Flying high: Concordia alumna Catherine Dubeau wins Air Canada’s film prize
It’s a short film, but it’s having an outsized impact on her career.
Concordia alumna Catherine Dubeau (BFA, 2015) won Air Canada’s 2015 enRoute Film Festival prize for Achievement in Animation for her graduation film Kaleidoscope (3:27 minutes), which illustrates one character’s surreal awakening to the colourful world in which he lives.
As part of the prize, Dubeau will receive an all-expenses paid trip to the 2016 Berlinale (the Berlin film festival), where Kaleidoscope will screen and Dubeau will get a film market badge to network with international producers.
She’ll also receive a three-day mentorship at The National Film Board of Canada. Her film will be shown on Air Canada flights and screened theatrically in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
“What I really appreciate about the airplane screenings is that they reach people who might not go to an animation festival or a film festival. It broadens the reach,” says the 23-year-old, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in film animation from the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema.
Her prize-winning film, Kaleidoscope, is about a character who finds a magic eye inside a fish. This new eye allows him to see the world as a more enticing place, full of colour and joy.
The film had its world premiere this past summer during the 19th Fantasia International Film Festival.
Dubeau says she hadn’t even considered a career in animation until she visited an open house for Film Production at Concordia.
“Studying at Concordia ended up being a life-changing choice for me. After my first animation assignment, I was hooked,” says Dubeau. “Teachers like Luigi Allemano opened my eyes to the beauty of storytelling through moving images, and I learned the significant difference between being an animator and an artist who uses animation as their medium.”
Dubeau’s next film will be an anti-fairytale, also in a surreal universe.
“There is nothing that compares to the feeling of sharing a project you cherished and worked so hard on over the course of many, many months of production,” she says.
Find out more about The Air Canada enRoute Film Festival.