Laurie Colbert is a Canadian film director, producer, and screenwriter. She works primarily but not exclusively in collaboration with Dominique Cardona. [1] The duo are most noted for their 1999 short film Below the Belt , which was a Genie Award nominee for Best Live Action Short Drama at the 21st Genie Awards in 2000, [2] and their feature film Margarita , which won the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival in 2012. [3]
Their other films have included the documentary shorts Thank God I'm a Lesbian (1992) [4] and My Feminism (1997), [5] and the feature films Finn's Girl (2007) [6] and Catch and Release (2018). [7] Finn wrote Finn's Girl, but she and Cardona co-conceived the idea for the film. [8]
Separately from Cardona, Colbert was an assistant director on Naomi McCormack's short film The Hangman's Bride .
Mina Shum is an independent Canadian filmmaker. She is a writer and director of award-winning feature films, numerous shorts and has created site specific installations and theatre. Her features, Double Happiness and Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity both premiered in the US at the Sundance Film Festival and Double Happiness won the Wolfgang Staudte Prize for Best First Feature at the Berlin Film Festival and the Audience Award at Torino. She was director resident at the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto. She was also a member of an alternative rock band called Playdoh Republic.
Patricia Rozema is a Canadian film director, writer and producer. She was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave.
Monika Treut is a German filmmaker. She made her feature film debut with Seduction: The Cruel Woman, a film that explores sadomasochistic sex practices. She has made over 20 films, including the short documentaries Annie and My Father is Coming. Treut’s involvement extends across writing, directing, editing and acting.
Jennifer Abbott is a Sundance and Genie award-winning film director, writer, editor, producer and sound designer who specializes in social justice and environmental documentaries.
The Inside Out Film and Video Festival, also known as the Inside Out LGBT or LGBTQ Film Festival, is an annual Canadian film festival, which presents a program of LGBT-related film. The festival is staged in both Toronto and Ottawa. Founded in 1991, the festival is now the largest of its kind in Canada. Deadline dubbed it "Canada’s foremost LGBTQ film festival."
Fina Torres is a Venezuelan film director and screenwriter. She became internationally recognized by winning the la Caméra d'Or award at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival with her directorial debut film, Oriana.
Thomas "Thom" Fitzgerald is an American-Canadian film and theatre director, screenwriter, playwright and producer.
Cheryl Dunye is a Liberian-American film director, producer, screenwriter, editor and actress. Dunye's work often concerns themes of race, sexuality, and gender, particularly issues relating to black lesbians. She is known as the first out black lesbian to ever direct a feature film with her 1996 film The Watermelon Woman. She runs the production company Jingletown Films based in Oakland California.
Geraldine "Geri" Peroni was an American film editor who was best known for working with Robert Altman. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for her work on Altman's 1992 film, The Player.
Peccadillo Pictures is a UK-based film producer and distributor of art house, gay and lesbian, independent and world cinema. They have provided distribution for many films such as Weekend, Tomboy, XXY, Eyes Wide Open, Four Minutes, The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, Transylvania, Cockles and Muscles, Summer Storm, The Guest House and Chemsex.
The Fairy Who Didn't Want to Be a Fairy Anymore is a Canadian musical comedy-drama short film directed by Laurie Lynd, which premiered at the 1992 Toronto International Film Festival before going into wider release in 1993. Made as an academic project while Lynd was studying at the Canadian Film Centre, it won the Genie Award for Best Live Action Short Drama at the 14th Genie Awards.
Margarita is a Canadian comedy-drama film, directed by Laurie Colbert and Dominique Cardona and released in 2012. The film stars Nicola Correia-Damude as Margarita, a lesbian immigrant from Mexico who works as a nanny for a Toronto couple, but is placed at risk of deportation when their financial situation forces them to let her go. The cast includes Patrick McKenna and Claire Lautier as her employers Ben and Gail, Maya Ritter as their daughter Mali, and Christine Horne as Margarita's girlfriend.
Finn's Girl is a Canadian drama film, directed by Dominique Cardona and Laurie Colbert and released in 2007. The film stars Brooke Johnson as Finn, a medical doctor mourning the recent death of her wife Nancy while continuing to step-parent Nancy's rebellious daughter Zelly and managing an abortion clinic which is being threatened by the increasingly violent protests of the anti-abortion movement.
Keely and Du is a theatrical play by Jane Martin. The play centers on Keely, a rape victim who became pregnant from a sexual assault and is being held captive by an extremist anti-abortion cult to prevent her from terminating the pregnancy, and Du, the cult member who is guarding her.
Naomi McCormack is a Canadian film director, producer, screenwriter, theatre director and arts administrator. She is most noted for her 1996 film The Hangman's Bride, which won the Genie Award for Best Live Action Short Drama at the 18th Genie Awards.
Catch and Release is a Canadian drama film, directed by Dominique Cardona and Laurie Colbert and released in 2018. An adaptation of Jane Martin's theatrical play Keely and Du, the film stars Laurence Leboeuf as Keely, a woman who got pregnant from being raped by her ex-husband, but has been kidnapped by an extremist anti-abortion group and is being detained at a remote wilderness cabin in Northern Ontario to prevent her from aborting the pregnancy.
Dominique Cardona is an Argentinian-born Canadian film director, producer, and screenwriter. She works primarily but not exclusively in collaboration with Laurie Colbert. The duo are most noted for their 1999 short film Below the Belt, which was a Genie Award nominee for Best Live Action Short Drama at the 21st Genie Awards in 2000, and their feature film Margarita, which won the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival in 2012.
Below the Belt is a Canadian short drama film, directed by Dominique Cardona and Laurie Colbert and released in 1999. The film stars Nathalie Toriel and Cara Pifko as Oona and Jill, two young lesbian amateur boxers who fall in love, and then discover that one of their mothers is also having an extramarital affair with another woman.