SHADOW GIRL
tHE TRAILER
awards
characters
MARÍA TERESA LARRAÍN
THE FILMMAKER
“I always knew I would go blind but I ‘forgot’.
I became a filmmaker instead.”
MARÍA ABAROA
“I used to work with a friend, his name is Andrés Albornoz. For years the authorities tried to kick us out. Together we fought back, the Police and the tear gas. We were the greatest warriors in the Alameda.”
ANDRÉS ALBORNOZ “BIRDMAN”
“I came to the Alameda in 1975, two years after the military coup. I would be walking some times and would step over the dead bodies they had thrown on the streets…”
LUIS AEDO
“Losing my sight was terrible. But, I had to adapt because, I was still alive. ”
CARLOS MARCONI
“People often say: ‘It is good not to see. There is nothing to see in this rotten world!’ So, I reply: ‘Give me your eyes then, because I do want to see!’ ”
THE TEAM
Maria teresa larrain - director/executive producer/ producer
María Teresa Larraín. Chilean born filmmaker Maria Teresa Larraín studied Law and Drama in her native land. In 1976, Larraín immigrated to Canada where she worked as a legal assistant and a community worker with immigrant women and refugees, and also studied Radio and Television Arts at the Ryerson University in Toronto. She graduated from that program in 1984 and has since worked as an independent filmmaker both in Chile and in Canada. Larraín has been invited to participate in several professional development programs including the Documentary Edit and Story Lab and the Documentary and Composers Lab of the Sundance Institute in Utah and the Alan King’s Documentary Studio and the Canadian Film Centre Scriptwriters Lab in Toronto. Her last documentary “Besieged Land”/ “El Juicio de Pascual Pichún” was at various international film festivals in Latin America, Canada and the United States, and her films “Dolores” and “Looking for Findley” have been broadcasted in Bravo! and Telelatino in Toronto. Today, Larraín is taking Disability Studies at Ryerson University and is also developing two new projects: an itinerant exhibition of Shadow Girl, which will take place in Chile, Canada and Costa Rica, and a Transmedia Project directed by and for people with disabilities.
ed barreveld - eXCUTIVE PRODUCER
Storyline Entertainment CEO and Emmy Award-winning producer Ed Barreveld is one of Canada’s top independent documentary-film professionals. A hands-on producer with 30 years of experience in both financing and the field, Barreveld brings together Canadian and international storytellers, investors, and partners on documentaries that explore underexposed places and perspectives in society and culture.
Barreveld has partnered with producers and investors in Germany, Belgium, Australia, Greece, France, Chile, and the U.S.A. He regularly attends many of the top documentary market events.
Storyline titles have sold internationally, screened at Tribeca, Hot Docs, IDFA, and TIFF, and garnered numerous festival accolades, as well as Emmy, Gemini, and Canadian Screen awards and nominations.
Barreveld is a member of the Documentary Organization of Canada, the International Documentary Association and the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television’s Documentary Film Committee.
LISA VALENCIA-SVENSSON - PRODUCER
Lisa Valencia-Svensson is an award-winning documentary film producer based in Toronto who has been involved in the industry for over a decade. Her first feature length documentary was Herman’s House, which won an Emmy for Outstanding Arts & Culture Programming and was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award: Donald Brittain Award for Best Social/ Political Documentary. Herman’s House was broadcast on the PBS documentary series POV and on documentary channel in Canada. She associate produced several films, including The World Before Her, which have garnered Emmy nominations and Canadian Screen Awards, have been broadcast internationally, and been screened and won awards at festivals including TIFF, Tribeca, Hot Docs and IDFA. Her passion is for film projects which explore issues of inequality and social justice, and which encourage audiences to view their world through a constructively critical and creatively unique lens.
Ricardo Acosta- Editor
Ricardo studied and worked at the Cuban Film Institute in Havana. His talent coupled with a keen sense of the human condition has contributed to the making of several award-winning films, including: Best Documentary Editing at Ashland Independent Film Festival with Marmato, directed by Mark Grieco, Best Picture Editing in a Documentary, The Canadian Screen Awards, with Herman’s House, directed by Angad Bhalla, The Take directed by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis and many others.
TIM WILSON - editor
Award winning writer, producer, host and director in radio, television, film and new media, Tim makes documentaries for broadcast, web and theatrical release, and as private commissions. In the film Shadow Girl, he worked as one of our editors and interviewed the Director Maria Teresa Larrain, the protagonist of the film.
Jordan Kawai - Additional Editing
Jordan Kawai received a BA Honours in Communication at the University of Ottawa before pursuing his MFA in Documentary Media at Ryerson University, where he is a recipient of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Jordan’s aspirations follow both artistic and academic pursuits, merging his background as a musician and artist with his passion for educating. A talented filmmaker on his own right, Kawai worked as the third editor in Shadow Girl.
