Run Woman Run

Production Designer

2021

Run Woman Run is a magical anti-rom com about Beck, a bereaved single mom who has lost her passion for life and for her Mohawk language after the death of her mom. Now Beck lives for donuts in her bathrobe where she even drives to the mailbox. Beck’s lifestyle lands her in the hospital where she wakes from a diabetic coma to see she has conjured the ghost of a legendary Six Nations marathon runner. Instead of rallying to take charge of her life, Beck runs away from her problems, alienating her family. Alone and bereft, Beck has to win them back. She finally listens to her ghostly coach who goads her, makes fun of her, and ultimately inspires her to become a runner herself. Beck learns to run, but most importantly she learns to be grateful for her life. She honours the earth and her family with every run, leading her back to her calling: to learn her language.

World Premiere March 2021: Maoriland Film Festival, Otaki, New Zealand. US Premiere April 2021: Santa Barbara Film Festival. Official Selection: WorldFest Houston International Film Festival.

WINNER: WorldFest Houston Best Supporting Actor: Asivak Koostachin (Tom Longboat)

NOMINATED: WorldFest Houston Rising Star Award: Sladen Peltier (Eric)

Red Rover

Production Designer and First AD

2019

Shane is the Director, Co-Writer, and Co-Producer of this low budget Canadian feature film. The film stars Kristian Bruun, Cara Gee, Meghan Heffern, Morgan David Jones, Joshua Peace, Anna Hopkins, and Sugith Varughese. It was co-written and co-produced with Duane Murray. Michelle St. John was also a co-producer and production manager. Executive Producers were Mike MacMillian and Chad Williams.

The film was shot in the summer of 2017. Post ran through to October 2018, where online was completed by the talented team at Frank Digital.

The film was edited by Luke Higginson and the original score was composed by Anthony Wallace.

Rounding out the key crew was David Hannan as Production Designer; Carolee Custus as hair, make-up, and wardrobe; and John Reed Hryszkiewicz as grip/gaff/camera operator.

Finally it should be noted that the project was made possible by the generous support of The Ontario Arts Council, Toronto’s TIP Program, and the CMPA’s support.

For more, please check out the official film website:  www.RedRoverMovie.ca

Wenjack Heritage Minute

Production Designer

2016

About

The Breath was hired on to work with Historica Canada to make two Heritage Minutes. Director Shane Belcourt and Producer Michelle St. John worked closely with screenwriter Joseph Campbell to bring these challenging issues into one-minute education spots.

Synopsis

This “synopsis” is from a Vice review

A glimpse into the horrors enacted on Indigenous children at residential schools as recently as 1996, the emotional minute is narrated by Pearl Achneepineskum. She is a survivor of the system that deliberately sought to “kill the Indian in the child.” Through violence, sexual abuse, and whitewashing, children were taught to cauterize their Indigenous parts. But while Pearl lived through the horrific ordeal, her brother Chanie Wenjack did not. The new Heritage Minute opens on Wenjack’s attempt to escape his residential school in 1966 and ends with his tragic death on a railway track, not far from where he began. The video is raw, heartbreaking and not easy to watch. It will bring you to tears. And you should watch it over and over again. Because as hokey as those old videos were, this new Heritage Minute is not only devastatingly recent, it’s devastatingly real and more relevant to our present than any previous video, as iconic as they may have become.

Naskumituwin Heritage Minute

Production Designer

2016

About

The Breath was hired on to work with Historica Canada to make two Heritage Minutes. Director Shane Belcourt and Producer Michelle St. John worked closely with screenwriter Joseph Campbell to bring these challenging issues into one-minute education spots.

Synopsis

The making of Treaty 9 from the perspective of historical witness George Spence, an 18-year-old Cree hunter from Albany, James Bay. The 83rd Heritage Minute in Historica Canada’s collection.

URBAN NATIVE GIRL

Production Designer

2015-16

ABOUT

Urban Native Girl is a 13-part half-hour POV documentary series for APTN that will make it’s broadcast premiere in June 2016 (exact schedule details to come). After series co-creators Lisa Charleyboy and Shane Belcourt pitch the series at the Banff World Media Festival in 2012, they went on to a development deal with APTN, that eventually led to the series green light! Shooting took place in the Fall of 2015 in Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia with Shane Belcourt as Director and DP, Lisa as POV “host”, along with an all-aboriginal crew led by Production Manager and Associate Producer Michelle St. John. Urban Native Girl is a Jeremy Edwardes and Jim Compton Production, of Wabunganung Film Company Ltd.

LOGLINE

At a time when print media is on a sharp decline, Lisa Charleyboy, a beautiful and determined Tsilhqot’in entrepreneur, sets out to transform her small online blog – “Pop Culture with an Indigenous Twist” – into successful print magazine in the hopes of creating a world wide, recognizable brand that amplifies the voices of the Indigenous renaissance of our time.

Kaha:wi – the cycle of life

Production Designer

2014

This is a one-hour performance arts documentary that will air on APTN in 2014.  The film is directed by Shane Belcourt featuring Santee Smith, the acclaimed Mohawk dancer and choreographer of Kaha:wi : The Cycle of Life. A documentary dance journey through the spirit realm, into life, and the celebration of love and community.

Updates to come on screenings.

