We congratulate New Zealand filmmaker Yamin Tun, who will be attending this year's Student Symposium at the 40th Telluride Film Festival (TFF) in Colorado.
Sponsored by Film Finances Inc., the Symposium gives up-and-coming filmmakers the opportunity to experience the internationally renowned festival, attending screenings and meeting film industry professionals from around the world. The students will also participate in a special curriculum of workshops and discussions with filmmakers and executives.
Founded in 1950, Film Finances is an international financing corporation which acts as a completion guarantor for film, television and transmedia projects. Film Finances Australasia has acted as the completion guarantor on many New Zealand films, including River Queen, Boy, Mt. Zion, The Weight of Elephants and Beyond The Edge.
Yamin Tun is one of fifty filmmakers invited to attend the Symposium as the guest of Film Finances and TFF.
Says Tun of her selection, "I am extremely grateful to Film Finances for making this possible, and for the New Zealand Film Commission’s encouragement to attend Telluride Film Festival's Student Symposium. It's a brilliant Symposium and one that I've always wanted to attend. I am over the moon!”
Burma-born Tun won the Unitec V48HOURS Study Award in 2010 to undertake a graduate course in film direction. Her first dramatic short, Two Princes (mentored by Sima Urale), was selected to screen at the 2012 New Zealand International Film Festival.
Tun was supported through the NZFC’s 2012 Fresh Shorts programme to make her Fresh 30 film Stone, Paper, Scissors, co-produced by Vicky Pope and Dan Higgins. She was also shortlisted for Fresh Shorts in 2011 and was a finalist for the 2013 Killer Films Internship Scholarship in New York.
TFF’s Student Symposium was launched 1989 to provide undergraduate and graduate students with a long weekend of immersion in film and film discussion.
Guest speakers at the Symposium in recent years have included Frank Marshall, George Lucas, Ang Lee, David Lynch, Werner Herzog, Gus Van Sant, Salman Rushdie, Stephen Sondheim, Jean-Claude Carrière and Buck Henry.
TFF runs from 29 August to 2 September.