AVFilm of Cloverdale will be presenting their inaugural Impact Award to “celebrate the future of film” to Erica Milsom, a San Francisco animator whose career with Pixar produced several award-winning films.
Among them is the computer-animated short, Loop, the story of two kids adrift on a lake—one of them autistic, the other talkative—and their efforts to communicate so they can rescue themselves from their predicament.
Milsom will receive the 2022 Impact Award on Saturday, Oct. 22, in an awards’ presentation at Rodney Strong Vineyards in Healdsburg, from 4 to 8pm. Her groundbreaking nine-minute film, Loop, along with others in the SparkShorts series, is available on Disney+.
As documentary director at Pixar, Milsom created hundreds of films about the creative process for the Inside Pixar video series. In 2022, she left this role to found her own animation studio, the results of which are eagerly awaited.
She directed her first feature in 2014, Snow Day, which IMDB describes as a “documentary film about life, death, and skiing that follows a group of senior citizens on their weekly ski trip in the Colorado Rockies.” Milsom screened the film to an AVFilm audience in 2016 and conducted a Q and A with local students.
Since then, Milsom has continued to support AVFilm’s educational work and help connect the local nonprofit with filmmakers across the Bay.
“For her commitment to AVFilm, intentionality around lifting marginalized voices, and for using her platform to center women in the film industry, Milsom is the recipient of the 2022 Impact Award,” AVFilm said in a release.
In addition to the honor for Milsom, student filmmaker Amelia Durbin will receive an award for her first film, Sito, a short documentary named after her Syrian grandmother about her family’s cultural connection through food. She made the film while participating in AVFilm’s after-school filmmaking camp at Corazón Healdsburg.
Since its inception in 2015, AVFilm has taught filmmaking fundamentals at camps for middle and high schoolers and to lifelong learners. Last year, the organization brought a teaching artist to a high school English classroom in Cloverdale so that 22 students could create their own documentaries from concept to final edit. This year, they expanded that program to seven Sonoma County schools.
Tickets for the 2022 Impact Awards are $250 each, or tables for eight can be purchased for $2,000. In addition to the awards’ presentations and conversation with Milsom, tickets include hors d’oeuvres from Chef Derek Corsino and the Healdsburg High culinary program; dinner from Petaluma’s new Puerto Rican restaurant, Sol Food; and wines from host Rodney Strong Vineyards. Live music will be performed by Sabor de mi Cuba.
A fund-raising auction of “community experiences inspired by film” is also being developed. Funds raised at the Impact Awards will enable AVFilm to pay their teaching artists a living wage, fill future classrooms with the equipment student filmmakers need and expand the organization’s reach.
For more information or to purchase tickets, visit avfilmpresents.org/impact-awards.
