2021 New England Film Star Award Finalists
The 2021 finalists for the New England Film Star Award
Written by Hannah Ruane | Posted by: NewEnglandFilm.com Festival
NewEnglandFilm.com and Women in Film/Video New England have announced five finalists for the 2021 New England Star Award. The winner will be announced at the WIFVNE Annual Meeting on December 1 at WGBH Boston.
The finalists for 2021 New England Film Star Award, a partnership between NewEnglandFilm.com and Women in Film/Video New England (WIFVNE), have been announced. The winner will be announced at the 2021 WIFVNE annual meeting at WGBH Boston on December 1.
The mission of the award is to provide an in-kind grant to a minoritized filmmaker residing in New England to further develop their work.
“It’s so exciting to be able to offer this award for the third year in a row,” says Michele Meek, NewEnglandFilm.com and Star Award founder. “Each of these finalists is creating incredible work despite the obstacles they’ve encountered, and we look forward to supporting them in their journey.”
NewEnglandFilm.com partners on the award with with Women in Film/Video New England (WIFVNE), an organization committed to promoting filmmakers of all identities. WIFVNE staff collaborate on selecting finalists and the awardee, and the award will be presented at their annual meeting.
“At WIFVNE, we are so excited to be working with NewEnglandFilm.com for the New England Film Star Award,” says Alecia Jean Orsini Lebeda, WIFVNE director. “We need to hear the voices of storytellers that have been missing from our film spaces, and we are honored to support the finalists chosen this year. The work, ideas, and stories that were presented to us all had merit and heart. Our finalists are sure to make our community proud.”
NewEnglandFilm.com’s mission has always been to serve under-represented independent filmmakers, and the purpose of the Star Award, launched in 2019, is to help local filmmakers access resources and mentorship and receive recognition. Past winners include 2019 Awardee Jessica Estelle-Huggins who as Creative Producer for the series Black Women Shine in Boston since released as a podcast and 2020 Awardee Melissa McClung won for her project With Reckless Abandon which is in production. Melissa will participate on the committee to choose the 2021 Awardee.
The Film Star Award would not be possible without the generous support from our sponsors: Rule Boston Camera, Animus Studios, Mark Maguire, Stowe Story Labs, Stage 32, Michele Meek, and Media Thinktank. Learn more about the guidelines and specifics of grant.
Congratulations to the following 2021 New England Film Star Award Finalists:
Finalists are presented in alphabetical order by last name.
Kristen Falso-Capaldi – Closet
Project: In a twisted homage to The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and The Wizard of Oz, an abused woman cowers in a closet only to push through to a magical world where she finds pieces of her lost self.
Bio: Kristen Falso-Capaldi is a writer, filmmaker and visual artist. In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Kristen wrote, directed and edited a short film, “You Weren’t Afraid at All.” Kristen is the recipient of a 2018 Assets for Artists grant for creative writing and the winner of several short story contests. Her short play, “Threshold” debuted at the 2016 10-minute play festival at the Sandra Feinstein Gamm Theatre. Her writing has been published in Good Housekeeping, Volume 1 Brooklyn and Joyland among others. She is also a novelist, represented by Jill Grinberg Literary Management.
Lyria Garcia – Waysland
Project: When her past pays an unexpected visit, an immigrant leans on an unlikely friendship and will risk everything to fight for her dreams.
Bio: Lyria Garcia is a fine art and portrait photographer based in Marlborough, MA, originally from Brazil. She graduated from Framingham State University with a degree in Communication Arts with a concentration in film production. Before Covid she organized destination shoots and has traveled with clients to: Dubai, Iceland, South Africa, and numerous destinations in the US for photography assignments. In the Fall of 2021 she was accepted to the competitive Sundance workshop, Directing Actors and also Directing: Core Elements. Lyria wrote and will direct her short film at the end of November. The short will serve as a proof of concept to market her feature film with the same name, WAYSLAND, a feature film about the friendship between an undocumented immigrant and a young American woman who is a survivor of domestic violence. Lyria feels inspired to tell stories of women who overcome obstacles and break barriers, because she came from a family with a few of them. As an immigrant herself, she is driven to the tell the stories of undocumented immigrants and the value they bring to this country, regardless of their immigration status.
