Pitch winner screening short film at Gimli fest

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This article was published 03/07/2020 (1966 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An emerging film director is getting ready to screen a short film at the Gimli Film Festival this July.

Fort Richmond resident Matthew van Ginkel won the RBC $10,000 Emerging Filmmaker Pitch competition in 2019 and has spent the past year shooting and editing a film called First Session.

The film will be shown on July 25 at the Gimli Theatre and also via a livestream, as part of the July 22 to 26 annual festival.

“First Session has lead actor Dakota Nickels as a character named James, who is exploring an abandoned school where he meets twisted-face monsters,” van Ginkel said. “These turn out to be his inner turmoil, in that there’s a twist revealed at the end.”

The film also features actor Marina Stephenson Kerr and five other actors in full-body make-up as the monsters.

Van Ginkel, who professes a fondness for making horror and action films, said he first picked up a camera in high school, followed by training at the Vancouver Film School. After he graduated in 2018, he moved back to Winnipeg and has been working on a variety of short films of his own, and on film sets for production companies shooting in Winnipeg, often as a script supervisor.

“Winning the pitch competition last year is a stepping-stone toward a career in making full-length feature films,” he said. “I received $10,000 from RBC, and a further $5,000 in gear and services from William F. Whyte equipment rental. The financial backing is great because it allowed me to hire a crew and gave me more leeway in shooting and editing.”

The pitch competition is open to filmmakers with less than three years of experience, who have some basic training and who’ve completed at least one independent film or video work.

After wrapping up the filming on First Session in March, he worked with a post-production editor and a sound composer. “I like to bring an editor on-board, because they can look at the footage more effectively, and improve the project,” he said, adding they had a trailer for the film ready by May 20. “I would then calibrate the colour of the footage to help set the mood of the horror film.”

His experiences during the making of this short film will be carried forward and will hopefully bring him to the attention of financial backers, he said.

The COVID-19 shutdown has allowed him to work on several new projects, and also to participate in a 48-hour film contest by the Winnipeg Film Group. “We shot a horror short about a guy lost in the middle of the woods,” he said.

To view the trailer for van Ginkel’s short film, search for the film or his name on www.vimeo.com or see bit.ly/3glqpnE

For more on the Gimli Film Festival, see www.gimlifilm.com