Jorge Aliaga - COMPOSER
What defines Aliaga’s work is a constant exploration of emotion and the way this emotion relates to image and gesture. He has worked in film, television, dance and theater and his clients include independent filmmakers as well as commissions from the public and private worlds. Jorge’s latest prizes include the Jerry Goldsmith Award for Best Music Score for a Short Action Film with “Necrolovers”, directed by Víctor Uribe at the Music Film Festival in Ciudad de Córdoba, Spain, 2014 and, the Pulsar 2015 Award in Best Music for Audiovisual works in Santiago de Chile.
Manfred Becker - Editor
Manfred snuck into Canada from his native Germany in 1983 on a semi-legal work permit and was given the opportunity to work with and learn from this country’s preeminent documentary filmmakers like Sturla Gunnarsson, Nettie Wild and Peter Watkins. In 2001, after a decade of making sense of the creative mess of others in the cutting room, Manfred gathered his courage to step into the light and create his own, with documentaries on psychoanalysis, urban guerrillas, Dark Tourism and what it means to live with the burden of history. Fifteen years and two dozen documentaries later, creating that meaningful emotional experience for the audience remains a mystery to him.
Arnaldo Rodríguez - DOP Chile
Studied Film in Chile, Journalism and Industrial Design in Mexico, and attended various cinematography workshops in the US and Spain. Currently based in Chile, Rodriguez is often traveling abroad to work as a Cinematographer in documentaries and fiction films, commercials, musicals, theater and television series.
Daniel Grant – DOP Cinematography
Cinematographer Daniel Grant has accumulated a wide variety of credits for his work in over fifty short films, documentaries, and several feature films. His work has been shown at festivals around the world, such as Berlin, Sundance, Slamdance, and TIFF. In 2011, the CSC recognized him again with a nomination for his work on the drama Hangnail, and he was also recently nominated for a Gemini for the documentary Love at the Twilite Motel.
Daniel Pellerin – Sound Design
Daniel Pellerin has worked in sound and music post production for film and television for the past 34 years, as recording and re-recording mixer/engineer, sound design and music supervisor/editor. Throughout his career, he has mixed all of Atom Egoyan’s 13 feature films, including his upcoming feature dramas “The Devil’s Knot” with Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth and also “Queen of the Night” and “The Sweet Hereafter”.
Contact & Sales
CONTACT
SALES
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WOMEN MAKE MOVIES (WMM) is now distributing our film throughout the United States for sale, rental, and preview purposes, (including home video and television) and all other forms of distribution and display. WMM is a multicultural, multiracial, non-profit media arts organization which facilitates the production, promotion, distribution exhibition of independent films and videotapes by and about women.
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For educational sales contact orders@wmm.com
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To book a screening contact kfitzpatrick@wmm.com
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For Latin American Sales and the Spanish version of the film: SUDMEDIA – CANAL 13
REVIEWS
The visual language of blindness Blind filmmaker finds new ways of seeing By Will Sloan July 28, 2017 "Maria Teresa Larrain had a long career as a filmmaker and activist before she lost her sight, but the dimming of her vision was not the end of her creative life. Shadow Girl, the Chilean-Canadian filmmaker’s first-person documentary, […]" https://www.ryerson.ca/news-events/news/2017/07/the-visual-language-of-blindness/
09 Jun 2017/0 Comments/in Reviews & Interviews
"MARIA TERESA LARRAIN, A DIRECTOR IN THE LAND OF THE BLIND Larrain has become a paradoxical artist, a blind filmmaker committed to creating images she can no longer see. Article by Kate Taylor It was a blind street vendor in Santiago who first told filmmaker Maria Teresa Larrain that her next project would be autobiographical. […]" https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/shadow-girl-seeks-to-reproduce-a-blind-filmakers-sight/article35190826/
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Shadow Girl in CNN Chile: Journalist Mónica Rincón interviews the director in program Inclusive Awareness- 26 Aug 2016/0 Comments/in Reviews & Interviews
“In a new chapter of Inclusive Awareness we will talk with film director, María Teresa Larraín, about the premise of Shadow Girl, a documentary which narrates the process of the loss of sight.” CNN Chile
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The Blind Gaze of María Teresa Larraín – by Carlos Correa, film critic- 24 Aug 2016/0 Comments/in Reviews & Interviews
Shadow Girl by film critic Carlos Correa “This moving documentary by María Teresa Larraín depicts her own story. A hard road, a deep journey towards vision loss and a feared blindness which gradually dims shapes and colours, substantially transforming her life. As she becomes blind, she lets us into her inner world…” Source: Signis Chile
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Shadow Girl visits Barcelona – Commentary by Dani Jariod, documentarian and programmer at DocsBarcelona- 07 Jun 2016/0 Comments/in Reviews & Interviews
“Two weeks ago, as moderator of the International Film Festival DocsBarcelona, I had both the pleasure and the privilege of accompanying María Teresa Larraín to the first public screenings of her wonderful film Shadow Girl. As a member of the Programing Committee, which selected the works for the Official Section of the Festival, I had […]