ImagineNATIVE and Harold Greenberg Fund have partnered on the Indigenous Story Editing Mentorship, a collaborative nine-month program designed to further Indigenous expertise in script development for feature films.

The mentorship, set to launch in January 2016, will see one selected applicant paired with two mentors over two phases of the course. HGF’s Alan Bacchus and imagineNATIVE executive director Jason Ryle will mentor the successful candidate in approaches to evaluating and making notes on scripts.

As well as the one-on-one coaching, the mentee will also be a part of the review board at 2016’s imagineNATIVE Film Script Lab, following their completion of the nine-month course.

The application window for the program opens on Nov. 1 and closes on Dec. 1.

The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival award ceremony also took place this weekend at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. 

The prize for Best Dramatic Feature went to Mekko, directed by Sterlin Harjo, while the Alanis Obomsawin Best Documentary Award went to director Kim Webby and producer Christina Milligan for The Price of Peace. Bulunu Milkarri, directed by Sylvia Nulpinditj, won the Best Indigenous Language Production Award.

In addition, Trevor Mack’s Clouds of Autumn won the Best Canadian Short Drama prize, Bonnie Ammaq’s Nowhere Land took Best Short Documentary and director/producer Amanda Kernell’s Stoerre Vaerie (“Northern Great Mountain”) won Best Short Drama.

In the pitch categories, Roxann Whitebean won the best drama pitch prize for The Paradigm, while Tasha Beeds won the documentary pitch prize for Shattering Silences: An Indigenous Woman’s Journey Out of Domestic Violence.

The August Schellenberg Award of Excellence, which recognizes significant professional and personal achievements by an Indigenous performer, was presented by ACTRA Performers’ Rights Society & ACTRA National to Tantoo Cardinal.

Photo Credit: Dominic Chan / imagineNATIVE