People

Thomas Pope
Thomas Pope has worked for Francis Coppola, Barry Levinson, Ridley Scott, Penny Marshall, Frank Oz, Wim Wenders, Robert Redford, Jerry Bruckheimer and many others. He has worked on Someone to Watch Over Me, F/X, Lords of Discipline, The Manitou, Cold Dog Soup, Hammett, and Bad Boys.  His book, Good Scripts, Bad Scripts, examines some of the best and worst scripts in history. He currently is on the faculty of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Michael Miner
Mr. Miner received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Theater, and a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he wrote and directed Labyrinths, which won a Focus and Cine Eagle Award, Alias Jane Doe, which was exhibited at Deauville and Bilbao, and Cosmographia, which was exhibited at Filmex. While at UCLA he was also a cinematographer of ten student films including Scarred, which was exhibited commercially and Fool’s Dance, which was produced by PBS.

Mr. Miner's professional career includes time as a director of photography and director/cameraman of twenty music videos. As co-writer of Robocop, the successful action story about the part man/part machine law enforcer of the future, Mr. Miner received the SATURN AWARD for Best Science Fiction Screenplay and a nomination for Best Screenplay by the Mystery Writers of America. He is also the co-writer of the pilot for Robocop: The Television Show, produced by Sky TV, Anacondas: Search for the Blood Orchid, the action adventure sequel about humans battling deadly snakes, and Lanwnmowerman II, the science fiction sequel to the virtual reality story about an idiot savant trapped in a computer program.  Mr. Miner made his debut as a writer/director with Deadly Weapon, a drama about a teenager who finds a prototype Star Wars weapon and uses it to take a desert town hostage. Most recently, he directed The Book of Stars, magic realism about the troubled relationship between two sisters and the memory book one of them keeps that has the power to anticipate future events.  Mr. Miner discovered the script while teaching a writing class at the Maine Photographic Workshops.

Mr. Miner has written screenplays for Oliver Stone, Sylvester Stallone and Michael Douglas.  He is currently developing a feature film based on the true story of a friendship between a Franciscan priest and a gangster living in a ghetto in Kingston, Jamaica, a documentary on the history of jailhouse informants and perjured testimony, an action/thriller about a robbery during the Los Angeles Marathon and a futuristic thriller about genetic programming.  He has taught screenwriting at the Maine Photographic Workshops, the University of Hawaii, the Southeastern Media Institute, the Praxis Center for Screenwriting, the University of California at Santa Barbara and California State University at Los Angeles.

Noel Baker
Screenwriter, author, story editor, and screenwriting teacher Noel Baker is the co-creator of the Showcase/Oxygen Network series Show Me Yours. With Ken Finkleman he co-created the series Chateau Rousseau, currently in production for the CBC. Other credits include his Genie-nominated screenplay for Bruce McDonald’s punk road movie, Hard Core Logo, and rewrites of the CBC MOW Platinum and miniseries The Last Chapter. Noel is also the author of Hard Core Roadshow: A Screenwriter’s Diary (Anansi/Stoddart, 1997). As a creative consultant and story editor, Noel has worked with dozens of writers, directors and producers on numerous screenplays and films funded through Telefilm Canada, the Harold Greenberg Fund, Movie Central, and provincial film funding agencies. He has lectured, taught workshops, and participated in panel discussions at film festivals, conferences, and universities in Canada, the U.S., and Europe. He is Screenwriter-in-Residence at the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto, a post he has held since 1999.

Carrie Paupst-Shaughnessy
Carrie is President of The Development House Inc., a development service company.   Working with companies, such as Alliance Atlantis, The National Screen Institute, CTV and Breakthrough Films, The Development House has worked on both film and television projects.  She has story edited many independent feature projects including Love, Sex and Eating the Bones by Sudz Sutherland, A Problem with Fear by Gary Burns, Treed Murray by Bill Phillips, Saint Ralph by Michael McGowan and Lie with Me by Clement Virgo.   She has also worked on documentary series for Life, Discovery and MTV.  Carrie also develops her own projects including a new teen series in development with the CBC and Amaze Film & Television titled Sugar Shack.

