MEMBERS IN THE NEWS

A Fall 2021 round-up of WIFSFBA member achievements,
acknowledgments, and what’s coming up on the horizon.

Congratulations on all your hard work!

EMMY® Winners!

Liz Canning

Member Liz Canning was awarded a Los Angeles Emmy® on July 24th, 2021 for her work as Director, Producer, Writer, Editor, and Host on Episode 1 of KCET’s Global Mosaic: Could Empowering Girls Transform the World? - in the category of Education/Information programs for its premiere broadcast on the public television station KCET in Burbank, CA.

Watch the trailer here. See the official broadcast version here.
Check out the
director’s cut here!

Cynthia Abbott & Andrea Leland

Member Cynthia Abbott, Director/Producer, and Co-producer/Director Andrea Leland received a Northern California Emmy® for Three Ocean Advocates: Inspiring Change in the Educational/Science (Long Form) category. The segment is part of Every Second Breath film series about committed individuals who are helping to heal an ocean.
KRCB – Nor Cal Public Media was the broadcast station. The filmmakers want to acknowledge Amy Boyd COO for all her help and encouragement.

Contest Finalists

Carol Lee Hall

Carol Lee Hall's feature-length period drama, The Angry Angels of Chinatown, placed as a SEMI-FINALIST in Emerging Screenwriters Genre Screenplay Competition.

The script is inspired by true events and is about two women who take down the most notorious human trafficker in 1911 San Francisco Chinatown. This script has won or placed in seven contests in the last six years, and is currently being developed by Carol's film company, Blue Carp Productions, as a motion picture.

Nil Unerdem

Nil Unerdem’s script, Settling Sounds (recently renamed Song of Selale) was a QUARTER-FINALIST in the 2021 Screencraft Comedy Competition and the Screencraft Fellowship Competition.

When a disenchanted 38-year-old engineer & amateur cover band guitarist settles for the security of her old college crush, she struggles to make the relationship work and funnels her woes into lyrics…until she finds the courage to perform her own song onstage, with the real love of her life listening in the audience.

Notable Selection

Film Premiere

Dani Milton

Member Dani Milton’s Medieval fantasy pilot, Morien and the Black Knights, was selected for the Athena Film Festival's 2021 Virtual Writers Lab.

Dani is one of 16 TV and film writers who will attend mentoring, pitching, and feedback sessions headed by experienced industry experts September 20 - 22, 2021.

Based on 13th century IP, Morien and the Black Knights is an origin story about the knights of color in King Arthur's court who exist in canon but have been overlooked in retellings of the mythology over the centuries.

Dani was also recently selected for Coverfly's Fall 2021 Pitch Week.

Cindy Maram

Member Cindy Maram is Associate Producer on the feature film Women is Losers, which premiered at SXSW Film Festival 2021, and was an Official Selection of the 44th Mill Valley Film Festival. Women is Losers takes place in 1960s San Francisco, about school girl Celina Guerrerez who rises above the oppression of poverty to invest in a future for herself. Written and directed by Lissette Feliciano and starring Lorenza Izzo, Chrissie Fit, Bryan Craig and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” star Simu Liu, Women is Losers has been acquired by HBO Max and the film will debut exclusively on the platform October 18.

Cindy was also the Producer and Publicist for the short film I Am Normal which won Best Ensemble Cast at the 2021 FirstGlance Film Festival in Los Angeles, and was an Official Selection of the LA Shorts Fest and the Bentonville Film Festival. http://www.IMDb.me/cindymaram

Projects In The Works

Kristin Sherman Olnes

A Sound Life, by member Kristin Sherman Olnes is a feature-length documentary 6 years in the making about Oscar-winning sound designer Richard Beggs. His career spanned 43 years working as a sound designer and mixer for motion picture soundtracks. The film features interviews with Sophia Coppola, Walter Murch, Barry Levinson, and others. Olnes is currently finalizing the edit in preparation for the audio post-production. Read more about Kristin and A Sound of Life at kristinshermanolnes.com

Julie Rubio

Tamara, by member and WISFBA board director Julie Rubio, is a visually stunning and sweeping feature documentary that traces the life and adventures of the renowned painter Tamara de Lempicka, from her rise to international stardom in 1920s Paris, to her move to the United States fleeing fascism in 1940, to her revival in the current art market. The film follows this remarkable emigrée as she reinvents herself multiple times and attempts to claim her rightful place in art history. Click here to see the Trailer for Tamara. Follow: @tamaradelempickadoc