For all the latest and more info please check out the Facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/KahawiTheCycleOfLife

A COMMON EXPERIENCE

Production Designer

2013

A Common Experience is a short film that I had the honour of creating with Yvette Nolan, which is based on her play “Dear Mr. Buchwald.”  The film is a poetic reflection on what it means to be a child of a residential school survivor.  For Yvette the creative work began in reaction to filing her mother’s Residential School Common Experience Claim.  For me as a filmmaker it was about just scratching the surface of Yvette’s experience, her mothers experience, and the complexity of emotions and realties that are left in the wake of the Residential School system.  While my father wasn’t in Residential School, in fact our family way back wouldn’t enlist in the Treaty where they were in order to avoid having to send their kids to one of these schools, there are similarities in terms of not being allowed to speak the language in class, being bullied and beaten by teachers, etc.  I guess you could say, my connection to this film is that sense and struggle to understand and forgive and live with the effects of colonization as it plays out over many generations.  I hope more than anything that this is a film that honours Yvette and her mother, Helen Thundercloud.

I want to mention that the key collaborators on this were the usual suspects of Duane Murray (producer), David Hannan (production designer), and Jordan O’Connor (editor, sound, and score).  And I was thrilled to work with Daniel Grant (cinematographer) for the first time – a truly gifted artist.  And when you get a chance to see it, it was Lilia Greyeyes first experience acting … and she was stunning and brave.

And hey, this film would not have been possible if it were not for the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.  They came in and made this work and collaboration happen.

The film was selected by Telefilm Canada to screen in Cannes Film Festival Market in 2013. It has since screened at many festivals around the world including imagineNATIVE Film Festival, Whistler Film Festival, Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival, Skabmagovat (Finland), among others.

Visit the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ACommonExperience

Apikiwiyak

Production Designer

2013

About

Although the film works as a stand-alone short film, it was original conceived as a special presentation piece at the 2014 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. Since the festival was celebrating their 15th year they wanted to do something special as a dedication to “Storytellers”. From the 2014 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival program:

Experience cinema-based storytelling in a new way at this remarkable, not-to-be missed presentation.  In celebration of imagineNATIVE’s 15th anniversary, two pairs of artists – each comprising one author and one filmmaker – collaborated to create a “storyteller screening”: a screen-based video work that accompanies a live reading.  For each of the two presentations, the author will read a new short story written especially for this event as the filmmaker’s new video work plays simultaneously, creating a multimedia performance that transcends screen and stage. Legendary author, artist, and activist Maria Campbell shares a new story created in collaboration with Shane Belcourt, one of the leading filmmakers in Canadian Indigenous cinema. Their counterparts are Joseph Boyden, one of Canada’s true literary stars, who presents work with Terril Calder, a master of animation. Together these artists – each from a Metis or mixed culture – combine craft, transcend media and explore new territory to tell a story unlike any other.

Synopsis

Violence against Indigenous woman is something we’d all like to sweep under the rug … both in mainstream Canadian society and within Indigenous families ourselves.  It’s occurred for hundreds of years and is now ever present, and it is brutal and disgusting. Maria Campbell, an acclaimed Metis author from Saskatchewan, knows much about these sad realities in our communities.  In this work, Maria sets out to hold a mirror out for Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people to peer into the never-ending legacy of colonial violence.  In collaboration Shane Belcourt, the video is a series of heartbreaking vignettes, all wrapped around the imagery of a man in ceremony looking for hope and calling for the ancestors to help us all get back on the good road home.

TKARONTO

Production Designer and First AD

2007

About

In 2007 The Breath’s debut feature film, Tkaronto, made it’s world premiere at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto, Canada. As the Closing Night film it played to a sold out audience and quickly was sold to Kinosmith for distribution. Shortly thereafter it toured various films festivals picking up Directing Awards and glowing reviews for both the lead actors (and always a shout-out to Lorne Cardinal performance!). It was sold to Air Canada and SuperChannel, screened as part of the 150th Anniversary at Toronto’s City Hall, has been included in many Indigenous studies screenings, and was included in the TIFF Bell Lightbox’s Indigenous Cinema Retrospective.  Director Shane Belcourt’s favourite accolade is its inclusion in Thomas King’s international best-seller, Inconvenient Indian, wherein he mentions Tkaronto as part of a new empowered movement in Indigenous Cinema (as a good thing!).

While the film screened at both film festivals and during it’s limited theatrical release, it received numerous glowing reviews. However, it was the first review it received by Jason Anderson at Eye Weekly that set the tone for things to come:

“The quality of writer-director Shane Belcourt’s feature debut – named after our city’s original Mohawk name – is all the more remarkable when you consider that it was made in six months on a measly budget of $20,000. Based on Belcourt’s experience as the son of a Métis father, the movie portrays the crises of Jolene and Ray (Duane Murray), two thirty-somethings who can’t figure out a way to square up their urban lifestyles and material ambitions with what an elder (played by Lorne Cardinal) calls “blood memory.” But for all of Tkaronto‘s heavy themes, the film has a sense of lightness that makes it one of the year’s most appealing local indie features.”

Synopsis

Tkaronto is a reflective and provoking exploration of two Aboriginal 30-somethings, Ray and Jolene, who make an unexpected connection at the pinnacle of a common struggle: to stake claim to their urban aboriginal identity.

Ray Morin, A Métis writer, is in Tkaronto (the original Mohawk word for “Toronto”) to pitch his TV series, Indian Jones. This looks to be his big break. The only problem is Ray’s growing disdain for TV execs who are more motivated by ticking off the Aboriginal box and tapping into “hot” Aboriginal funding than they are genuinely interested in the project itself. Ray feels caught between a rock and a hard place as his non-aboriginal wife puts the pressure on for him to take the job.

Jolene Peltier, an Anishnabe painter, is in Tkaronto conducting interviews for a series of portraits on prominent Aboriginal people. When Elder Max Cardinal gives her an eagle feather and sweetgrass, it confirms her deep-seated feeling that she should walk a spiritual path. But can walking this path mean the end of her relationship with her husband who seems utterly disinterested in Jolene’s newfound spiritual calling?

For Ray and Jolene, home feels very far away. And having this chance meeting with each other only raises a difficult question: would their questions of identity be answered if they were together?