Film Festival Scholarship Spring 2014

We're excited to announce the details to our Film Festival Scholarship! Women in Cinema is offering waived fees to the following film festivals to three lucky winners chosen by a panel of filmmakers including Heather Courtney (Where Soldiers Come From), Lauren Wolkstein (The Strange Ones, Social Butterfly) and Laura Kincaid (Texas Film Commission).

Indie Memphis Film Festival

Cucalorus Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

Citizen Jane Film Festival

Oxford Film Festival

Lone Star Film Festival

Previous winners have gone on to play festivals including Sarasota Film Festival, deadCenter Film Festival, Citizen Jane Film Festival, AFS SXSW Shortscase and even win the IDA for Best Student Documentary.

To apply for the scholarship, you MUST be a paid member of Women in Cinema and submit your film by Friday, May 9th at noon.

You can find the application along with the officials rules on our 'Scholarship' page at the top. 

Laura Kincaid is the Senior Marketing Coordinator at the Texas Film Commission, a division of the Office of the Governor. She supports the creative industries of Texas by developing marketing opportunities to promote Texas Film Commission services, and works with the state’s regional film commissions, industry organizations, film festivals and conferences, and constituents. Laura is a native Austinite, and graduated from UT Austin in 2006 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Radio, Television & Film. She’s been on staff at the Texas Film Commission since 2007 and has served on the Advisory Board of the ATX Television Festival since 2012. She has co-edited numerous short films (and one very long documentary in French, Arabic and Portuguese, none of which she speaks) and is a spontaneous world traveler.

Lauren Wolkstein is an award-winning filmmaker whose films have screened worldwide. Her film THE STRANGE ONES (co-dir. Christopher Radcliff) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011, and has since screened at over 100 festivals worldwide, including SXSW, Rotterdam, Clermont-Ferrand, and Tokyo and has received numerous awards, including several Oscar-qualifying festival wins. Lauren Wolkstein has also directed the acclaimed short films CIGARETTE CANDY (best short film, SXSW 2010), and SOCIAL BUTTERFLY, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. She earned her MFA in film from Columbia University, where she received the Plum Pictures Most Promising Filmmaker Award. Lauren was also recently selected as one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film.

Austin Film Organizations Panel

We're excited to announce Women in Cinema's April Panel on Austin Film Organizations. This is a great panel for those who are looking for summer internships and organizations to volunteer for and get involved with. These panelists will share with us their knowledge about working the film scene in Austin and working for these amazing groups!

Join us April 24th at 7PM at the CMB Studio 4D. See you there! 

Kim LeBlanc, Texas Film Commission

 Since 2009, Kim LeBlanc has been on staff at the Texas Film Commission helping to spread the good word about all of the wonderful resources available for creative industries in Texas. As a Production Consultant, she works closely with Writers, Directors, Producers, Production Designers, Studio Executives and Community Representatives, promoting Texas as a destination for filmmaking, television production, commercials, music videos, video games and still photography. Her travels have taken her to the far corners of the state and her efforts have been put forth on projects such as TRUE GRIT, TOP CHEF TEXAS and BERNIE among many others.

Prior to working for the Texas Film Commission, she had the incredibly good fortune to work for the Austin Film Society, the Austin Film Festival and Troublemaker Studios, where she was on board as an Executive Office Assistant and Assistant to Director, Robert Rodriguez. She has also served as a volunteer for SXSW Film Festival since 2009. Kim is a graduate of Trinity University in San Antonio, where she double majored in Urban Studies and History and co-founded the university’s Film Studies minor program. 

Holly Herrick, Artistic Director, Austin Film Society

Holly Herrick joined the Austin Film Society in 2012 as Associate Artistic Director, overseeing the organization’s celebrated artist services and film programming departments.  Prior to joining AFS, she served as Deputy Programs Director at the Hamptons International Film Festival in New York, and Director of Programming at the Sarasota Film Festival in Florida.  Herrick also programmed an edition of the Newport International Film Festival in Rhode Island.  In 2011, she established a partnership between the Sarasota Film Festival and Women Make Movies. Together, the organizations created Side By Side, a symposium for the mentorship and promotion of women filmmakers, which continues to take place at the festival.  Holly associate produced Michael Tully’s narrative feature SEPTIEN (Sundance 2011), and co-produced his upcoming narrative feature, PING PONG SUMMER (Sundance 2014). Her writing has appeared on the Resources Blog of the Independent Feature Project, the editorial film website Hammer To Nail, and on IndieWire.

Elizabeth Mims, Senior Programmer, Austin Film Festival

Elizabeth Mims grew up in Austin, Texas and graduated with a BFA from CalArts. Her 2012 film Only The Young was theatrically released by Oscilloscope and won numerous awards including the Silverdoc’s Sterling Silver Award for best US documentary, American Film Institute Audience Award, and was nominated for a Spirit Award. She is currently the Senior Programmer for Austin Film Festival. 

Claudette Godfrey, Short Film Programmer and Operations Manager, South by Southwest

Born and raised in Austin, Texas, Claudette began her career at SXSW in 2006 as an enthusiastic volunteer. Currently she is responsible for the curation of the 10 short film programs the festival screens each year, overseeing film submissions to the festival, and managing the organizational big picture for the event. A University of Texas Film graduate, Claudette previously worked as a Corporate Relations Coordinator at the CineVegas Film Festival and served as a Shorts Programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse's Fantastic Fest from 2010-2012. Notably, and perhaps most importantly, she does a mean karaoke version of Notorious B.I.G.'s ‘Hypnotize.’ @claudasaur