December 15, 2014

"With Glowing Hearts" has found some extended festival life through the Culture Unplugged online festival. This year's theme is "Humanity Explored" and we're very happy to be included with the other stellar selections included. Best of the holiday season to everyone, see you in the new year!

October 2, 2014

We're pleased to announce that "With Glowing Hearts" has been added to the lending collection of the Vancouver Public library system and proud that our film has been added to the city's permanent record!

August 12, 2014

Director Jon Ornoy will be attending the Peloponnesian International Film Festival in Corinth, Greece between October 1-5 with "True Love Waits" for its second international screening. The film will be playing at the Cypress International Film Festival three weeks previous for its international premiere.

June 3, 2014

We're pleased to announce that True Love Waits has been accepted into festivals in both Cypress and Greece, watch this space for more details.

We've also completed our initial development phase on "A Heartbeat Away" made possible by the Shaw/Hot Docs fund and are excited about the directions the project has taken.

December 9, 2013

Happy and sad news to start the week, and leading with the sad is the only choice.

Today we mark the passing of Stephen Hill who died in late November in London, where he had been living for the last two years. We met Stephen during the production of "With Glowing Hearts" and it wouldn't be any exageration to say that we couldn't have finished the project without him. He became a friend, a connection, a tireless supporter and a constant source of new ideas about how to spread the word and raise money for the film. When we sold our "Become a Producer" packages leading up to Christmas 2009, Stephen was a force of nature and probably hustled half of the packages himself. In addition, it feels only appropriate now to acknowledge the vital financial contributions that he made from his own pocket and an inheritance left to him, which at the time of their donation he had asked to keep anonymous. He wasn't a wealthy man, or someone who, between his job, passions and marriage, had a shortage of things to do, but his generosity of time and spirit was apparent to all and we benefited from it greatly. Stephen was then the natural choice to host our premiere screening and we could not have asked for a more eloquent and passionate introduction. For those of you who never had the good fortune to meet him, we'd encourage you to read this eulogy from Lorraine Murphy which also includes a clip from the above mentioned introduction. There will be a memorial service for Stephen on December 22nd at 6pm at Pat's Pub in Vancouver.

On to the promised happy news...We had an excellent World Premiere screening of "True Love Waits" in front of a very receptive and appreciative audience this past Saturday at the Whistler International Film Festival. It was almost exactly a year to the day since we received the grant at the 2012 incarnation of the festival, so it felt great to bring the film back to where it was born and enjoy the premiere with the (almost) hometown crowd. Thanks again to our great cast and crew, WIFF, Creative BC and MPPIA for making this fantastic experience possible.

November 27, 2013

We're less than two weeks away from the premiere of True Love Waits at the Whistler International Film Festival. We're screening on Saturday December 7th at 1230pm, you can find tickets here, and more info about the film here.

August 15, 2013

Exciting news from Toronto! The Shaw/Hot Docs fund has announced their grant recipients for 2013 and we've picked up one of only five development grants for "A Heartbeat Away". Check out the official announcement here.

May 12, 2013

Now that the storm has passed it's time to provide a few updates:

Production on True Love Waits reached an exciting culmination with our shoot weekend from April 13-16 at various locations around the city. Our crew did a truly fantastic job and as a result we had fun and still captured some great images. Editing is scheduled to being May 20th at Finale Editworks and we hope to have a locked picture cut within the month. Check out the TLW page here for some production stills
AMF also attended HotDocs 2013 in Toronto in support of our project "A Heartbeat Away" and had some very promising meetings while, hopefully we'll have some good news to share from those meetings soon

March 22, 2013

A whirlwind of production is on the go here at AMF headquarters in Vancouver.

True Love Waits - With about 3 weeks to go until our shoot weekend, some of the big puzzle pieces are falling into place, namely cast and location. We've found our store location which was pretty key to the operation and we've had great cooperation so far the ownership. We're also pleased to announce the casting of Sarah Jane Redmond in the lead role of Judy, she's tremendously talented and going to bring a great edge to the show. Check for more updates coming on the "In Production" page.
A Heartbeat Away - Betsy Carson of Face to Face Media, one of the most experienced documentary producers in the country, has agreed to take on the producer's role for this film as well. This is a huge bonus and we're definitely excite about this partnership. We were in Houston and NYC this week shooting material for the trailer which we'll be taking to HotDocs at the end of April. More updates to come

