Screenwriter Karen Walton will be the featured guest at The Independents, a monthly series of screenings and discussions on independent Canadian cinema presented by York University's Film Department.
Walton will screen and discuss her 2000 Canadian werewolf film Ginger Snaps.
Directed by John Fawcett, Ginger Snaps was Walton’s debut feature film script and has since spawned both a prequel and a sequel. The presentation will take place on Thursday, March 22, at 7pm, in the Price Family Cinema, 102 Accolade East on York’s Keele campus.
A staff writer and story executive in the Canadian and US film and television industries, Walton has also worked on a number of series, most notably Season Two of Showtime's Queer As Folk (USA) and the Canadian dramatic series The Eleventh Hour. By 2002, Walton had penned to scripts for two true-story television movies: Heart – The Marilyn Bell Story, and the multiple Gemini award-winning The Many Trials of One Jane Doe, for which she received the Best Writing in a Dramatic Movie or Miniseries prize. In 2005, she consulted on, and co-wrote, several episodes of the new CBC animated series, What It's Like Being Alone.
Her current projects include co-writing a screenplay for the original film Billy Grimm with director Brad Peyton for Mosaic/Sony Columbia Pictures and Peyton's animated feature, The Spider & The Fly for Playtone/Universal Studios. In Canada, she is at work on a script for The Troll Under the Table for Toronto's Capris Films and is adapting Michael Turner's bestseller, The Pornographer's Poem.
Walton is a recipient of the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival's Special Jury Award for Best Screenplay, the CTV Banff Fellowship Alumni Award; the Canadian Comedy Award (for Pretty Funny screenplay); and a Top Ten Writers To Watch spot from Variety Magazine.
Ginger Snaps tells the story of two sisters: 15-year-old Brigitte Fitzgerald (played by Emily Perkins) and 16-year-old Ginger (played by Katharine Isabelle). The emotional and philosophical intimacy between the siblings equips them to deal with a toxic high-school culture which leaves them feeling isolated and alienated. Scorned by their classmates, the Fitzgerald sisters are misfits and misanthropes whose only defence is a suicide pact. One day, while walking in the woods, Ginger is attacked by a werewolf and becomes infected with an obsession for meat. Ginger's escalating thirst for blood begins to get out of control and even her innocent sister Brigitte isn't able to stop her.
Walton’s screening and presentation will be followed by a question and answer session moderated by York film professors Amnon Buchbinder and Seth Feldman. For more information on Walton’s presentation, contact Natasha Bissoon, department secretary, at ext. 33592.
The presentation is sponsored by York University's Department of Film, the Centre for Feminist Research, Fine Arts Cultural Studies and the Division of Social Science in York’s Faculty of Arts.