Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) organizers are delighted to announce that Vancouver-based filmmaker Kim Albright is the 2020 winner of two major WIDC awards: the CBC Films WIDC Talent Development Award worth $10,000 cash, and the WIDC Feature Film Award valued at up to $200,000 in-kind services and rentals for her feature film directorial debut, With Love and a Major Organ.
The first award, the CBC Films WIDC Talent Development Award, is a $10,000 development prize designed to support the advancement of the voices of underrepresented talent. It includes a director’s chair bursary towards Albright’s participation in the WIDC Story & Leadership program along with funds to assist with script polish and packaging. Following its support of the award in 2020, CBC Films has renewed its commitment, for $25,000, to the WIDC Story & Leadership program for 2021.
“I’m excited to complete this final stage of script development with our wonderful team,” says Kim Albright. “Production is now truly within reach, thanks to WIDC, CBC Films, and the sponsors of the Feature Film Award, all of which I am grateful for.”
Albright is also the recipient of the 2020 WIDC Feature Film Award. Selected by a nationally representative jury of peers, the prize includes in-kind production and post-production services and rentals valued at up to $200,000 from Canada’s most influential companies, including William F. White International Inc. which recently confirmed another three-year commitment to the WIDC Feature Film Award program.
“Congratulations to Kim on the well-deserved awards, and we look forward to seeing her film brought to the screen,” says Mehernaz Lentin, Senior Director, CBC Films. “We’re pleased to announce the renewal of our partnership with the Women In the Director’s Chair program for another year, as part of our commitment to supporting and developing original Canadian stories and to give a tangible boost to the careers of Canadian women directors.”
Set in a technologically advanced but antiseptic world where people go to extreme lengths to avoid the messiness of their emotions, With Love and a Major Organ is a cautionary tale about thirty-something Anabel who is determined to follow the sometimes offbeat of her own often overactive heart.
With Love and a Major Organ is based on the hit play of the same name written by Julia Lederer. Albright and Lederer began developing the screenplay adaptation during Albright’s 2018 Canadian Film Centre residency. Lederer further developed the script as part of the 2019 Whistler Film Festival Writers Lab while Albright workshopped it through WIDC Story & Leadership. The project has also received development support from Bell Media’s Harold Greenberg Fund and has been greenlit for production by Telefilm Canada.
The film will be produced by Madeleine Davis with executive producers Lori Lozinski (The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open) and WIDC’s Carol Whiteman. Whiteman has executive produced eight of the ten feature films supported through the WIDC Feature Film Award since 2009 when the award was launched.
For further information visit https://www.widc.ca/
Images provided by Carol Whiteman
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