Reel Ideas: So You Think You Can Pitch?

Michael Fukushima is studio head and executive producer of the National Film Board of Canada’s world-renowned English Animation Studio. After freelancing following college, Fukushima joined the Animation Studio in 1990 as a filmmaker, then became a studio producer, and is now head of the fabled studio, with over 200 films (and some nice awards and nominations) under his belt. These days he produces one or two films per year, by veteran creators like Torill Kove and Alison Snowden and David Fine, and otherwise offers up pearls of wisdom and wise-cracking bon mots.

Amar Wala’s debut feature The Secret Trial 5 received the Emerging Filmmaker Jury Award at Hot Docs, and the Magnus Isacsson Award at RIDM. Often using his cinema to deconstruct notions of race and identity, Amar has also directed series for CBC, Viceland and the newly opened Shopify Studios. He is currently Director and Consulting Producer of CBC’s acclaimed Arts series In The Making. In the community, Amar served as the Chair of the Images Festival from 2015-2018, and he recently received the 2018 VANGUARD Award from the Documentary Organization of Canada.

Born in Seoul, Korea, writer/director Gloria Ui Young Kim comes from a long line of media makers. She recently directed, wrote and produced her first feature, Queen Of The Morning Calm. Her last short Flamenco, won the 2017 Corus Fearless Female Filmmaker Award. She has won numerous Golds for her commercial work at the Bessies, Cannes Lions, ADCC, Marketing Magazine Awards and was chosen by Women in View as one of the 2017 Five in Focus, and is on the Board of Directors for Women in Film and Television-Toronto.

Carolyn Wu is a writer, director, and community organizer. She led CBC’s national television show “Q” through a total rebranding as Acting Senior Producer. Her film “In My Mother’s Closet” has screened at NSI Online Short Film Festival and Wicked Queer Boston. She won Breakthroughs Film Festival’s Emerging Filmmaker Pitch 2019. She also started and co-organizes Colour Theory, an event celebrating short films of all sizes, genres, and budgets made exclusively by racialized filmmakers who identify as 2SLGBTQ (2SQTBIPOC). In all her work, she seeks to empower the voices of everyone involved at every level while building space for 2s/queer/trans BIPOC filmmakers to heal, create, and thrive.

Qais Pasha is a documentary filmmaker and media specialist based in Toronto. He grew up in Pakistan and immigrated to Ontario as a teenager. He is a graduate of Carleton and Ryerson Universities. He was one of 12 filmmakers selected for the CBC diverse creators workshop in 2016, received the Corus diverse voices scholarship at Hotdocs 2017 and was one of the E20 chosen for ReelWorld film festival 2017. He received Ontario Arts Council funding to complete his first feature film in 2018, and was one of two winners of the DOC BreakThrough Pitch Contest at Hotdocs 2019.