2008 is off to a great start for alums! This year’s Kick Start recipients include a number of VFSers. Kick Start, a program supported by the Directors Guild of Canada and BC Film, helps emerging filmmakers make festival-quality calling card films. Recipients receive $20,000 in cash as well as post-production assistance.

This year’s winners include Jason Goode, who took a producing program at VFS; Kelly-Ruth Mercier, a recent instructor in the Writing program; and Eric Maran (on right in the photo) and his producer, Rob Fernuk, both Film Production grads. Eric’s film, Fragile, is about a woman who enters the underworld of black market human organ trafficking. The script is a short adaptation from Eric’s own feature screenplay of the same name, which has been recognized by a number of major contests: it was a finalist in 2007′s Scriptapalooza contest, won Grand Prize in 2006′s Script P.I.M.P. contest, and perhaps most impressively, was a semi-finalist in the mother of all writing contests — the Nicholls.

On receiving the award, Eric says, “Independent filmmaking is incredibly difficult in Canada. To have the DGC select our project for this year’s Kick Start Program is really exciting. It’s validation for the years of hard work I’ve put into my own projects and encouragement for the years ahead. It’s inspiring.”

Check out this interview with Eric at 2007′s AFI Dallas Film Festival, where he premiered his first short film Ashes Fall.