January 10, 2013

A belated announcement of exciting news! AMF's script for the short film "True Love Waits" was selected to participate in theMPPIA/BCFilm pitch contest at the 2012 Whistler Film Festival. Presented with the task of crafting a 7 minute pitch to convince the panel of three judges of the merits of our projects, we competed against 4 other great pitches for a chance at the big prize. After a long's night waiting, the pitch contest results were the first to be announced at Sunday's awards brunch, and the long and short of it is that "True Love Waits" will soon be moving from the page to the screen. Thanks very much to BCFilm, the MPPIA and the Whistler Film Festival for their generous ($15,000 cash and $100,000 in services!) support of my film and I'm excited that it will receive its premiere at Whistler in December of this year. So we're off to the races now, and as you can see blogging isn't our strong suit, but we'll do out best to keep you updated with some of the process as we gear up to shooting mid-April.

January 1, 2012

Happy New Year everyone! We're in full scheming mode here at AMF right now, brainstorming ideas for this year's productions and beyond. Please keep tuned to this space for updates and announcements as the year rolls on.

December 1, 2011

While taking a break from production for a bit, AMF principal Jon Ornoy has joined the Board of Directors for the BC chapter of the Documentary Organization of Canada. DOC lobbies for the rights of filmmakers at the national level, while DOCBC works on serving the needs of the local membership through workshops, speaker and advocacy. The term is for one year and we're very excited about this opportunity to give back to the filmmaking community.

September 24th, 2011

Wow, to just look at the AMF site you'd think that nothing's been going on all this time, but we've actually been quite busy over at WghTheMovie.ca, the official site for With Glowing Hearts. Three years in the making, this look at the intersection between social media and social justice, has been an extremely rewarding experience to produce and we're very excited about sending it out into the world now. For our friends in Canada, you'll be able to find the movie on CBC's documentary channel, while for foreign broadcast sales we've signed a deal with FilmOption International. Thanks to everyone who supported the project along the way, please keep spreding the word!

April 23, 2010

Jon Ornoy will be representing AMF at this year's HotDocs Festival and will be in Toronto April 27 to May 12. Anyone interested in booking a meeting should do so at jon@animalmotherfilms.com.

April 16, 2010

We've entered the post-production phase of With Glowing Hearts and are beginning to work through the 60+ hours of material we've amassed in the past 13 months. Stay tuned to our Twitter feed (@wghthemovie) and Facebook page as we release clips throughout the summer.
AMF's "Plastic Bottles" is playing Sunday April 25th on Bravo!(Canada) as part of their Earth Day programming. It'll be on BravoFact presents which airs at 730PM EST 430PM PST

February 17, 2010

Day 6 of the Games and at 3 in the afternoon the lineup to get on the Skytrain at City Center almost reached the street (well not quite, but it was close). I'm heading off to beautiful Powell River tomorrow thanks to the organizers of the Powell River Film Festival who are playing "Plastic Bottles" in this year's extravaganza. They've also invited me to participate as a facilitator in their youth film camp which runs concurrent to the festival and should be an education for everyone, myself included!

January 29, 2010

First posting of the new year! With the 2010 Winter Olympics a mere two weeks away (with no snow in sight) we've been working very hard to get ourselves ready to cover all the elements of WGH. Keep your eyes open for our second webisode - about the True North Media House - going online today and two more before the games begin. We're also proud to report that we'll be attending the Powell River Film Festival which has graciously selected Plastic Bottles as part of its 2010 program.

November 30, 2009

wghthemovie.ca is now online! This is the official home for all things to do with "With Glowing Hearts", so be sure to check in regularly to keep up with developments!

November 26, 2009

Tomorrow is Buy Nothing Day picked this year to coincide with Black Friday in the US, the day before the unofficial start of the Christmas shopping madness. This year, let's try and make it a little less maddening.

November 24, 2009

As usual, things are busy around here. Andrew and I attended The New Transperancy at SFU last week, a two day conference of surveillance experts and academics that had chosen to gather this year in Vancouver in light of the coming Games. The weeked closed with a walking tour of downtown to have a look at some of the over 2000(!) surveillance cameras in the downtown core.

We've begun shooting the Voluntary Simplicity workshop for Plastic Wrapped with a great group of people out in Coquitlam, and it's going to be really interesting to see the sorts of evolution people will go through.

The website for With Glowing Hearts, wghthemovie.ca, is just days away from being launched and we're very excited about the official launch party which is going down Wednesday December 2nd. If you're interested in coming drop us a line. Keep your eyes open for the first of our webisodes coming very soon too...

