Fusion Film Festival

Celebrating women in TV, Film & New Media

television

Why Submit to the Fusion Film Festival?

By Siena Richardson

Submitting to the Fusion Film Festival is a fantastic opportunity for young women to have their creative voices heard. From professional exposure to incredible prizes, there are so many ways to win just by submitting your work! Here are the top three simple reasons we at Fusion want to see your submissions by JANUARY 15th!

1. Raise your creative voice in this male-dominated industry.

Women’s stories are essential to our culture. We need to hear them told. Women are seriously underrepresented behind the camera in film, television, and new media. We at Fusion intend to change the rules about whose voices are heard in the industry. We are fostering an environment where women are encouraged to succeed and have their work exposed to a network of potential future collaborators. Share your work with us!

2. Win some serious prizes.

Last year’s winners were awarded various prizes, from Canon cameras to FinalDraft and Adobe Creative Cloud software to workshop and production grants. Any college student or recent graduate would be lucky to win these valuable prizes to use on their future projects! This year’s prizes promise to be just as impressive.

3. Everyone who submits wins in some way!

Each submission is viewed by industry professionals as well as faculty judges. Submitting to Fusion gives your work exposure, regardless of whether your submission is chosen as a finalist.

Every year, agents and managers contact our faculty advisor Susan Sandler asking to see the work of Fusion finalists, in addition to the winners! Submitting gets you that much closer to professional representation.

Finalists in our Docs-in-the-Works category get the opportunity to pitch their ideas directly to top executives in the documentary world. They prepare for this experience though an expert workshop to help them perfect their pitch and their trailer before the pitch competition. This year, the workshop will be taught by Emmy and Peabody Award-winning Professor Sam Pollard, who has served as executive producer and editor of numerous documentary films and series, and who worked in collaboration with Henry Hampton’s Blackside productions and with filmmaker Spike Lee.

Submit your work to the 2016 Fusion Film Festival by January 15th, 2016 by visiting www.fusionfilmfestival.com!

Click the following link to go directly to the Submission Form: https://docs.google.com/a/nyu.edu/forms/d/16ti-Q6SM6yjsDV5HmD1wEpNeGJxyov6SGOKJWMaummU/viewform?c=0&w=1

ALUMNI FEATURE: Interview – Elizabeth Bohinc & Kate Zabinsky

By Piera Van de Wiel and Kara Lawson, Fusion Alumni Relations.

September, 29th 2015: We spoke with Elizabeth Bohinc and Kate Zabinsky, Fusion Film Festival alumnae who recently put together a panel in LA for industry professionals to talk about women in the film and television industries.The panel was two years in the making.

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What was your process in creating the panel?

Having been co-directors of the Fusion Film Festival during our time at NYU, we have a history and particular connection with these themes. After graduation we both moved to Los Angeles and began our careers. We continue to be involved with NYU alumni events as well as with other industry professional organizations. Through our experiences, we noticed that there was a dearth of high-level conversations about women working in this industry. There was the standard fare about balancing work and family life or breaking in. There weren’t examples or conversations about mentorship or how to grow your careers once you are in the door (if they manage to get themselves into the room in the first place). We are women in entertainment. Ultimately, we wanted to hear the opinions and advice of people who have careers we’d like to emulate. We thought back on our experiences at Fusion and realized, with the help of NYU, we had the power to put all these people in a room to foster this conversation. So that’s what we did.

Who was involved?

The two of us [Elizabeth Bohinc TSOA ’10 and Kate Zabinsky TSOA ’11], Joanna Puglisi from Tisch Alumni Relations, and Lauren Nisenson from Gallatin Alumni Relations. We had actually previously worked with Lauren on Fusion in 2010 for our first ever alumni panel. Drew Uriarte, Assistant Dean of Tisch, helped get it off the ground. Thania St. John (Gallatin parent) moderated the panel. Thania is a TV Writer/Showrunner, WGA Board Member, and the Co-Founder of the League of Hollywood Women Writers.

The panelists included: Rachel Brosnahan, Maryam Keshavarz, Toni Graphia, and Campbell Smith.

Rachel Brosnahan graduated from Tisch with a BFA in Drama in 2012. After several guest TV and theater roles, she broke out with a guest role in House of Cards, eventually leading to an Emmy Nomination for Best Guest Actress in a Drama Series for “Rachel.” She is also a series regular in WGN’s Manhattan. In addition to her acting work, she works as an Ambassador for Global Citizen.

Maryam Keshavarz is a producer, writer, and director. After graduating from NYU’s TSOA MFA program with a major in Film & TV, she shot her independent feature Circumstance, which explores homosexuality in modern Iran. Circumstance went on to win several festival awards including the 2011 Audience Award. Maryam teamed up with Academy Award nominated producers Anna Gerb, Neal Dodson, and JC Chandor (A Most Violent Year, All is Lost, and Margin Call) and will be directing her sophomore feature, The Untitled Oliver Diaz Story, in February 2016.

Toni Graphia is a television writer and producer, currently serving as Executive Producer on Starz’s hit fantasy drama Outlander. She has been working television for over twenty years, starting as a researcher on China Beach and working her way up the writing ladder on shows such as Roswell, Grey’s Anatomy, and Battlestar Galactica. In 2005, she won a Peabody Award as part of the writing staff for Battlestar.

