for a show, and had to be away from a while to attend the funeral. It reminded me how a lot of the deaths I have experienced have overlapped with times in my dance career, and how we as artists have to cope while also having to perform and manage our emotions. All of this reminded me of the 5 stages of grief, and how we experience loss. I thought about how to express this idea, and rather than do a very direct interpretation of this idea with one person going through the stages, I wanted to make the story bigger, feel real, and have multiple characters focusing on a specific emotional aspect of grieving and implement the idea that we are all going through something and that universal experience can connect us as people. While it can be very abstract and symbolic, I also wanted it to be grounded enough that there anyone can understand it and resonate with it in their own way. To me this film is an ode to why I love dance, and the power that it has as a storytelling device.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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BEAT, 23min., UK
Directed by Christopher Karallis
Beat looks into the world of Saul Eisenberg, musician and performer who turns the discarded junk of our city into instruments that make unique and beautiful sounds.

Get to know the filmmaker:

I came across Saul when we moved back to London after eighteen years living in the USA. We were temporarily staying with my sister and the back of her house looked out onto a typical London back alley running behind a row of high street shops and rental flats punctuated by overflowing rubbish bins, garage lock ups and the constant hum of industrial extractor fans. It was also my short-cut to the park when I walked the dogs. Passing one of the double garages at the start of the mews I was frozen by a beautiful, lyrical, scale suddenly bursting into life seemingly out of nowhere. It sounded something like a Glockenspiel only more resonant, deeper in pitch and tone with a sound that penetrated my core. I realized the sound was drifting out from the half open door of one of the lock-ups. It stopped suddenly only to be replaced by the explosive whir of a power tool as an angle grinder cut against metal for several seconds. The contrast was stark. I poked my head under the garage door rather awkwardly to find Saul, a friendly, bemused smile on his face, filthy blue overalls, safety goggles pushed high up on his head standing over a series of heavy metal poles cut to various lengths. “I’m sorry but I just had to ask what you’re doing in here, that sound is…?” I wasn’t quite sure how to finish the sentence. Saul took the uninvited intrusion with warmth and good grace, telling me that he was making a “scaffold-a-phone” out of discarded scaffold poles. I was stunned. How could something so industrial and brutal sound so lovely. I peered around the lock up which was packed with spent gas tanks, fire extinguishers, old decking and even flip flops that had all been salvaged and turned into percussion instruments that, I would come to discover, all sounded not only beautiful but absolutely unique. A type of alchemy was occurring under our very noses and barely anyone knew about it. I realized immediately that I had to tell the story of the remarkable things Saul was doing with the discarded junk of our city and how his work is an inspiration to children, parents, musicians and anyone lucky enough to come into contact with his work.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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I AM JUDIT, 83min., USA
Directed by Christiane Arbesu
From award-winning documentary filmmaker Christiane Arbesu comes I AM JUDIT; a poignant depiction of Holocaust survivor Judy Sleed and her present day family. A fixture in the East Hampton community, Judy, at the age of 90, is finally lifting the veil of secrecy surrounding her harrowing childhood — a painful truth she never discussed with her children. The longtime, local talk show host who loves to hear other people’s stories is sharing hers with unprecedented candor. Skillfully juxtaposing the past with the present, I AM JUDIT is a captivating portrait of Judy Sleed’s emergence as a magnificent light.

http://terrebonneproductions.com/

Get to know the filmmaker:

There are so few survivors left and the incidence of hate against “Jews” is at an all time high since WWII. People need to know the Holocaust happened.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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THE SLOW DEATH, 22min,. Canada
Directed by Chris Hird-Saunders
A disturbed woman reanimates her recently deceased father’s corpse in a twisted, ambitious experiment intended to save humanity from the ongoing climate crisis.