Amnon Buchbinder
Amnon Buchbinder has been involved with filmmaking since Grade 6. He has directed two feature films: the Genie-winning The Fishing Trip (1998), written by one of his students, and Whole New Thing (2005), which he co-wrote with Daniel MacIvor. Previously he wrote, produced and directed a wide variety of short films, ranging from experimental to narrative to documentary and performing arts works.   He has written numerous development-funded feature screenplays. Amnon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film at York University, where he has been teaching since 1995. He is the author of the book THE WAY OF THE SCREENWRITER, published in 2005 by House of Anansi Press. (Visit www.wayofthescreenwriter.com for more info about the book.) He has worked as a story editor with writers, directors and producers, as well as leading professional screenwriting workshops, across Canada. Amnon obtained his BFA and MFA in film from California Institute of the Arts, where he studied with Dr. Don Levy and Alexander Mackendrick. He was a director resident at the Canadian Film Centre and was a fellow of the very first Praxis workshop in 1986. He is the father of two teenaged sons and lives with his family in Toronto. For more info about Amnon’s work visit www.amnon.ca.

Maureen Dorey
Since 1992, Maureen Dorey has been working as a free-lance analyst and story editor to help writers to renew their inspiration and find their voices.  Her production credits straddle television and film:  MoccasIn Flats, Season II, (8 x 30 min.),  Random Passage, an eight-hour mini-series directed by John N. Smith, produced by Passage Films and Cité-Amérique for broadcast on CBC and RTE (Eire), as well as Mile Zero, a feature film produced by Anagram Films and Horsie's Retreat, a feature film with the Film Centre’s Feature Film Programme.  Other credits include The Mysteries of Ice Fishing  by writer-director Paul Fox for Sienna Films, Extraordinary Visitor  (Film East), The War Between Us (MOW, Troika Productions/Atlantis); LyddiE (MOW, Film Works/Mind's Eye, for CBC and BBC), Violet (written and directed by Rosemary House, produced by Mary Sexton) and On My Mind, 6 x 30 min. children’s dramas.   She has acted as consultant to the National Screen Institute, Praxis Film Works and B.C. Film, and has been Story Editor in Residence to the Canadian Film Centre’s Professional Screenwriting Programme and to Writers’ Lab for the past four years.  Most recently she was story editor on three Feature Film Projects: The Dark Hours, Siblings, and Dirty Girl.

Don McKellar
To connoisseurs of Canadian cinema Don McKellar is best known for his collaborations with Bruce McDonald. McKellar wrote Roadkill and Highway 61, co-wrote Dance Me Outside, and appeared in Roadkill and Highway 61. He also co-wrote (with Francois Girard) the Genie-winning Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould, The Red Violin and wrote, directed and starred in his latest feature, Childstar. McKellar is a prodigious writer for the stage (The Drowsy Chaperone, 86, An Autopsy) and television (Twitch City). His role in Atom Egoyan’s Exotica won him a Best Supporting Genie and his directorial debut, Last Night, earned him the Prix de la Jeunesse at Cannes. He has also appeared in Atom Egoyan’s new feature Where The Truth Lies, Olivier Assayas’ Clean, Slings & Arrows, The Tommy Douglas Story, The Event, Rub & Tug, The Art of Woo, Waydowntown, and David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, as well as Peter Wellington’s Joe’s So Mean To Josephine and Patricia Rozema’s When Night Is Falling.

Tom Musca
Mr. Musca’s most recently produced screenplay is Tortilla Soup.  Variety counted Tortilla Soup among the 20 top grossing art house films of 2001 and it is already the third highest selling Latino-themed DVD in history.    Mr. Musca’s most recently produced teleplay is Gotta Kick It Up! -- a school dance extravaganza directed by Ramón Menéndez.  This Disney Channel presentation was the #1 cable show of 2003 among pre-teen girls.
Mr. Musca first captured attention as the producer and co-writer of Stand and Deliver which nabbed six Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay. 
Partnering again with Ramón Menéndez, Mr. Musca produced and co-wrote Hollywood Pictures’s Money For Nothing, which starred John Cusack.  The 1994 film jump-started the careers of James Gandolfini, Benicio del Toro, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Debi Mazar and Michael Madsen.  Mr. Musca made his feature film directorial debut with Race, his satire of a Los Angeles City Council election, that premiered on HBO.   A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Rutgers, Mr. Musca went on to earn a Masters of Fine Arts degree at UCLA.  Immediately after graduation, he sold his first screenplay, Little Nikita.  Other recently produced film credits include producing, co-writing and second unit directing Flight of Fancy for Showtime. 
Produced network television credits include working as Executive Story Consultant and writing several episodes of the NBC television series You Again?.  Mr. Musca has been a guest lecturer at the Sundance Institute, IFP west, and the AFI Film Festival among others.  Recently, Mr. Musca conducted MPA workshops on screenwriting and producing in Santiago, Chile, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and for the U.S. Embassy Speaker Program in Mexico City.

