'It's a dream': Halifax-based filmmaker looks forward to showcasing new short film at Atlantic Int'l Film Festival

The Atlantic International Film Festival (AIFF) is getting ready to raise the curtain for another year of exciting, inspiring and thought-provoking movies.

The festival, which is celebrating its 44th year, started as a small grassroots operation in St. John’s, N.L. in 1981, before relocating to Halifax the following year.

Halifax-based filmmaker and director Andrea Dorfman is no stranger to the festival and is returning this year with her animated short film called “Hairy Legs.”

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Dorfman’s piece documents a 13-year-old girl’s lifechanging act of rebellion on the road to womanhood and feminism.

“‘Hairy Legs’ is about that first time as a girl you are told you have to do something, in this case, shaving your legs,” said Dorfman during an interview on CTV Morning Live Monday.

“And it goes horribly awry and things don’t go as planned let’s just say that… and in that gap of things not working out, I started thinking about, ‘Well, why do we even do this?’”

An image from Andrea Dorfman's short film "Hairy Legs" is seen. (Source: Vimeo NFB/ Marketing)

Dorfman says she considers “Hairy Legs” her first feminist act.

“I think as a young woman, we’re told to do so many different things and it just seems society or conditioning, or ‘You just have to,’ but there isn’t really a good reason.”

As far as creating the film’s animation, Dorfman believes it’s something anyone can do.

“So, there’s nothing in this film that I couldn’t teach you how to do in a day,” she said. “It’s very handmade, it’s all paper, pen, ink, paints, pushing little pieces of cutout papers around. Everything is done in, I guess eight frames to 12 frames-per-second, so every time you see something move, I’m just moving it a tiny little bit.”

She says when it comes down to it, creating an animated piece is very much DIY.

“It’s really handmade, it’s not computer-generated. There are layers, which I put together in the computer… but this is something that’s really accessible and I became an animator because as a live action or feature filmmaker, it was taking so much time to raise money and the films themselves took so much time to create that I just wanted something fast and dirty.”

An image from Andrea Dorfman's short film "Hairy Legs" is seen. (Source: Vimeo NFB/ Marketing)

As far as how Dorfman learned how to create animation, she said it came down to online tutorials.

“Truth be told, this film was made over about four years, so that does sound like a long time. That being said, I stopped halfway through and made a whole other film. I tend to work on different projects at the same time and one will go to the back burner and that’s the beauty of working for yourself. You can work on your own time.”

Dorfman’s first film showcased at the AIFF was in 1997.

“It’s a dream… The film festival is amazing. There’s an incredible group of people who work there and volunteers who make it happen,” she said.

The Atlantic International Film Festival takes place between Sept. 11 and Sept. 18.

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