In the midst of a major life transition, filmmaker Tess Girard visits a local doomsday shelter which forces her to reckon with impermanence and the extreme measures we take to avoid the inevitable.
Prison Farm shows what daily life is like on the farms. Through conversations with the inmates, the film shows how their work is part of a unique rehabilitation process. By following the inmates’ journeys, the film highlights important issues around incarceration, shattering stereotypes of offenders and questioning the need for a punitive system.
Canada The Good?
5 mins
Commissioned by Big Cedar Films and CBC
Through Simon Anholt's work on The Good Country Index, Canada The Good? explores Canada's reputation as a good country and whether or not it's really true.
Official Selection of Hot Docs 2017
Co-directed with Ryan J Noth
Produced by Fifth Town Films
National Film Board of Canada, Documentary Channel
As the Crow Flies follows a group of the top young Royal Canadian Air Cadets as they undergo seven weeks at an elite flight-training camp to get their pilot’s license, which normally takes six to eight months. Casting an especially affectionate eye on her female subjects, filmmaker Tess Girard—herself a graduate of the program—creates a unique and intimate portrait of an extraordinary, yet also very recognizable, group of 17-year-olds as they come of age.
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In the frigid isolation of winter an elderly man braves the elements to hew his cord of wood with nothing but an axe and a wheelbarrow. What first appears as a landscape study soon becomes an elegy for nature's sacrifice to fuel man's existence, in this lyrical documentary.
Official Selection of the Toronto International Film Festival 2012
Canada's Top Ten 2012
"A Simple Rhythm" is a philosophical exploration about rhythm and synchronization. Utilizing recorded conversations with interview subjects including Mathematical Theorist Steven H. Strogatz (Cornell University), Roger D. Nelson (Director of the Global Consciousness Project, Princeton University) and Juno Award winning musician Charles Spearin (The Happiness Project, Broken Social Scene, Do Make Say Think), the film connects their diverging disciplines through one topic; our unconscious tendency to keep in step.
Told through a unique cinematic perspective and a densely layered soundscape, the filmmaker roots theoretical and academic topics with metaphoric images of the every day.
52 mins
A mining company has promised to create opportunities for the remote Webequie First Nation. Through the eyes of three youths facing an uncertain future, this observational yet expansive documentary shows the struggles — and hopes — of a community confronting challenges that many Canadians will never experience.
Commissioned by the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto for their 30th Anniversary
Shot in Iceland on Super 8 mm film.
A filmmaker’s exploration of all things fleeting. Told through a personal story, Benediction is a filmmaker's last attempt to pay homage to those things left and leaving.
Toronto International Film Festival 2005, 2006 Worldwide Short Film Festival, 2007 Images Film Festival, 2006 San Francisco International Film Festival, Le Festival Des Films Du Monde 2005
Winner, Norman McLaren Award for Best Production @ Le Festival Des Films Du Monde 2005
Winner, Special Jury Citation @ the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival Student Film Showcase
Winner, Kodak Award for Best Cinematography @ the 2006 Worldwide Short Film Festival