Award winning filmmaker and UWinnipeg professor, Shelagh Carter, has earned an award at the prestigious 2017 Milan Film Festival. Carter took the honours of Best Director for her film Before Anything You Say. The film is about Isobel and her husband Jack.
Shelagh Carter, photo supplied
When Isobel’s husband Jack announces his intent to pursue a job that would require him to live in Bangkok for five years to work against human trafficking, he assumes Isobel will follow and leave her life and career behind. Isobel is not prepared to blindly obey; Jack is not prepared to forfeit this chance of a life time. Hurt and misunderstood by one another, struggling with the desire to care and the inability to do so, husband and wife attempt to reconcile their lives and love in Paris and in their Winnipeg dream home.
“Shelagh Carter is a prolific creative force in our department and especially in her areas of film production and direction where she has received international recognition for a number of her works,” said Tim Babcock, UWinnipeg Chair, Theatre and Film. “We could not be more proud of the work she does. We are indeed most fortunate that she continues to bring her talent, expertise and experience to our students as a part of our dynamic teaching ensemble of professional creative artists.”
Carter is a Lifetime Member of The Actors Studio as an Actress and Director, and a graduate of the Canadian Film Centre’s Directors Lab in Toronto. As a director, Carter has created work for ten years.
Night Travellers, her third short film, was a National Screen Institute Drama Prize winner in 2007 and One Night, her award winning 35 mm short filmed as part of the Canadian Film Centre’s Short Dramatic Film 2009 series, has screened at several international film festivals. She has also won world festival recognition with her experimental narrative short films Canoe and Rifting/Blue.
Carter’s first feature film called Passionflower, the story of Sarah, an 11-year- old girl, forcing her family to come to terms with her mother’s increasing mental instability, is presently winning film festival attention and honours. Her recent experimental short, Is It My Turn, a 3D black and white dance film, has begun its festival tour.
Carter’s next feature projects, a psychological thriller called Skinner, a humanistic comedy called Dreaming of Tempests, and an allegory called La Jefa are in development. She is a recent recipient of the award, Women In the Director’s Chair Career Advancement Module 2010, in collaboration with Women in Film Festival Vancouver.
