 | "Commedia Fantasia,” a film by Gina Lori Riley Dance Enterprises, has won a Gold Award in the Performance Arts-Dance, Drama, Music category at the prestigious Worldfest 2002, Houston International Film Festival in Texas. ~
Dramatic Art instructor Gina Lori Riley is the artistic director of the company.
Worldfest (http://www.worldfest.org) is one of the largest international film festivals in the United States with some 25,000 people attending and more than 4,300 films entered in 200 categories. (50 in Performance Arts-Dance, Drama, Music)
GOLD TEAM: Nicholas Shields, Gina Lori Riley and Peter Freele celebrate award amid stills from their film.
“We were told in advance that we would be receiving an award. So, my husband, Robert, and I went to the award ceremony expecting maybe a bronze. So when the bronze awards were called, and they didn’t call our name, we thought maybe they left us out. Later, when they announced us for the gold and that we were from Windsor, Canada, we couldn’t believe it, and all the other Canadians who were there cheered for us,” Gina says. “And they described our film as being unique, and this made us all the more pleased.”
The idea began with Gina, who was executive producer. Co-producers and co-directors were Peter Freele, producer in the Media Production Unit of the Centre for Flexible Learning, and Nick Shields, director of the Media for a Change production unit in Communications Studies at the University of Windsor. The film was shot in six Windsor locations, ranging from the barren gravel piles at Coco Group of Companies to the lush environments of Memorial Park and Ojibway Nature Reserve, to the industrial confines of the Ford Motor of Canada-Windsor Casting Plant and Windsor Engine Plant.
“I had great support from the university right from the start,” says Gina. “President Ross Paul and Diana Mady Kelly of the School of Dramatic Art provided space to rehearse. More than 40 performing, visual, media and design artists were involved, including some university faculty, staff and students. I can’t thank the university enough. I am especially indebted to the creative efforts and perseverance of Peter and Nicholas whose talent enabled me to bring forward my idea. We could not have done the project without them.”
Gina describes the film, which premiered in Windsor in 2000, as a fantastical odyssey of the human condition with three heroes representing humankind in all time. At each site is a tribe that represents an aspect of the human condition in the time represented by the site. The message is presented through movement, masks, music and costumes.
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