August 16, 2005

Up and Running

The new Lank Beach website is up and running and features a number of sample clips from their impressive list of credits as well as some stunning on-location still photos. I first met Barry Lank at NSI Local Heroes film festival in Winnipeg back in 2001. It's good to finally be working together.

August 12, 2005

This Afternoon

On A Sunday screens at one o'clock this afternoon at the Crested Butte Reel Fest in Colorado, and despite what I wrote in a previous post, I will not be in the theater as the lights go down. Which is regrettable, but such is life when working under a heavy deadline.

Speaking of which, work on the Scars documentary for CTV is going well. It's exciting to be confirming the cast and divining the common threads of their stories. But more on all of that later.

August 03, 2005

CTV and Me

This is a strange, inexplicable business. How else would you account for the fact that a documentary proposal I wrote over four years ago was recently picked up by CTV, one of two big Canadian national television networks, after having been passed over by a half dozen or more much smaller regional broadcasters? Part of what makes this career of mine so interesting, (and damnably frustrating) is that you never know what's going to happen when the phone rings or when you check your inbox. As was the case when I recently received an email with the subject, CTV called about scars from my collaborators at Lank Beach Productions Inc.

The project, which has just launched in earnest, is being set up as a one-hour, one-off documentary for W5. The current working title (which I expect will change) is, Scars of the Body, Reflections of the Soul, and will explore the relationship between our physical bodies and our innermost selves, how a brush with mortality can inspire profound catharsis and how the scars we carry can become a daily affirmation of life and affect similar change in those around us.

We've compiled a stellar list of potential subjects for the film, all of whom have fascinating stories of survival, courage and dark periods of reflection followed by profound catharsis and redirection.

And isn't that what life, in general, is all about?