Ellyn Cardon, a senior undergraduate at Brigham Young University, is the winner of this year’s Young Filmmaker Contest for her entry, Mrs. Bennet’s Plan. Both Ellyn (above) and her mother, Dana (below) — the inspiration for Mrs. Bennet in the short film — attended JASNA Southwest’s December meeting at Sony, where the winning entry had its world premiere.
Ellyn intends to pursue a master’s degree in ethnographic filmmaking, which she says is appropriate since this film is practically an ethnography of her life. This film is inspired by her mother, who has four unmarried children of her own and at one point or another has said something to inspire the content of each scene in the film. More importantly, Ellyn’s mother has motivated her to be the kind of person that makes things happen, and to bring concepts from the world of ideas into concrete reality. Ellyn adds that the film is designed to remind us that Jane Austen wrote characters who are real and understandable, no matter what century we live in. We all know a Mrs. Bennet, and we love her for who she is.
