This is an archive of the moving-image projects I’ve worked on since the late 20th century.
You’ll find the movies along with some stories about how they came to be and the people who helped make them, and some other stuff that is creative in nature, but not moving-images.
Born and raised on Treaty 4 land in Regina, Saskatchewan Canada, I’ve spent the past few decades nurturing unflattering hairdos and occasionally making movies, usually on tiny budgets.
What I love about cinema is that any experience or curiosity or idea can lay the foundation for a film, and the language and tools to try and explore it. My moving-image projects includes short and feature-length dramas, broadcast documentaries, and some work on the more experimental side of things.
Growing up in Saskatchewan, filmmaking was not something I would have imagined doing. I enjoyed going to watch movies, but as a child and teenager I never saw Canadian films in movie theatres or on our two TV channels. Being a filmmaker in Saskatchewan would have seemed as plausible as being an astronaut in Saskatchewan.
In high school, my focus was on basketball and on saving money to travel outside Canada. For the first five years after high school, I worked in construction and in bars, and I traveled. I saw a lot of visual art, theatre, live music, and films. One day in London after a celebratory night out, my head was hurting too much to go see The Birthday Party, so I retreated to the darkness of a movie theatre and the dream world of Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander. Those were formative experiences.
In my early 20s, I started to frequent the RPL Film Theatre, which showed foreign language and independent films. There were also film series at the University of Regina that showed the kinds of movies that didn’t make it into the commercial theatres, and it was at one of those screenings that I met Marsha Herle, and through Marsha learned there was a film program at the University of Regina.
When I finally started university, I thought I might go into anthropology or journalism, but bit by bit, I started taking film classes and over time began to think I may have found a vocation. This coincided with a time when filmmaking in Canada was starting to achieve a higher profile with the films of Denys Arcand, Atom Egoyan, and Patricia Rozema receiving national and international attention.
When I finished my undergrad degree the Saskatchewan film industry was starting to make its first dramatic productions, and I worked on a couple of them but I soon realised that working in the film industry wasn’t the goal; the main focus was on getting my own films made.
I have a BFA in Film from the University of Regina, and an MFA in Film from Concordia University in Montreal. In 2003 I had the good fortune of becoming a faculty member in the Film program at the University of Regina.
