Milk | |
---|---|
Directed by | Heather Young |
Written by | Heather Young |
Starring | Babette Hayward |
Cinematography | Daniel Boos |
Edited by | Heather Young |
Release date |
|
Running time | 15 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
Milk is a Canadian short drama film, directed by Heather Young and released in 2017. The film stars Babette Hayward as a woman working as a farmhand on a dairy farm, who finds herself facing an unplanned pregnancy of her own. [1]
Young has described the film as inspired by the contrast between the industrialization of the birthing process among farm animals, contrasted against the way pregnancy and motherhood are treated among humans. [2]
The film premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. [2] It was subsequently named to TIFF's year-end Canada's Top Ten list for short films in 2017. [3]
The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a permanent destination for film culture operating out of the TIFF Bell Lightbox, located in Downtown Toronto. TIFF's mission is "to transform the way people see the world through film".
Dairy farming is a class of agriculture for long-term production of milk, which is processed for eventual sale of a dairy product. Dairy farming has a history that goes back to the early Neolithic era, around the seventh millennium BC, in many regions of Europe and Africa. Before the 20th century, milking was done by hand on small farms. Beginning in the early 20th century, milking was done in large scale dairy farms with innovations including rotary parlors, the milking pipeline, and automatic milking systems that were commercially developed in the early 1990s.
Dairy cattle are cattle bred for the ability to produce large quantities of milk, from which dairy products are made. Dairy cattle generally are of the species Bos taurus.
Heather O'Neill is a Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist, who published her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, in 2006. The novel was subsequently selected for the 2007 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by singer-songwriter John K. Samson. Lullabies won the competition. The book also won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for eight other major awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Governor General's Award and was longlisted for International Dublin Literary Award.
Teenage pregnancy in the United States refers to females under the age of 20 who become pregnant. 89% of these births take place out-of-wedlock. Since the 1990s, teen pregnancy rates have declined almost continuously in the United States, but the United States still has one of the highest teenage birth rates among the industrialized nations. The 5 states with the highest teen birth rate are Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Alabama.According to the Centers for Disease Control, evidence suggests that the decline in teenage pregnancy is due to abstinence teaching and the use of birth control. Although the decline is considered good news, the racial/ethnic and geographic disparities continue in The United States. In 2019, the birth rates for Hispanic teens and non-Hispanic Black teens were more than double than the rates for white teens.
The End of Pinky is a 2013 Canadian stereoscopic National Film Board of Canada animated short directed by Claire Blanchet, based on a short story of the same name by Heather O'Neill. Described by the director as an "animated film noir set in a dream-like version of Montreal's Red Light District," the film is narrated in its English version by O'Neill and in French by Quebec actor Marc-André Grondin. Music for the film was composed by Genevieve Levasseur. O'Neill's story was originally published in the 2008 January–February edition of The Walrus. The film had its world premiere on September 11 in the Short Cuts Canada Programme of the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.
Heather Young is a Canadian filmmaker based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
Bacon and God's Wrath is a Canadian short documentary film, which premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. Directed by Sol Friedman and mixing animation with live action interview footage, the film centres on Razie Brownstone, a 90-year-old Jewish woman who, after undergoing a crisis of faith which has led her to reject many of the tenets of her religion, is preparing to cook and eat bacon for the first time in her life.
Mutants is a Canadian short drama film, directed by Alexandre Dostie and released in 2016. The film stars Joseph DeLorey as Keven, a teenager who, after being injured at baseball practice, is sent on an unexpected emotional journey of discovery.
The 42nd annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from 7 to 17 September 2017. There were fourteen programmes, with the Vanguard and City to City programmes both being retired from previous years, with the total number of films down by 20% from the 2016 edition. Borg/McEnroe directed by Janus Metz Pedersen opened the festival.
Pre-Drink is a Canadian dramatic short film by Marc-Antoine Lemire, which won the Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Short Film at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.
Canada's Top Ten is an annual honour, compiled by the Toronto International Film Festival and announced in December each year to identify and promote the year's best Canadian films. The list was first introduced in 2001 as an initiative to help publicize Canadian films.
The 44th annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from 5 to 15 September 2019. The opening gala was the documentary film Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, directed by Daniel Roher, and the festival closed with a screening of the biographical film Radioactive, directed by Marjane Satrapi.
Jasmin Mozaffari is an Iranian-Canadian film director and screenwriter. She won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Director at the 7th Canadian Screen Awards in 2019 for her debut feature film Firecrackers.
Murmur is a Canadian docufiction film, directed by Heather Young and released in 2019. Young's full-length directorial debut, the film stars a cast of largely non-professional actors and centres on Donna, a lonely, alcoholic woman who is ordered to perform community service in an animal shelter after being arrested for drunk driving; when she adopts an older dog from the shelter to save him from being put down, she finds new meaning and purpose in her life but becomes obsessed with saving animals to the detriment of her own well-being.
Deragh Campbell is a Canadian actress and filmmaker. She is known for her acclaimed performances in independent Canadian cinema. Her collaborations with filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz—Never Eat Alone (2016), Veslemøy's Song (2018), MS Slavic 7 (2019), and Point and Line to Plane (2020)—have screened at film festivals internationally. She has also featured in two of Kazik Radwanski's films, How Heavy This Hammer (2015) and Anne at 13,000 Ft. (2019), both of which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Threads is a Norwegian-Canadian animated short film, directed by Torill Kove and released in 2017. Based on Kove's own experience as an adoptive parent, the film depicts a woman who catches a thread in the sky which carries her to a baby girl, whom she rears and remains connected to with a red thread of love and emotional connection until the girl is a young woman old enough to go seek her own thread of connection to a baby of her own.
Sing Me a Lullaby is a Canadian short documentary film, directed by Tiffany Hsiung and released in 2020. The film documents Hsiung's efforts to locate and reconnect with her mother's birth family in Taiwan, following her mother's separation from her parents and adoption in childhood.
Angakusajaujuq: The Shaman's Apprentice is a Canadian animated short film, directed by Zacharias Kunuk and released in 2021. A story about the traditional Inuit role of the shaman, the film centres on a grandmother and granddaughter who travel to the underworld in an effort to heal an ill young hunter.