Reel Connections Panel & Networking Event

Thursday 2 November
6.30pm-9.00pm
House of Brews, 17 Orchid Ave, Surfers Paradise QLD 4217

Early-career filmmakers continue to bring fresh perspectives and challenge the state of cinema, creating a bright future for the industry. Reel Connections returns in 2023, offering emerging and early-career filmmakers the opportunity to connect with like-minded collaborators and hear from a diverse panel who will share their insights on filmmaking, the challenges they are currently facing, and how they discovered their voices in the global film industry.

Speakers

• Anthony Shim (Canada / Republic of Korea) Writer, Director, Producer, Actor, Editor
  Anthony was born in Seoul, South Korea and then immigrated to Vancouver, Canada with his family in the early 90s. He began his career as an actor after his mom enrolled him in a high school drama class and soon after he co-founded a theatre company in which he served as the artistic director while acting, producing, and directing its variety of projects. In 2019, Anthony made his first feature film, Daughter; a micro-budget feature that was developed from a one-act play he wrote; then, he followed that up with Riceboy Sleeps which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022 and won the prestigious Platform Prize. He is nominated for Best Screenplay at APSA 2023.
• Nicole Midori Woodford (Singapore) Director, Writer
  Nicole Midori Woodford is an alumna of Berlinale Talents, Asian Film Academy, Torino Film Lab and Talents Tokyo. Her debut feature film Last Shadow at First Light, shot in both Singapore and Japan was selected to compete in San Sebastián Film Festival’s New Directors competition in 2023, and is nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Performance at APSA 2023. She is also one of the director-writers for the second season of the acclaimed HBO Asia series Folklore 2.
• Hikaru Toda (Japan) Director, Producer 
  Hikaru Toda is a director/producer and the founder of Little Stranger Films. Raised in the Netherlands, she holds master’s degrees in visual Anthropology and Performance Making from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her debut feature documentary Of Love & Law (2017) won top awards at the Tokyo International Film Festival (2017) and the Hong Kong International Film Festival (2018) and was nominated for an Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Documentary Film (2018). She most recently directed and produced an episode of Netflix’s Original Documentary Series My Love: 6 Stories of True Love (2021), which won the International Documentary Association (IDA) award for Best Episodic series and is streaming in 190 countries. 
• Moderated by Lark Lee (Korea/Australia) Writer, Director, Producer 
  Lark Lee is a Korean migrant living in Australia. She is a writer, director and producer who loves entertaining audiences with captivating stories and visually appealing films. Starting in the industry as an actress, she worked on the ABC TV show Harrow. Her most recent proof-of-concept short film, Street No. 4 (2022), has been selected at multiple Academy Award qualifying festivals, such as LA Shorts and Holly Shorts Film Festival, and it screened at the opening night of St. Kilda Film Festival 2023. Lark wrote and directed two seasons of the heart-warming short documentary web series Mother’s Table (2022 – 2023), covering inter-generational Asian family stories behind the restaurants in Brisbane for the BrisAsia Festival hosted by the Brisbane City Council. Season 1 streamed on SBS on Demand. As a filmmaker, Lark’s strength is drawing emotions from the audience to engage with her films, and she looks forward to growing her career to an international stage. 

Tickets

$25 per person
+ booking fees

Ticket includes a drink on arrival from a large selection of local and imported beverages. An exclusive $15 food menu will be available for purchase.

This event is proudly supported by HOUSE OF BREWS, SURFERS PARADISE.