Get to know the filmmaker:

I was mostly driven to make another film out of the need to keep creating stuff. Covid in particular made me need to seek out my passion after feeling stiffled.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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PLACES BEEN, 3min,. USA
Directed by Cameron Bortolussi

Get to know the filmmaker:

I really wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to see how quickly I could make a film, a half decent one at least, from start to finish. For an extra bit of challenge, I added in the task of putting VFX in it, too. I have always been a creative person, but I really wanted to push those skills to the test and make a story that people resonate to or will make them feel something.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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WHITE NOISE, 16min,. Australia
Directed by Bryce McLellan
Zoe Marlowe is the Pathfinder, tasked with finding humanity a new home after the loss of Earth to climate change. With her trusty A.I. she explores planet after planet, looking for the perfect combination of conditions that mark a habitable world. But her A.I. is more than she appears to be, and what happens if/

Get to know the filmmaker:
A love of science fiction! A lot of science fiction stories are about finding a new home, a planet just like Earth, for humanity to start over. I wanted to create a film where that’s not possible, where nothing out there in the cosmos, as grand and exciting as it is, can compare to our home.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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UNCANNY VALLEY: SAUVAGE, 21min., USA
Directed by Anthony A DiMaria
Uncanny Valley is a series focusing on the culinary scene in Phoenix, Arizona. Sauvage is the second episode in the series, introducing the audience to owner and natural wine connoisseur, Chris Lingua. Learn about natural wine – what it is and how it is made – and discover the challenges and inspiration behind Chris’ journey of bringing natural wine to the city of Phoenix through creating the only all natural wine bar in the state: Sauvage.

https://instagram.com/uncannyvalleyseries

Get to know the filmmaker:

Chris Lingua’s story captivated me from the moment I heard it. An entrepreneur, a connoisseur, and an artist in his craft, Chris’ story is a unique look at the world of wine and one I felt needed to be told. Additionally, having lived in Phoenix for nearly a decade, it is important to me to shine a light on the wonderful things happening in that city through my work. These elements created the perfect recipe to educate audiences on natural wine, showcase Chris’ story, and ultimately tell a piece of the greater story of the food and beverage landscape in Phoenix, Arizona.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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Pamela PerryGoulardt has had multiple scripts performed at the WILDsound Festival, with 5 scripts being turned into “Script Movies”. Those films have gone onto winning multiple awards at various festivals.

You can watch Pamela’s script movies and screenplay readings here:

https://www.wildsound.ca/search?q=Pamela%20PerryGoulardt

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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MI NINA/MY LITTLE GIRL, 7min., USA, Experimental
Directed by Emanuel Loarca
Laura takes us by the hand on a moving journey through time with her mother. You experience how love overcomes suffering and builds lasting memories that give meaning to life and strengthen the soul.

Interview with Director/Producer Emanuel Loarca & Writer/Producer Laura Isabel Figueroa

Emanuel Loarca: What motivated me to make this film was the love imprinted on the page, this beautiful poem that celebrated and honored their unique kind love at different stages of their lives and beyond life itself. I wanted to honor that.

Laura Isabel: The vision of the director and producer Emanuel Loarca, who fell immediately in love with the poem I wrote to honor my mother’s resiliency and unconditionally love. I also wanted to raise awareness among potential viewers to care for their mothers and loved ones while they are still alive. Originally, I was planning to record myself reciting the poem and share the video on social media for Mother’s Day, but Emanuel believed it was meant to be a film and I decided to go along with the idea. I’m glad I did!

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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HE WON’T BELONG, 22min., USA, Drama
Directed by Dominic Mercurio
In the midst of a storm on a desolate strip of California’s lost coast, Theo spots a young shivering stranger named Connor on the side of the road and brings him back to his home for shelter. While they wait for the storm to pass, they begin to uncover each others past wounds.

http://www.hewontbelong.com/

Get to know the filmmaker:

A personal experience I had with a close friend kicked off the initial concept, but there were so many more moments of inspiration along that way that continually made me so excited to make this film. After the bones of the story were in place it became really exciting to be telling a story that played around with audience expectations. Especially expectations we have when two gay men are at the center of a story. I also was very motivated to offer my portrayal of anxiety / panic attacks / nightmares on screen. It was very cathartic.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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