The 2022 Impact Awards
Funding the Educational Programs of AVFilm
TICKETS START AT $250
Join us in your finest wine-country casual as we kick off the evening with distinctive wines from our host, Rodney Strong Vineyards, and hors d’oeuvres from the Healdsburg High culinary program. Take in the awards while tucking into a sumptuous spread of Sol Food’s award-winning Puerto Rican fare. Fund the educational future of AVFilm, then dance into the night with the lush rhythms of Sabor de mi Cuba.
In lieu of an auction, our team is assembling a unique collection of buy-in community experiences inspired by film that will take place throughout the year. All proceeds will support AVFilm’s educational programs.
October 22, 2022 | 4PM-8PM
The event starts at 4pm for cocktails; dinner from Sol Food starts at 4:45pm, and the program starts promptly at 5pm. Guests will be dancing by 6:45pm.
On Saturday, October 22, 2022, at Rodney Strong Vineyards, we celebrated four extraordinary people with the following recognition:
2022 Impact Award: Erica Milsom
Honors a luminary in the film and media industry who exhibits exemplary professional grit and personal integrity.
2022 Student Filmmaker Award & Scholarship: Amelia Dublin
Recognizes an AVFilm student, nominated by their instructors, who demonstrates AVFilm’s core values.
2022 Jackie Hoffner Heart & Hope Award: Wendy Conner
Celebrates a community member who reflects these key attributes: Heart, Passion, Social or Community Impact, and Optimism.
Special citation for the impact of his historical appointment to Healdsburg City Council: Ozzy Jimenez
About the Awards
The Impact Awards is a celebration of the future of film in our community. Each year, we nominate, review, and vet professional and budding new filmmakers, as well as members of our local community, who embody, represent, and reflect our core values to the greater world.
Impact Award
Honors a luminary in the film and media industry who exhibits exemplary professional grit and personal integrity.
Student Filmmaker Award & Scholarship
Recognizes an AVFilm student, nominated by their instructors, who demonstrates AVFilm's core values.
Jackie Hoffner Heart & Hope Award
Celebrates a community member who reflects these key attributes: Heart, Passion, Social or Community Impact, and Optimism.
Nominations for the Jackie Hoffner Heart & Hope Award are open now through September 16th! To make a nomination, click here.
WHAT YOUR DOLLARS FUND
It’s time to celebrate the explosive growth of our educational programming at AVFilm. Last year, we 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, that pilot program is expanding into seven classrooms for 154 students all across Sonoma County. Additionally, we’re also teaching in after-school centers in partnership with community groups.
Your support enables us to pay our teaching artists a living wage, fill our future classrooms with the equipment student filmmakers need, and propels our reach to go even further.
WHERE WE WORK:
SONOMA COUNTY
Cloverdale High School
Healdsburg Junior High School
Healdsburg High School
Jack London Elementary School
Olivet Elementary School
Schaefer Elementary School
Windsor High School
WHAT WE DO:
STANDARDS-BASED CLASSES
In school:
Integrated Filmmaking Intensive
AV Carts
Video skills training
After school:
Cinema Arts & Lecture
Future Filmmakers Program
Student Film Competition in AVFest
Summer Film Camp
WHO WE ARE WORKING WITH:
COMMUNITY PARTNERS
California Arts Council
CARE Foundation
Cloverdale Performing Arts Center
Corazón Healdsburg
Creative Sonoma
La Familia Sana
La Luz
National Endowment for the Arts
Sonoma Community Center
Sonoma County Vintners Foundation
Sonoma County Public Library
Sonoma County Office of Education
2022 Impact Award Winners
Impact Award Winner Erica Milsom
Erica Milsom sparked her relationship with AVFilm in March of 2016. Introduced to the organization by late founding Board Member, Adam Burke, Erica screened her first feature film, SNOW DAY, for an AVFilm audience. She then conducted a talk-back with local students. Since then, Erica continued to support AVFilm's educational work and connected the organization with filmmakers across the Bay Area. For her commitment to AVFilm, intentionality around lifting marginalized voices, and for using her platform to center women in the film industry, Erica Milsom is the recipient of the 2022 Impact Award.
Erica Milsom is a writer, director, and, most recently, founder of Ryzo Animation Studios. Erica spent the majority of her film career at Pixar Animation Studios. As Documentary Director, she created hundreds of films about the creative process that featured in-depth conversations with all of Pixar’s greatest filmmakers. From FINDING NEMO to TURNING RED and every film in between, she explored what made the films hard, what made them powerful, and where their emotional resonance originated. In 2018, Erica received the rare opportunity to direct under the Pixar SparkShorts program, which resulted in the groundbreaking short film LOOP. When Disney+ came about, Erica was a crucial player in creating a strategy and approach to the studio’s unscripted programming. First, she served as co-showrunner for the Emmy Award Nominated series “Inside Pixar” and then directed “Embrace the Panda,” a Documentary that playfully explored the lives and work of the first all-women leadership team. In addition to her ‘day job’ Erica directed the emotional short SO MUCH YELLOW and the heartfelt documentary SNOW DAY; LIFE, DEATH, AND SKIING. Before her work as a filmmaker, Erica worked in non-formal education in San Francisco, Oakland, The Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Nepal.
Milsom currently resides in Richmond, CA.
Student Filmmaker Award & Scholarship Winner Amelia Dublin
Amelia Dublin might be new to filmmaking, but her artwork is profound. In her film, SITO, Amelia tenderly captured her Middle Eastern family's cultural connection through food. Amelia is the recipient of the 2022 Student Filmmaker Award & Scholarship for her kindness, creativity, and enthusiasm.
Amelia is a 16-year-old high school junior and created her first film in the spring of 2022. She and her brother, Jasper, attended the Future Filmmakers Program, hosted by the Healdsburg Community Center and Corazón.
While Amelia grew up in the city of Seattle, she spent all her weekends and summers at the farms where her mom worked. Seeing how food was grown and distributed taught her how sustainable agriculture can make an impact on the local food system.
Jackie Hoffner Heart & Hope Award
Wendy also worked extensively with the Full Circle Cinema program via AVFilm to integrate media arts skills training into her English classes. An early adopter of this program, she coached AVFilm staff and her students to connect her curriculum with the outside skills teaching. Based on the reviews from her students, the AVFilm program has developed into a standards-based platform widely sought by other educators throughout Sonoma and Lake Counties.
During the pandemic shutdown, Wendy actively made space for students to turn on their cameras while distance learning. She normalized many challenging home situations with empathy and encouraged her students to prioritize their education no matter the circumstances. For these and many, many other reasons brought forth by her nominators, Wendy is 2022 Jackie Hoffner Heart & Hope Award recipient.
Guest of Honor: Healdsburg Mayor Ozzy Jimenez
Thank you to our sponsors
Hillary & Mike Kambour Dianne & Mark Vernon