Marguerite Pigott
Marguerite is an independent consultant focusing on story development, market consulting and production financing.   Recent clients include CBC, Cellar Door, Fred Fuchs, Martin Katz, Screen Sirens, Telefilm Canada, Toronto International Film Festival and Triptych Media.  She is accepted as a market consultant with respect to Telefilm Canada’s ‘Packaging’ phase.  Until March 2004, Marguerite was Vice President of Development and Production for Odeon Films, an Alliance Atlantis Company.  In this capacity, she oversaw the evaluation, selection, contracting, development and production of Canadian projects acquired for distribution.  She Executive Produced Saint Ralph, Fubar, waydowntown, Flower and Garnet and others.  

In addition to co-teaching ‘The Essential Questions of Script Development’ across Canada with Carrie Paupst Shaughnessy, Marguerite has been a guest speaker at Toronto International Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival, Atlantic Film Festival, the Canadian Film Centre, the National Screen Institute and has also sat on numerous juries.  She sits on the Board of Directors for World Literacy of Canada, and formerly, for WIFT-T.  She denies she spent a decade as a professional actor, despite substantial evidence to the contrary.

Marlene Rodgers
Marlene brings her passion for helping filmmakers achieve their vision to her story editing work on features, television and shorts.  She teaches and consults regularly at the Praxis Centre for Screenwriters and the UBC Writing Centre, and has taught at the Canadian Film Centre.  She has an extensive background in development, having held executive positions at the CBC Movies and Miniseries Unit and the Ontario Film Development Corporation.  Marlene won a Leo for screenwriting and a Genie nomination for best short for her drama Foxy Lady, Wild Cherry, and produced the CFC short Cleveland Wood’s Last Day on Earth; both films have had numerous  broadcast sales and international festival exposure.

Sharon Riis
Sharon Riis won a Genie in 2003 for her screenplay Savage Messiah.  Her last produced screenplay was Mob Princess, produced by Bright Light Pictures and Nightingale Films, and directed by Mina Shum.  She continues to roll Drum tobacco and bang her head slowly in Saskatoon.

Andrew Currie
Andrew  is a Vancouver-based writer/director/producer and a founding partner in Anagram Pictures. He recently directed and co-wrote Anagram's theatrical feature Fido, starring Carrie Anne Moss (The Matrix, Memento), Billy Connolly (Mrs. Brown, Lemony Snickett), Dylan Baker (Happiness, Spiderman 2), and Tim Blake Nelson (O'Brother Where Art Thou, Minority Report). Fido is being released theatrically by Lions Gate Films in the US and TVA in Canada. Andrew previously directed Sleep Murder (2004), a television movie for CTV and Buena Vista International, starring Jason Priestley and Natar Ungalaag (The Fast Runner) and produced (with partner Blake Corbet) The Delicate Art of Parking (Best Canadian Film - 2003 Montreal World Film Festival). Andrew's debut feature, the critically acclaimed Mile Zero played at over twenty film festivals around the world, winning top honours in Houston (WorldFest Platinum Award), Victoria (CityTV Award for Best First Feature), and Moondance (Best Feature Award). Mile Zero was one of ten international films selected in 2002 for Janet Maslin's prestigious Town Hall Film Series in New York. Before moving onto features, Andrew enjoyed international success with a series of award-winning short films that saw wide broadcast including: Canal Plus - France, Channel 4 - UK, Telepiu - Italy. In 1997 Andrew attended Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre, where he made the short film, Night of The Living, which garnered an impressive array of awards from festivals around the world.

 Shelley Gillen
As Head of Creative Affairs for Movie Central, since 1994, Shelley is responsible for the Pay Service’s extensive and Canada-wide Development Funding and Pre-licensing activities.  This includes evaluation of all submissions, selection of both film and television projects and creative supervision of selected projects through production. Gillen is the Executive in Charge of Production for Movie Central’s Original Canadian programs Terminal City, G-Spot, ReGenesis, and Slings & Arrows.
In addition to Movie Central’s financial support for projects, Gillen actively helps producers put together funding partners to bring projects to fruition on the screen.  
Examples of Movie Central projects developed and/or pre-licensed by Gillen recently include:  Fido, Water, A Simple Curve, Eve & the Firehorse, and These Girls.  Others include Flower and Garnet, Emile, The Snow Walker, Bollywood Hollywood, Falling Angels, A Problem With Fear, and Mambo Italiano.
The Leo Awards offered congratulations to Shelley as the recipient of  The Leo’s Individual Outstanding Achievement Award for 2003 as well as being awarded the WIFVV Wayne Black Service Award.  
Gillen began her career as a newspaper reporter writing for The Toronto Sun, The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. She was Executive Story Editor on the 26 Episode Kleo, the Misfit Unicorn, written screenplays and acted as an Associate Producer and Story Editor on a number of successful Canadian features.

