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Katelyn McCulloch built the showcase funny women on screen were missing
Shenanigans is one of the coolest female-led film events in North America, and filmmaker Katelyn McCulloch is building it right here in Halifax. After two sold out years across Halifax, LA, and Toronto, the event is back for its third Halifax edition on November 12.
It’s more of a night out than an industry event: ten short comedies made by over 100 women, a pink carpet experience for everyone and an after-party at The Economy Shoe Shop.
McCulloch started as an actor in theatre and circus and began writing during the pandemic. “I was 30. I hadn’t gone to film school,” she wrote this fall. Her first short, the golf comedy Mulligan, won Best Canadian Short at the Great Canadian Comedy Film Festival. Everybody’s Meg, the Bell Fibe TV1 series she made with Maddy Foley and Becky Swannick, has six Canadian Screen Award nominations.
Her comedy often got programmed between sombre dramas, in rooms that weren’t primed to laugh. When she finished Everybody’s Meg, she looked into renting a Cineplex. The minimum booking was three hours, and her show ran 90 minutes. “If I had screen time, why not share it?”
In female-driven comedy, she told Late Night Scrolling on last year’s carpet, “nobody was actually out there celebrating themselves. It was always this thing where it was almost apologetic.” That’s why the dress code is "extravaganza".
Her latest short, CARTGIRLS, made with Mary Austin, won Best Comedy at the Great Canadian Comedy Film Festival and will screen at this year's Shenanigans.
The first two years paired featured shorts with a season of Everybody’s Meg. This year it’s ten films, picked from about 60 submissions, and filmmakers don’t pay to submit. DOUGH MAN, from Halifax’s A+B Roll Films, played TIFF this year, and MOTHBALLS premiered at Sitges.
All the filmmakers are in the room, together with friends and fans. McCulloch says Halifax had “the highest booze sales for Cineplex” in 2024. After the films, everyone moves to The Economy Shoe Shop for snacks and drinks at the official afterparty.
