Creative Team Biographies

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Director, Writer, Producer:  Gary Marcuse

CBC Television Programming Executive (2004-2008):  Liaison for the CBC documentary unit in charge of regional development and local documentary production, CBC Vancouver

Independent production:  Writer, director, producer for Face to Face Media: The Mind of a Child, (Gemini Canada Award), Nuclear Dynamite (Gemini, Beijing Golden Dragon, and 12 international awards),   ARKTIKA:  the Russian Dream that Failed. 

Writer and director: Champions of the Wild (Great Sea Turtles, Jaguars and Siberian Tigers episodes), and The Search for Women Warriors for the series Ancient Clues for Omni Productions.

Executive Producer for the feature documentary FIX: The Story of an Addicted City by Canada Wild Productions (Nettie Wild, Director)

Industry Service: Past National Chair, Documentary Organization of Canada,  Founding member, Vancouver Branch of the Documentary Organization of Canada.  Past President and national executive, Writer’s Guild of Canada.  

Selected awards: Genie, Beijing Golden Dragon, Gemini, Gemini Canada, Columbus, New York, Chicago, Houston, Planet in Focus

 

Producer/ Executive Producer: Betsy Carson

Betsy is a producer/ director with over  20 years experience in documentary film and television.  She has produced the feature docs of Nettie Wild  (FIX: The Story of an Addicted City, A Place Called Chiapas, Blockade,  Bevel Up) throughout that time, and has also collaborated for the entire 20 years with filmmakers Gary Marcuse (Nuclear Dynamite, Arktika) and Hugh Brody  (The Meaning of Life, Time Immemorial).

Betsy has recently been EP with Mark Achbar (The Corporation) on three theatrical feature documentaries:  Fierce Light (dir: Velcrow Ripper) , Pax Americana (dir: Denis Delestrac) and Waterlife (dir: Kevin McMahon), with a fourth -  Surviving Progress -   now in production with Cinémaginaire (also Executive Produced with Martin Scorsese),   inspired by Ronald Wright’s book A Short History of Progress.  

Other current projects include : War in the Mind  (2011) a film by Judy Jackson for TVO about post traumatic stress in the military; Tracks Across Sand, directed by Hug Brody, a Web/DVD history of and for the San of the Kalahari about their successful  South African land claim and the ten years following that event.  In development:  All Things Alice – a look at 150 years of Alice in Wonderland in global popular culture.

Industry service: Vice Chair of the Documentary Organization of Canada for six years, and currently a member of several DOC advocacy committees. She came to documentary film after a long career as a professional ballet dancer.

Editor Stuart de Jong

Stuart de Jong also edited  Gary Marcuse’s films Arktika, the Russian Dream that Failed and Nuclear Dynamite  which won eight international prizes including the Beijing Golden Dragon Award for films about science. Stuart’s many credits include John Zaritsky’s films The Suicide Tourist, which aired on PBS Frontline, Men Don’t Cry: Prostate Cancer Stories and College Days, College Nights.  Stuart studied film and photography in London and while working in London edited a wide range of documentaries for BBC and Channel 4 on subjects ranging from New York punks to collectors of lawn mowers. He now lives and works in Vancouver.  For further information please see his entry on IMDB.com

 

Director of Photography  Rolf Cutts

Rolf Cutts has been working as a cinematographer in film and video for 30 years and has shot for ARD, BBC, CBC, Discovery US, the National Film Board of Canada, Radio Canada the United Nations, and independent producers.  His work has taken him across North America many times, into the jungles of Central America and Cuba, throughout the Caribbean islands, and to China, Thailand, Pakistan, Burundi, Rwanda and Kenya, Tahiti, New Zealand, Japan, Hawaii and the Marshall Islands.  He has also filmed nature series and broadcast specials in Australia, Kenya, Cuba, Costa Rica, Belize and the Arctic.  Social issues programs for the UN and ARD were filmed the slums of Bangkok and Mexico City and a rural development project in northern Pakistan.

 

Composer Doug Wilde

Born and raised in Sault Ste.Marie, Ontario, Doug studied music at the University of Western Ontario, York University, The Royal Conservatory, Humber College(where he studied arranging with Ron Collier) and The Eastman School of Music( where he studied arranging and film scoring with Rayburn Wright).  Doug moved to Toronto in the late 1970s.

 

As a  keyboard player he has performed and recorded with numerous international artists including Leonard Cohen, Jane Siberry, Nancy White, Manteca, Simon Wynberg and Scott Merritt.  As a composer Doug spent many years writing music for commercials,  documentaries, radio drama, comedy and variety television.  He has extensive experience as a music director, composing, arranging and leading bands for live TV  award shows, weekly talk shows and national events including the  2011 Canada  Day Show from Ottawa.  He has also released two solo records and has recorded extensively as a session musician and has several thousand commercials to his credit. 

Doug recently emerged from the studios and is again performing live on keyboards with the Canadian Latin / jazz / funk  group Manteca and with David Woodhead's group Confabulation .

Composer Henry Heillig

Composer and bassist Henry Heillig moved to Toronto from his native Montreal in 1974. He has performed with a variety of Canadian acts, including Sharon Lois and Bram, Nancy White, Carlos del Junco and Joe Sealy, but is best known as co-founder and musical director of the Juno-winning  latin/funk/salsa band Manteca.  Henry has composed music for several films and documentaries, including Gary Marcuse’s Nuclear Dynamite, Arktika, the Russian Dream that Failed, and Mind of a Child  which was  nominated for best score at Hot Docs.  Mr Heillig currently leads the contemporary jazz quartet The Heillig Manoeuvre.  He has also been musical director for Canada’s  Genie and Gemini Awards, and he freelances in the busy Toronto Jazz and blues scene.  He toured western Canada in 1999 with pianist Joe Sealy and tours regularly with master harmonicist Carlos del Junco.