Laurier faculty, Alumuni to Return for Milton Film Fest panels

he Milton Film Festival has announced the panelists for two lunchtime discussion panels to be held on Saturday Jan 27th and Sunday Jan 28th, at 1 pm in the Escarpment Hall of the FirstOntario Arts Centre Milton. These panels are free to the public and offer a lively and informative discussion about the film industry, film history, and other fascinating topics.

Saturday’s panel will focus on the history of women in film – the powerful positions they once held in the early years of the film industry and how their role had changed over the decades. For this timely topic, Milton Film Festival is once again partnering with Wilfrid Laurier University who are sending three of their alumni and faculty with expertise in film history to form the panel: Dr. Liz Clarke, Dr. Philippa Gates, and Dr. Patrick Faubert.

Dr. Liz Clarke is an assistant professor of film and popular culture at Brock University. Her research looks broadly at women in Hollywood, in both film and television. Her recent projects include a study of female heroism in American war films from 1908 to 1918, women screenwriters in the 1910s and 1920s, and women showrunners in contemporary television.

Dr. Philippa Gates is Professor in Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her teaching and research focuses on gender, age, and race in classical and contemporary Hollywood films and she has published the books Detecting Men: Masculinity and the Hollywood Detective Film (2006), Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film (2011), and Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas (2012). Her current book project explores the representation of Chinese Americans and Chinatowns in Classical Hollywood films.

Dr. Patrick Faubert earned his PhD from Wilfrid Laurier University in 2013. Since then, he has been teaching film and media studies at both Laurier and Sheridan College. A film historian, he focuses on the Hollywood Studio Era, which spans the 1930s into the 1960s, and is interested in the relationships between film and other popular media. Specifically, he is interested in how the Hollywood studios turned to other media as a means of establishing their social importance, and of defining their contributions to the cultural landscape of America.

On Sunday, the Festival is proud to welcome veteran animators Dale and Dave Cox, who are long time residents of Glen Williams just outside of Georgetown. They will be sharing their long experience as animators, exploring the evolution of the medium as well as discussing the breakthrough film LOVING VINCENT, which will screen right before the panel and is the world’s first fully oil painted animated feature film.

Dale and Dave Cox spent their long careers working for firms such as Nelvana, Videoart Productions, and Rainbow Animation since the 1970s. They have worked in production management, writing, and animating capacities, and their filmography reads like a who’s who of animated characters familiar to Canadians, young and old: Inspector Gadget, Beetlejuice, The Care Bears, Star Wars: Ewoks, Franklin Turtle, Babar, and the list goes on.

Both panels are moderated by Festival host and MC Ron Base. Ron is best known in Milton as the author of The Escarpment and The Sanibel Sunset Detective novels. However, in his previous life he was the film critic for the Toronto Star, as well as the host of a syndicated radio show, Marquee Magazine at the Movies. He also co-hosted The Movie Show with Alex Barris for TV Ontario.