Also wanted to pass this along from Karen Skadsheim from Pebble in Pond, a great little enviro group based in Powell River:

"We've also entered the Aviva Community Fund competition to raise money for a regional cloth bag program that we are developing for Powell River. If you could vote for us and encourage others, that would be just swell! http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf3120"

Get rid of pastic bags? Consider yourselves encouraged!

October 18, 2009

Photographer Chris Jordan has just returned from a trip to Midway Atoll, the most remote piece of land on Earth, with powerful pictures showing the toxic spread of our consumer lifestyle. The island's native Albatross population each year falls victim to feeding on the endless amounts of plastic bits in the surrounding waters and consequently starve with the stomachs full of plastic.

October 14, 2009

So what's new? Well first of all we just got back from Berkeley and interviewing the fantastic Annie Leonard for Plastic Wrapped. It was a wide ranging conversation that covered a lot of interesting ground and it's going to be a great addition to the film.

The official site for With Glowing Hearts is just getting polished and will be launched imminently. Keep an eye here and atwghthemovie.ca for updates.

We're also excited to report that "Critical" ahs been added to the curriculum at the University of Alberta as part of an ethics class in the Masters of Nursing program. Very cool!

September 6, 2009

More exciting news afoot. First off, we've confirmed Douglas Rushkoff as a participant in Plastic Wrapped. He is a best-sellingauthor, professor of media studies at New School University, and documentarian in his own right.

We've also finished post-production on our Bravo!FACT-supported short "Plastic Bottles" and will update airdates for that program when they become available.

If that wasn't enough, we're also getting ready to head out this week to the Toronto International Film Festival to try and drum up some sales and support for our projects. You'll be able to follow the action on Twitter @wghthemovie

August 4, 2009

We're very excited to confirm the addition of Annie Leonard as another participant in Plastic Wrapped. Annie's fantastic site, the Story of Stuff, has received over 6 million hits and was recently profiled on the front page of the New York Times. Based on a decade's worth of research, the site's 20 minute video presentation clearly and simply explains the structure which keeps prices artificially low in the West (to encourage our consumption) by outsourcing the true costs to the Third World. I'll be heading down to Berkeley in October to interview her, should be fascinating.

August 3, 2009

Clearly we've been a little delinquent around here lately with the updates, so here's some of the fun and delicious things that have been going on:

-We didn't win at Banff but it was still a great experience and we got a lot of great feedback. It was good to have WGH's coming out party and now we just have to get it out to the rest of the world!

-You can now find the trailer for WGH here

-Completed filming on the trailer for Plastic Wrapped and will be in post-production for the next two weeks. Things went really well, the rotoscope animation of Chris is looking great, and I'm looking forward to getting it done

June 6, 2009

It's been a very hectic few weeks since our last posting, mainly because Andrew and I have been working furiously to get ready to head to the Banff World TV festival bright and early tommorrow morning. We've been invited to present our film With Glowing Hearts at an NFB sponsored cross platform pitchfest, as one of only three competitors. Keep your fingers crossed for us Monday, June 8th between 3-4pm. Results will be posted here.

May 21, 2009

Just got back from the super-fantastic 10th edition of the Media that Matters conference on Cortes Island. It was a very inspiring four days brainstorming and connecting with media-makers from around North America who are using their tools to affect positive social change. Can't wait for next year!

March 3, 2009

We're very happy to announce that AMF's short film Plastic Bottles, 2007, on artist Chris Jordan, has received a grant from BravoFact! Pre-production starts now and we hope to have a finished product by the end of April. Check out the official announcement.

January 29, 2009

The Lunar Effect will be screening twice as part of CineRail Wednesday 25th, March at 11:00 am and on Sunday 29th, March at 11:00 am, at «Les 7 Parnassiens» cinema.

January 13, 2009

Good News for the New Year!

AMF is proud to report that The Lunar Effect has received its first festival invitation, and is an official selection at CineRail, a week long festival happening in the heart of Paris, March 25-31. The festival, which only programs films about trains is in its 17th year. For more info check out www.cinerail-fest.com.

Showtimes to follow.

October 2, 2008

Hello and welcome,

This is the new home of Animal Mother Films and things are busy around here. We've just recently completed the short documentary "The Lunar Effect" and are awaiting the results from a number of festivals. At the same time, development is in full swing on the feature documentary project"Plastic Wrapped" which we are very excited about. Thanks for stopping by, if you've got any questions or comments please check out the contact page.