Stephen Arnold for Dust , winner of the 2008 Joy Award.

Joanne Kerrigan for Gigantic Piledriver! , winner of the 2008 Joy Post Award. More >

Mark Hoffe for Snarbuckled , winner of the 2008 Newfoundland Joy Award. More >

Luckas Cardona for Mr. Happy , winner of the 2008 CBC TV Broadcast Script Development Award. More >

2008 Helen Hill Animated Award TBA
2008 New Brunswick Joy Award TBA

Winner of the 2008 Joy Award, Stephen Arnold for Dust .

Dust is a short film about a writer frozen by the looming blank surface of his writing paper, his journey through connections of the imagination, and the resulting epiphany and inspiration.

Using a phantasmagorical merging of fleeting internal landscapes and the reality around the writer, Arnold takes us on a magical trip through the creative process in all its chaotic wonder.

Influenced by “the literary work of Kafka and cinematic work of Terry Gilliam and Michel Gondry,” the film will offer a rich visual experience with surprising and innovative techniques to cross between real and unreal, this world and the world of imagination.

A graduate of Dalhousie University's Theatre program, Stephen Arnold is a writer and filmmaker who has worked in the film industry on set as a Key Grip, Props Master, and other jobs. He is also an actor working in theatrical and broadcast projects. Last year he participated in the Writer's Lab & Boot Camp at the Island Media Arts Centre in Charlottetown. Dust is his first independent production.

Winner of the 2008 Joy Post Award, Joanne Kerrigan for Gigantic Piledriver!

Joanne Kerrigan's film Gigantic Piledriver! Has some outrageous propositions for you. Kerrigan wants to strain your credulity as the film presents individuals engaged in discussion – all based on the hook lines of spam sex product email messages! The filmmaker wants the audience to reflect on just how much we believe, as much as how unbelieveable some of these messages can be. Makers of ludicrous sex aid products make millions, cashing in on insecurities – how does that gullibility button get pressed?

Kerrigan entertainingly examines “this aspect of human nature which has belief as its default setting.”

Joanne finished her first project, Fear For , at the Centre For Art Tapes (CFAT) in 1999 as part of a media art scholarship. Since then she has made several short films on 16mm, Super-8 and video, and her first 35mm short Mine in 2005 at the FILM5 emerging filmmakers program. She is a past Joy Awards Coordinator, and worked at Moving Images Group. As a mentor and teacher, she now helps new filmmakers through programs at the Atlantic Filmmakers' Cooperative, and has worked with many of this region's filmmakers and artists.

Winner of the 2008 Newfoundland Joy Award, Mark Hoffe for Snarbuckled.

Snarbuckled is a dramatic story about alienation and the search for roots, exploring the powerful emotions of people in various states of isolation. An itinerant cook, sole survivor of his sunken ship, paddles to the nearest shore in a cauldron, beginning a series of encounters with characters both eccentric and wonderful, and finding himself on a mission to rescue a clown.

Mark Hoffe is from St John's Newfoundland, and has been fascinated by cinema from an early age. After studying film at the Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers' Cooperative (NIFCO), Mark applied successfully to NIFCO's First Time Filmmakers program to create the short film Spiritual . He is a freelance writer and emerging filmmaker, and is currently working on a feature-length script.

Winner of the 2008 CBC TV Broadcast Script Development Award,
Luckas Cardona for Mr. Happy .

Luckas Cardona's script humorously tells the story of an inflexible environmentalist, 5 th Level Vegan, and self-described angry hippie whose self-appointed quest to keep virtue alive in the world must be achieved at any cost. Living an immaculate lifestyle on the moral high ground, his anger at lesser mortals has come to define his life – so much so, he realizes, that it isn't his life any more. His anger has taken form: a tumor that will kill him unless he can change his ways. Can an angry hippie find inner peace without selling out?