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The Filmmakers
Velcrow Ripper
Director, Writer, Cinematographer, Sound Designer
Multiple award-winning documentary filmmaker, writer and sound designer, Velcrow Ripper garnered international attention with his feature-length doc ScaredSacred (www.scaredsacred.org) winner of nine major awards, including the 2005 Best Documentary Genie Award (the Canadian Academy Awards) as well as a Special Jury Prize at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival. It was selected as one of Canada’s Top Ten films of 2004.
Ripper has explored some of the most important issues of our time. His twenty-eight films and videos include: In the Company of Fear, a documentary on non-violent resistance to the ‘dirty war’ in Colombia; the Golden Gate Award winning doc Open Season, about bear hunters and the activists who protest the hunt; and the multiple award-winning feature documentary, Bones of the Forest examining the struggle to save the ancient forests of British Columbia (Best of the Festival - Hot Docs, 1996 Genie award for Best Feature Doc).
In sound design, he has garnered awards on the feature docs The Corporation, (www.thecorporation.com) and A Place Called Chiapas, and was the sound designer on the multiple award-winning feature film Eve and the Fire Horse that won a Special Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. He has also done sound work for Atom Egoyan and Bruce Macdonald.
Ripper is a graduate of Concordia University, and was a founder of the Gulf Island Film and Television School (GIFTS). While in high school Gibsons, BC, he co-founded a community television station which, to this day, is still operated by students. He made his first documentary Iran the Crisis, at the age of 16. In 1995 he created the first artist driven web project at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and has served as a film instructor at the prestigious Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, as well as the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto.
He is currently developing the feature documentaries Evolve Dissolve: Another World is Here and Redvolution: Dare to Disturb the Universe.
“If anyone can find the silver lining in a mushroom cloud, it is this astounding, thoughtful filmmaker.”
- The National Post
“Compusively original.”
-Atom Egoyan
Cher Hawrysh
Producer
Cher Hawrysh is one of Canada’s emerging producers. A graduate of the prestigious Canadian Film Centre, Hawrysh has worked on hundreds of hours of programming in Canada, Africa, Britain and the U.S.
Hawrysh began her career in broadcast news, working with Canada’s number one newscast Global National, and with the CTV and CHUM networks. Moving into independent production, she worked with renowned production company The May Street Group on award-winning television including the UK/Canada MOW A Matter of Judgment and the acclaimed documentaries, Mama June: A Different Perspective on AIDS and To Free the Slaves as well as the travel series The Best Places to Kiss and a performing arts documentary based on author PK Page’s story, Unless the Eye Catch Fire.
In 2003, Hawrysh worked with Peabody Award winning producer Mark Carliner, and best-selling author Stephen King on a 13-part series produced by Sony Pictures Television, for ABC, called Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital.
Hawrysh first paired up with Velcrow Ripper in 2004 to release his Genie Award winning documentary ScaredSacred in Canada.
Her next projects include the comedies Leaving Dora and Tandoori Slice in development with the Canadian Film Centre’s Feature Film Project, and the feature documentaries Evolve Dissolve: Another World is Here, and Redvolution: Dare to Disturb the Universe.
Gerry Flahive
Producer for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB)
Gerry Flahive has produced more than 40 NFB films including the Genie Award-winning Just Watch Me: Trudeau and the ‘70s Generation; McLuhan’s Wake; The Next Big Thing; and the cult hit Project Grizzly, which he executive produced. In 2004, he produced the award-winning film It’s a Girl’s World, a documentary about social bullying among girls which became the top selling NFB DVD in 2005.
His recent projects include producing the award-winning House Calls, Cricket and The Meaning of Life, This Beggar’s Description and co-producing the critically acclaimed films Souvenir of Canada, and Manufactured Landscapes. Currently, he is producing the NFB Filmmaker-in-Residence, an experimental community-based alternative model of media making that partners media with medicine. In addition, Flahive is co-producing The Dark Years, a three-part history of the Great Depression in Canada, and Paris 1919, a feature-length film based on the book by Margaret MacMillan.
In addition to producing films, Flahive is a freelance humorist and his work has appeared in Time Magazine, The New York Times and is a regular contributor to The Globe and Mail.
Silva Basmajian
Executive Producer for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB)
Since 1976, Silva Basmajian’s more than 65 NFB films have garnered numerous awards, with many premiering at more than 200 international festivals including Berlin, Toronto and Sundance. As Executive Producer of the NFB Ontario Centre, Ms. Basmajian oversees English-language production in the province, fostering partnerships among broadcasters and other industry leaders. Since her appointment in 2004, she has explored innovative ways to tell Canadian and international stories, and championed innovative projects like the ground-breaking NFB Filmmaker-in-Residence at St. Michael’s Hospital and North America’s first interactive dramatic feature film, Late Fragment, co-produced with the Canadian Film Centre. Recently, Basmajian co-produced the critically acclaimed Triage: Dr. James Orbinski’s Humanitarian Dilemma, and is executive producer for Deepa Mehta’s new feature drama Heaven on Earth, the 2008 Hot Docs award-winning FLicKeR; Tiger Spirit and the 2007 Hot Docs award-winning Bodybuilder and I.
Mark Achbar
Executive Producer
Award-winning filmmaker, Mark Achbar’s career spans 30 years. During that time he co-produced and co-directed the two most the most recognized Canadian feature documentaries: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media and The Corporation.
In addition to Fierce Light, Achbar is Executive Producer, with Betsy Carson, on the feature documentaries; Denis Delestrac’s The Cassandra Syndrome; Kevin McMahon’s Waterlife; and Mathieu Roy’s A Short History of Progress. Achbar and Carson are also supporting six projects in development: Katherine Dodds’s I, Fembot; Barbara Mainguy’s Modern Madness; Oliver Hockenhull’s The Perfect Pill; Jill Sharpe’s Sex, Breath and Death; Ann Marie Slater’s and Sarah Butterfield’s The Curiosity Lab; and Fredrik Gertten’s Bananas!.
Betsy Carson
Executive Producer
Carson has more than 18 years experience in documentary film and television. Among her producing credits are several feature docs including Nettie Wild’s 2004 Genie Award winning doc film, FIX: The Story of an Addicted City, 1998 Genie Award winner A Place Called Chiapas, Gary Marcuse’s Nuclear Dynamite, and The Mind of A Child, Linda Ohama’s Obaachan’s Garden and Arlene Ami’s Say I Do.
In addition to numerous documentaries she has produced she was associate producer for the popular television series, Champions of the Wild. She also recently produced and directed, with fellow filmmaker Dan Schlanger, the documentary Evelyn Hart, about the life of the acclaimed ballerina for CBC Television. Carson has been member of the Documentary Organization of Canada since 1996, and currently holds the position of Vice-Chair.