WE MADE IT! 

The Delta Venus team is so insanely excited that we reached our fundraising goal with 1 day left to spare! We've had such an outpouring of generous support and feel so high on life. We're making this movie, guys!

We are especially excited about welcoming 3 executive producers on board; OPC production, Someplace Nice, and Eskimo. Three huge pieces of the puzzle came together with their support!

However, since our goal was modest and we have a little more than 24 hours to spare, we are setting our new STRETCH GOAL to $17,500. This will help us submit more widely to film festivals, which require submission fees, and will afford us more funds for music licenses and a professional sound mix.

Help us make our stretch goal! In microbudget filmmaking every dollar goes a very long way, so if you have $1, $5, or $10 dollars, or can share us on Facebook or Twitter, we'd really appreciate your support!

LOVE AND THANKS,

Sofia, Karen, Nicole & Kristin

DELTA VENUS  has gestated over the last three years as a discussion between its collaborators, Sofia Banzhaf, Nicole Dorsey, Karen Harnisch and Kristin LaPensee, equal parts creative and political. All four directors serve as co-writers, co-producers, co-cinematographers and co-lead actors.

Throughout our lives we've watched narratives featuring young female characters  in contemporary North American cities play familiar roles in movies and television. 

With Delta Venus, we wanted to be the sole creators behind our feature film. We wanted to co-direct so that our conversations (and yes, even arguments) became central to the storytelling project. Our production model allows us to retain complete control of the gaze of the camera, which subjectifies (and objectifies) each of our characters. We hope the effect of this unique process is a film that voices female experiences on screen in ways we haven't seen before. 

As women born in the mid-to-late eighties, we are highly aware of the tropes that have become synonymous with our generation: ubiquity of social media, recreational abuse of prescription and hard drugs, a prevalence of mood disorders, to name a few examples, are all addressed in Delta Venus. We wanted to veer from the characterization of the “Millenial” as affectless and entitled; instead striving to trace and trouble the social origins underlying these stereotypes.

The really exciting thing is that we have shot 90% of our scenes and are in the midst of assembling the edit! We’re working with brilliant editor Ajla Odobasic (The Waiting Room, How Heavy This Hammer, Tower) towards our fine cut, but have hit a wall in which the hard costs of post-production – editing, sound design and mix, colour correction, delivery – are too much for us to bear individually. 

We really need your help!

Over the next month, we hope to raise $15,000 in finishing funds for the film. This money wlll be used as follows:

$6,000 – Payment for our editor, so she can work on a full-time basis until the cut is finished

$3,250 – Post-production sound design & mix

$2,750 – Film scoring and music licenses

$1,750 – Colour correction

$500 – Master for festival screenings

$750 – Hard overhead costs (perk creation and delivery, crowdfunding fees)

Once the film is complete in the fall of 2016, we’ll submit it to a wide range of film festivals around the world and will hold an exclusive screening for cast, crew, and Indiegogo supporters here in Toronto.

WHO WE ARE

SOFIA BANZHAF

Sofia Banzhaf is a writer, actress, and filmmaker. She is the author of Pony Castle for which she received the Metatron Prize for Rising Authors. Pony Castle was handpicked by Amazon to become a Kindle Single in November 2015. Her most recent screen credits include Bitten, Closet Monster, and Degrassi: Next Class. She is developing an original half-hour series with collaborator Nicole Dorsey and JASH (Sarah Silverman/Michael Cera).

NICOLE DORSEY

Nicole Dorsey is a LA-based commercial and narrative film director. Her work has screened internationally, garnering awards within the United States and Canada; including the Irving Avrich Award for Emerging Director at TIFF.  Nicole is currently developing the feature film Black Conflux, which took part in the prestigious Women in the Director’s Chair Story Program. Her next short, Arlo Alone will be shot in the summer of 2016 with funding from Bravo!FACT. Nicole is developing an original half hour series with collaborator Sofia Banzhaf and JASH (Sarah Silverman/Michael Cera).

KAREN HARNISCH

Karen has brought to life several award winning shorts and two features, beginning with Calvin Thomas and Yonah Lewis’ The Oxbow Cure. Most recently she produced Andrew Cividino’s Sleeping Giant, which premiered at Critics’ Week in Cannes, won the Best Canadian First Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015 and was nominated for four Canadian Screen Awards including Best Picture. Karen was recently profiled by TIFF as one member of an emerging movement of DIY filmmakers in Toronto. She is an alumna of the TIFF Studio Producer Incubator and Ryerson’s School of Image Arts.

KRISTIN LAPENSÉE

Kristin is a wardrobe stylist and visual artist. Since the inception of Delta Venus Kristin has continued to explore film as an artistic medium, co-writing and directing as well as starring in a short horror film titled Dollface (which will be released summer 2016). She is currently working on a mixed media series involving model scale sets and Barbie dolls in which she explores the idea of femininity being a "toy" both beautiful and absurd, and the ways in which women have found joy in playing with it.