Campbell Smith is the Head of Television for Carousel Productions. After graduation, she moved to New York, eventually landing at The Daily Show for six years where she met Steve and Nancy Carell (both correspondents at the time).  After writing and producing a number of shows, she teamed back up with the Carells to form Carousel Television. Campbell Smith serve as an EP on TBS’s upcoming comedy series Angie Tribeca.

How did the event go? And how was it received?

The event went incredibly well. The panelists were so dynamic; we could have let them go for hours! We were able to convince UTA (United Talent Agency) to donate their theater for the event. They were very impressed with the event and offered their space to make it an annual event. We plan to do just that.

The audience responded very well. The questions during the Q&A as well as the conversation that continued during the reception were high level, intelligent, and productive.

How has Fusion impacted your careers, and what lessons did you carry over into the business?

Kate: First, actually working for Fusion, organizing logistics and personnel, taught me as much about how to work in the industry as my film classes did. Learning how to collaborate, problem solve, and meet deadlines is just as important as creative instinct once you enter the professional world. As far as thinking about women in the industry, I think Fusion helped me learn to verbalize my questions and concerns. That is to say, I am a woman and I work in film, so it would never have been something I didn’t know about or didn’t think about. But, because I had the experience of Fusion, I am able to look at the challenges that exist and approach them in more productive ways because it’s a conversation I’ve been having since I was a freshman at Tisch.

Elizabeth: I can’t agree more with Kate about Fusion preparing me for the professional world, but I also will say it helped me develop a shorthand with a group of professionals I truly trust to this day. Kate and I obviously work very well together because of our Fusion experience. [It’s the] same with Lauren Nisenson and I. We just know how to collaborate, problem solve, and get it done. Fusion also made me more aware of female industry professionals, which always helped when a development team had to make a list of episodic female directors or writers to staff a show. It’s good to just have a list of diverse, interesting voices in the back of your head at all times. I learned that from Fusion.

Once Upon a Time: The Progression of Women in Fairytales

By Rachel Lambert, Editorial Staff Writer.

Female characters in fairytales, while set in environments of fiction and fantasy, have begun to express truer-to-life traits. They are expanding beyond a reliance on princes on handsome steeds and breaking gender stereotypes. Once Upon a Time, an ABC television series created by Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, joins many characters, some new and some from well known fairytales and Disney films, in a creative plot set predominantly in Storybrooke, a fictional town in Maine. The storyline is intriguing, from its plot twists to its cleverly intermingled character relationships, and it provides a very empowering view of women through its multiple strong, female characters.

The main character is Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison), a woman who discovers that she is the daughter of Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming (Josh Dallas), and that she is the “savior” who can break the curse over Storybrooke. Emma exhibits remarkable fortitude, intelligence, and independence, and despite the obstacles that stand before her, continues to persevere and protect the town and her family. She is not perfect; for instance, she made mistakes when she was younger when trying to cope with being an orphan, but this again reveals the fine line between fantasy and reality. Magic comes with a price, and so do our decisions. The characters, like us, are multi-faceted and subject to the challenging situations life propels at them. Their perseverance through these situations, willingness to learn from their mistakes, and readiness to be the rescuers rather than the rescued is what makes them so motivational and relatable.

The show’s central antagonist, as much as the protagonist, breaks stereotypes as well. We are all familiar with the “evil stepmother” concept, but Once Upon A Time’s Regina Mills (Lana Parrilla), the queen who released the curse over Storybrooke, reveals that villains too are complex. They become evil not by an inherent desire to cause suffering, or by a devotion to vanity (as it is commonly portrayed), but by struggling to cope with their personal tragedies. Regina actually saved Snow White’s life when she was a child; however, Snow’s failure to keep a secret about Regina’s lover, a divulgence that led to his murder, was part of what sparked Regina’s villainy. In the series, Snow White and the Evil Queen are more than symbols of either virtue or vanity; instead, they are both human.

The same is true for other characters. Belle (Emilie de Ravin) exercises empathy and curiosity but sometimes lacks self-confidence. Red Riding Hood (Meghan Ory), who transforms into the Wolf, is tough but must also battle her inner beast, and her granny (Beverley Elliott), sharp-tongued and crossbow-bearing, is far from defenseless. The series has featured many other women as well, from Ariel (JoAnna Garcia Swisher) to the Wicked Witch of the West (Rebecca Mader), Tinker Bell (Rose McIver), Elsa (Georgina Haig) and Anna (Elizabeth Lail) of Arendelle, and more. Each woman has a goal that defines them and a past that built their identities. Some make more admirable decisions than others, but they all show that women are far from delicate damsels.

The characters in Once Upon a Time are independent, but that does not mean they reject love. Yes, the idea of “love at first sight” is challenged, but the characters still have lovers, families, and friends that they fight to protect. The relationships between characters grow over time, as love often does in the real world, evidencing a shift towards a more authentic perspective on romance. The performances by the many brilliant actresses in the cast are fantastic. Viewers empathize with the characters, want to see them find their happily ever afters, and join in every episode’s adventure.

Once Upon a Time fuses imagination with reality. Physical magic exists in the show, but it symbolizes and makes visual the magic we all possess. Some of the characters are afraid of their powers in a way that is similar to how many of us suppress what makes us unique, but they move past this fear. It is inspiring to see characters like Emma Swan, savior, mother, and sheriff, who reveals how tough, inventive, and brave women are. Women can sword fight, care for children, battle dragons, and save towns. They can be nurturers and protectors, fighters and peacekeepers. All stereotypes can be shattered, and everyone can be a hero.