Irene Duma - Writer Director » Canadian Film and Television

I’m off to Atlantic Film Festival to pitch my feature film

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:13:40 +0000

Yay! Just like the title says, I’ve been invited by Telefilm to pitch my feature film at the Atlantic Film Festival. It’s happening in Halifax starting Sept 16th and I am ridiculously excited.

Telefilm is the Canadian big Kahuna – all films are funded via Telefilm. This is the first year they are inviting screenwriters who attended the PEI Screenwriters’ Bootcamp this past June to pitch to Canadian and international broadcasters.

This is also the year Telefilm is changing direction and on the lookout for more commercially viable films. And that means comedy, said Gordon Whittaker of the Atlantic Telefilm office. As you know, I like comedy.

Shout outs to colleagues Roger Maunder who will be pitching at the Inspired Scripts event, and Kelly Davis who is the producer of the short film Cardboard Junction and the director of Down to the Wood – both screening at the festival. Congrats to first time director too, Jacqueline Hynes (Cardboard Junction.)

I’m Interviewed about PEI Screenwriters’ Bootcamp in the Telegram

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 01:45:44 +0000

Heidi Wicks asked me some questions about PEI Screenwriters’ Bootcamp.

Can you tell I liked it?

Read the whole interview:Wanna buff up? Screenwriter’s Bootcamp should do it.

Ink Canada Facebook Edition Best Threads

admin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:01:51 +0000

Ink Canada Facebook Edition is a Facebook Group and community for Canadian screenwriters and filmmakers. The Group is edited with uber-love by Karen Walton, Canada’s A-list screenwriter and industry activist and is a ridiculous font of goodness. It is brimming with tips and information offered by seasoned writers and industry players on all aspects of the craft and business of writing for film, TV or new media, befitting newbie and pro writers, directors, producers alike.

I am an intern on Ink Canada this year, along with 6 other smartypants, and am just blown away by all the really useful advice on the Facebook Group – especially the Discussion pages. That is also why I am distraught at not being able to “search” it to find threads or topics. Yup – Facebook’s search is non-functioning and has been broken for months now. Also, the threads do not seem to get indexed by Google, so you can’t use that search method either.

This sucks on quite a few levels. It makes it hard to go back and easily find a post you’d like to reread when there is over a year’s worth of discussion spread across hundreds of threads. Every new thread that is added pushes older discussions further and further back into a mire of uncategorized archive pages.

Because newbies generally ask the same questions over and over (in any field mind you), telling them that that question has been answered before and that they need only to find it in the ink archives is just a bit evil.

So, until the Facebook search is fixed, here are a few of my favorite threads. Email me to let me know if I’ve missed some.