FEEDBACK Film Festival

Director Biography – Jill D’Agnenica (A DOG’S STORY)

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Jill D’Agnenica is an award winning filmmaker and visual artist working in Los Angeles as a director and editor. She’s had the pleasure of editing drama series including How to Get Away With Murder (ABC), Lucifer (Fox), Pretty Little Liars (Freeform), Stitchers (Freeform), Switched at Birth (Freeform), Undercovers (NBC), Hollywood Heights (Nickelodeon), Dirt (FX), and The Division (Lifetime). Jill made her television directorial debut on Freeform’s Switched at Birth in 2017.

The Los Angeles Times called Life Inside Out (Jill’s first feature film) “a gentle, poignant drama whose heart and head are squarely in the right place” with “tender direction by Jill D’Agnenica.” Life Inside Out premiered at the 2013 Heartland Film Festival where it won both the Crystal Heart Award for Narrative Feature and Best Premiere. It went on to be screened at 21 festivals, receiving 16 awards, including 5 Best Feature and 4 Audience Awards. After a limited theatrical run, it now streams on AmazonPrime.

Jill holds a BA in history from UCLA and an MFA in Visual Art from Claremont Graduate University. She is a member Film Independent, Film Fatales, the Motion Picture Editors Guild and the Directors Guild of America.

With her myriad of experiences as a director, editor, and producer on music videos, PSAs, indie shorts and features, Jill enjoys opportunities to contribute as a guest lecturer, panelist, and mentor to fellow filmmakers and artists.

Director Statement

“A Dog’s Story” had its genesis with a series of humorous sculptures that my friend and frequent collaborator, artist Margaret Adachi, did of unhappy and angry pooches in dead end jobs. Like all of her various animal sculptures, they were anthropomorphized stand-ins for Margaret, this time aged out of work life and feeling irrelevant.

I call her “Margaret Adachi: Genius” because she is so, so quirky and funny and smart. I asked Margaret to write a back story for one of her sculptures which became the narrative for “A Dog’s Story” and together with our friend and collaborator, cinematographer Guido Frenzel, we hatched a plan for how we wanted to portray that story in film, landing on the character of The Dog giving a slide lecture, like a Ted Talk.

Guido wanted to shoot the entire movie with a 50mm lens “like Ozu” and the one-walled set I built in my studio had just enough room for him to get the wide shot we wanted.

We had a blast, setting up and shooting in one long night, laughing and chatting through each of the shots, since I decided to record all the sound in post.

I knew hitting the right tone with music would be absolutely essential to the telling of the story and also no small feat. To our absolute great good fortune, musician Goh Nakamura agreed to compose the score for the movie and it is perfection.

I am delighted that my friends and I got to play together to create “A Dog’s Story.”

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Short Film: A DOG’S STORY, 7min., USA, Comedy

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“A Dog’s Story” is an absurdist short that tells the tragi-comic tale of an old dog who contemplates his bleak future after being laid off from his security job. The Dog has made a slide presentation of his current predicament and how he got here — an all-too-frequent story that many of us have also experienced in this new competitive economy where jobs are being replaced by automation and being too old can leave you marginalized.

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Director Biography – Eric Dyson (APPY DAYS)

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A native Angeleno, Eric Dyson has been immersed in film & television his entire life. While studying at Brooks Institute of Photography, Eric spent a lot of hours working in the world of musical theater. After graduation, his first job was with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. “One of my most memorable experiences was running a video camera while Steven used toy dinosaurs to map out shots for Jurassic Park. ” Not long after, he became a member of the International Cinematographers Guild, Local 600. As a member of local 600, Eric has over 40,000 hours of on set experience. With credits that include A Wrinkle In Time, Snowfall and Crazy Ex Girlfriend to name a few. During his many years of camera work, Eric has developed a keen eye for what it takes to build a scene with strong visuals; all the while mastering the art of working inter-departmentally to get the day’s work completed.

Eric’s directing credits include short films, music videos, trailers and documentary work.

Director Biography – Caitlin Dahl (THE GET TOGETHER)

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Caitlin Dahl was born in Toronto, Canada to a sisterhood of strong talented artists. She attended Ryerson University and has since written, produced and directed three short films, a documentary film and countless music videos.

Caitlin got her start as a lead editor on Tim McGraw’s videos “Suspicions”, “Southern Voice” and McGraw and Def Leppard’s “Nine Lives”. Following the release of the videos, Caitlin was invited on Tim McGraw’s North American 2008 tour to shoot and edit for documentary purposes. Upon her return to Los Angeles, Caitlin and her twin sister Melinda formed their Production Company Dahlhouse Productions where Caitlin has been the head writer, director and producer of the film and television division. Their most notable clients include: Guess, Guess by Marciano, G by Guess, Sexy Hair and Bosley Professional Strength.

Her short film “White Picket Fence”, premiered at the Dances With Films Festival, where it won an Honorable Mention for Best Short Film. Her latest short film “Grown-Ups” recently premiered at the Los Angeles Independent Filmmakers Showcase in May of 2017 and won a total of ten awards in the festival circuit.

Caitlin began her career as an actress and has since appeared in numerous commercials, films and television productions, including, Nip/Tuck (FX), House M.D. (FOX), and American Horror Story (FX). She also sings and plays lead guitar in her band The Dahls with her sister Melinda.

Caitlin is married to Executive Producer/Writer, Danny Smith on “Family Guy”. They have two children together, Waylon and Adelaide.

Director Statement

I wrote “The Get Together” after I was invited to screen my last short film “Grown-Ups” at the prestigious and Oscar qualifying Rhode Island International Film Festival. I was so inspired by what I saw on opening night that I threw away the other short film script I was working on and opted to really challenge myself and write something I could visualize being shown on opening night of the festival next year. I dug deep within myself, wrote from my own experiences, and came up with a funny, farcical piece about two couples coming together for a dinner party to help plan a wedding for their children. Once gathered, the two couples gradually expose their own marital problems, as well as a growing enchantment with each other’s partners. All of their insecurities and human foibles soon come to the surface, and all of this is exacerbated by the fact that they have unwittingly and accidently eaten fudge that has been laced with edible marijuana – which of course results in confusion, hilarity and absurdity.

I want to tell this story to explore the many issues of marriage – its value, its relevance, and the question of its sustainability. My parents’ generation were the first to question the validity and the need for marriage (the film “The Graduate” comes to mind), and for many people my age, the idea of a lifetime of monogamy flies in the face of the basic human desire for variety and adventure. As best as we try, it seems so many of us are always looking for something more – or at least different.

Short Film: THE GET TOGETHER, 12min., USA, Comedy

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A wholesome middle-aged couple from Rhode Island have been invited over to a very successful and eccentric Hollywood record producer’s house with his much younger wife to plan the wedding of their children. As the two couples start to get to know each other, their difference seem to melt away with the help of accidentally injected edible marijuana. They slowly begin to expose their own marital problems and confide and seek comfort in each others partners. One thing leads to another and they find themselves on the verge of “The Great Switcheroo” when the unexpected happens resulting in confusion, hilarity and absurdity.

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Director BIO: Victoria Warmerdam (SHORT CALF MUSCLE)

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Director Biography – Victoria Warmerdam

Victoria graduated from Dutch Film School Utrecht in 2015 with her absurd short “Happily I am Happy”. Since then she has been writing two feature scripts, several shorts and just finished her first own short “Short Calf Muscle”. She likes mildly absurdic comedy with high concept.