Lyralen Kaye – Assigned Female at Birth
Project: A queer web series that combines narrative and mockumentary genres as it tells the stories of non-binary and trans people falling in love while fighting everything they’ve been taught about their bodies never being good enough.
Bio: Lyralen Kaye, AEA, SAG-AFTRA, MFA, Sarah Lawrence College, is an award-winning queer, disabled, screenwriter, actor, director playwright, novelist and poet. Their first screenplay, Saint John the Divine in Iowa, about the intersection of radical queer politics with an Episcopalian family in the Midwest won them a place in the Meryl Streep Writers Lab administered by NYWIFT and IRIS, was a semi-finalist for the 2011 Pride Plays and Films Award and a finalist for the 2011 Roy W. Dean Award. Their second screenplay, Run from Fire, a feminist thriller, was a finalist for the 2016 Half the World Literati Award. Assigned Female at Birth, a queer web series, has won Best Web Series/Best New Media in eight film festivals. My Mother and the Nun, the story of a 70’s housewife who falls in love with her lesbian daughter’s principal, won the 2002 Stanley and Eleanor Lipkin Prize in Playwriting and was a finalist in the 2005 Massachusetts Council of the Arts Awards. Lyralen has also been nominated for the 1997 Pushcart Prize in fiction and won the 1998 Boston Amazon Poetry Super Slam Finals, the 2017 Moth Story Slam, the 2017 Boston Story Slam and the 2018 San Francisco Best in Fringe for their show My Preferred Pronoun Is WE. Their poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction have been published in literary journals nationwide. Lyralen specializes in directing devised theater and film, based on interviews with members of minority communities. They are proud to tell these stories.
Dusty Noval – Last Girls’ Trip
Project: Lifelong friends Mary, Ilene and Lisa spend a week in a Rhode Island beach town where a game of Truth or Dare reveals their resentments, hidden desires and regrets, challenging their devotion and bond as they struggle toward an impossible ask and an unimaginable outcome.
Bio: Always a visual communicator, Dusty Noval spent the first of her career years as a single mom, juggling college, then working as an art director and sharing her knowledge as a professor and college administrator. As the administrative director of a theatre and film school, Dusty’s love of dramatic storytelling was ignited. Her first short play was accepted to The Sam French OOB Short Festival 2014 and with that began her journey as a storyteller. Her screenplays have placed in The Writer’s Digest Competition, Emerging Screenwriter’s Top 100, The Austin Film Festival, and The Screen Craft Sci-Fi & Fantasy Screenwriting Competition. In 2020, after graduating with her MFA in dramatic writing from Fairfield University, Dusty adapted her short play “Last Girls’ Trip” to a feature, filmed and directed it and is currently overseeing its post-production. She is currently rewriting her first novel, Same Stars Different Sky. Dusty teaches creative writing courses as an adjunct professor. She lives in the historic artist’s community of Silvermine Connecticut with her husband Ray and their pitmix rescue Piper.
Gabrielle Rosson – Self Talk
Project: Anger, Grief, Disgust and Fear are embodied by four strangers whose lives intersect. Self Talk explores the inner monologues that impact our every day lives.
Bio: Gabrielle Rosson is a writer, director, and producer living and working on Cape
Cod, MA. By day she is the news director and news anchor for Cape Media News,
a hyper-local newscast that airs weekly on Comcast 99, Facebook, and Youtube;
and by night she works on short films for future productions in a variety of
capacities. She is most known for writing and directing Get Up Eight, Salvation,
and Dessert, but she has also produced, done production design and management,
and acted on-screen in a number of other productions throughout New England. Gabrielle is a renaissance woman who pulls from a variety of influences. She believes that writing and filmmaking are therapeutic art forms that can be used to empower as much as they are used to entertain. When she’s not making art, she’s traveling and taking in new sights and sounds with her children, Juliette and Christian.
To attend the announcement of the 3rd Annual New England Film Star Award, reserve your tickets to the WIFVNE annual meeting on December 1 at WGBH Boston.
