Film created by local teenagers to launch Snakebite festival
Penticton’s Snakebite Film Festival will be opening Sept. 22 with a featurelength film created by local teenagers.
The Darlings, directed by Maddison Tebbutt and featuring lead actor Ivy Allen, premiered this spring in Penticton, and has gone on to be an official film selection at 11 international film festivals.
It has won various awards including Best Production Design and Best No Budget film at the Gold Movie Awards (London, England); Best Student Screen Play and Best Student Film at the European Cinematography Awards (Warsaw, Poland); and Best Costume Design at the Hollywood International Moving Pictures Film Festival.
A late 1800s thriller, The Darlings tells the story of The Chattoway family, which is torn apart when the youngest daughter mysteriously dies.
“It all started with a picnic and an idea for a short film and kind of spiralled from there,” says Tebbutt, 19, who directed, edited and produced the film under the artistic name, Percival M Rye.
The teenagers, who are also cousins, completed the film entirely on their own, from applying for grants and writing the screen play to hiring actors and filming.
“It was pretty crazy, trying to go to school, get homework done, and be up until 2 a.m. filming,”” says Allen, 16.
“There were many times when we’d be driving home late at night, wondering if we could really pull this off.”
Over two months, the girls prepped and shot the film at various locations from Rock Creek to Kelowna, including on the Kettle Valley Steam Railway train, the Leir House, Naramata Heritage Inn and Hidden Chapel Winery. After shooting, Tebbutt spent seven months editing the film, all while juggling school work at UBC Okanagan.
Although The Darlings is the cousins’ first feature film, they have created many short films together.
With these previous films, Allen and Tebbutt have won several provincial Zoom Fest awards, the 48-hour Film Challenge for the Kelowna Centre for Arts and Technology and the CBC Vancouver Sun Video Awards.
They have started a film production company called Domino Masquerade Studios, and are currently working on a second feature-length film. View The Darlings 2017 trailer on YouTube, or on their website, www.dominomasquerade.com. Tickets for the Snakebite Film Festival screening of The Darlings, Sept 22 at 6 p.m. at Penticton Landmark Cinemas, can be purchased as part of the Arts Rising Festival at EventBrite Penticton.