Charles Lazer
CHARLES LAZER’S TV work is known for its imagination and humour.  His talent at blending humor and serious dramatic themes has earned him multiple CableACE and Gemini nominations for Best Series and Best Writing in both Comedy and Drama categories.  For his body of work in Canadian television and his contribution to the industry, he recently received the Gemini/Margaret Collier Award. 
In the last decade-and-a-half, Mr. Lazer has written for or produced (or both) more than two dozen episodic TV series, many for the family market and acclaimed internationally.  He was writer/producer of CBC’s International-Emmy-nominated fantasy-action youth series The Odyssey, and has written many episodes of the top-rated Road To Avonlea, Goosebumps, 7th Heaven, Max Glick, Shirley Holmes and Danger Bay.  
His credits as showrunner include the genre-bending CBC western/romantic comedy series, Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy, and the internationally-syndicated fantasy-adventure TV series Beastmaster and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. 
His long-form credits include the TV Movies Nothing Too Good For a Cowboy for the CBC, and Diamond Girl and Loving Evangeline for Showtime/CTV. 
Mr. Lazer’s writing/producing experience outside Canada encompasses the USA, Australia, England and Scotland. 

Mina Shum
FEATURE FILMS
Mob Princess
TV Movie for the W Network. Produced by Steve Hegyes and Sean Williamson for Brightlight Pictures with Debbie Nightingale of the Nightingale Company.

Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity
A feature film starring Sandra Oh, produced by Scott Garvie & Christina Jennings (Shaftesbury Films) and Raymond Massey (Massey Productions). Distributed by Odeon Films (Canada), Film Movement (US). Screened as part of the Canadian Perspective Program at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival. Also screened at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.

Drive, She Said
Wrote and directed 35mm film which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.  In official competition at Turin Delle Donne Film Festival. Broadcast on the Romance Channel.

Double Happiness
Wrote and directed 35mm film which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.  Won Best First or Second Feature at the Berlin Film Festival; won Audience Award and Special Jury Citation at the Turin Film Festival; won Screenwriting Citation at the Vancouver Film Festival; Special Jury Citation and Metro Media Prize at the Toronto International Film Festival. A New Line/ Fine Line release.

TELEVISION
DaVinci’s Inquest
One hour drama for the CBC. Executive Produced by Chris Haddock. 2005 DGC Nomination for best direction, TV Series.

Romeo
Half hour episodic for Nickelodeon that follows the crazy life of aspiring rapper and middle school b-ball star Romeo Miller.

The Shield’s Stories
Half hour episodic; broadcast on the W Network. Produced by Christina Jennings for Shaftesbury Films and Kim Todd for Original Pictures.

Bliss
Half hour episodic; broadcast on Oxygen and Showcase. Produced by Janis Lundman and Adrienne Mitchell for Back Alley Films.

These Arms of Mine
Two episodes, one hour drama for the CBC. Produced by Phil Savath, Susan Delago and Stephen Hegyes for Arms Length Productions.

SHORT FILMS
Hunger
Wrote and directed film, part of Cineworks omnibus film Breaking Up in Three Minutes.

Love In
Directed, wrote and produced this short dramatic film.

Shortchanged
Directed, produced and wrote this short dramatic film which was shown as several women’s film festivals across North America.

Picture Perfect
Directed, produced, and wrote this short dramatic film which was shown at a number of festivals including Spain, Rome, and Italy.

DOCUMENTARIES
Thirsty
Wrote, directed and produced 20 minute docu-diary which premiered during Asian Heritage Month in Vancouver.

Me Mon and Mona
Writer, director, editor and co-producer. Won  Special Jury Citation Award when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Semi Chellas
Semi Chellas was the Co-Creator, Executive Producer and Head Writer of The Eleventh Hour, a dramatic series which won the Gemini in 2002.  She is also the writer of the feature films Picture Claire (directed by Bruce McDonald) and The Life Before This (directed by Jerry Ciccoritti).  Her script for Dead Aviators, a Showtime/CBC movie of the week, was nominated for an Emmy.

Anne Wheeler
After trying a variety of careers (computer programmer, musician, actor, high school teacher) and traveling for several years, Anne Wheeler discovered the world of film-making.  She’s since directed over a dozen features, countless shorts, and episodic TV.

Wheeler's stories are built on gentle humor and strong characters living extraordinary lives. She excels in exploring the human spirit, relationships, a sense of place and a oneness amongst people. Drawing from her own wide range of experiences, she usually writes or involves herself early in the development of a project.  Her films have touched the hearts of her audience, earning her SIX HONORARY DOCTORATES and THE ORDER OF CANADA.  www.annewheeler.com