Advisory Board

Sturla Gunnarsson

Oscar nominated, Genie, Gemini and Emmy Award-winning director Sturla Gunnarsson is one of Canada’s most prolific and eclectic filmmakers, moving with ease between feature films, documentaries and television drama.

Feature films include the medieval epic, Beowulf and Grendel, starring Gerard Butler, Stellan Skarsgaard and Sarah Polly, Rare Birds, starring William Hurt, Andy Jones and Molly Parker and Such A Long Journey, starring Roshan Seth, Om Puri and Naseeredin Shah.  Between them the films received over twenty Genie nominations and were among the top grossing Canadian films in the years they were released.

Gunnarsson recently completed Air India 182, a non-fiction thriller about the Vancouver-based conspiracy that resulted in the most deadly act of air terrorism in history before 911.   It was the Opening Night film at this year’s Hot Docs and telecast as a commercial-free special by CBC on the anniversary of the disaster.  His previous documentary, the post-apartheid love story, Gerrie & Louise, was shot in South Africa in 1997 during the Truth Commission and described by New Republic’s Stanley Kaufmann as “the gripping account of a journey through delusion to enlightenment.” Gerrie & Louise received scores of accolades including an International Emmy and the Canadian Academy’s Donald Brittain Award for ‘best feature documentary’.  Earlier documentaries include the Genie Award-winning cinema-verite classic Final Offer and Oscar nominated After The Axe.

Television drama includes Scorn and 100 Days In The Jungle, which both won the Gemini Award for best TV movie in the years they were telecast.  Drama series include DaVinci’s Inquest and Intelligence for CBC, Defying Gravity for Fox Studios/BBC/CTV and the Canada/UK mini-series Above And Beyond, for which Gunnarsson received the Directors Guild Award for ‘best directing’.  His most recent production was the pilot for Epitome Picture’s new series, St Brigit’s Medical.

Gunnarsson is the national president of the Directors Guild of Canada.

Stephen Hegyes

Producer and co-founder of Brightlight Pictures, Stephen Hegyes has established an impressive track record in his eighteen years in the feature film and television industry, most recently becoming an industry leader in international co-productions.  After beginning his producing career with breakout hit Double Happiness directed by Mina Shum and starring Sandra Oh, he later produced international box office success White Noise starring Michael Keaton. His most recent credits include Fifty Dead Men Walking, a UK/Canadian co-production starring Ben Kingsley, Jim Sturgess, Kevin Zegers and Rose McGowan, and eco-thriller The Thaw  in partnership with Anagram Pictures and starring Val Kilmer. Stephen also produced, among others, television comedy series About A Girl for MTV’s The N and one hour drama series The Guard, starring David James Elliot for Global Television and Lionsgate.  Stephen also produced the Australian/Canadian co-production Stormworld, a 26 episode television series for Space Network and Nine Network.  Upcoming feature projects include Gunless, a comedy western starring Paul Gross and co-produced with Rhombus Media, and Brent Butt’s first feature film No Clue.  Beyond producing and managing Brightlight Pictures, Hegyes is also the long-term chair of BC’s Feature Film Committee, and has been nominated by Variety Magazine as “One of 50 to Watch”.

Ian Weir

A UBC graduate, Ian Weir is a playwright, screenwriter and novelist.  For television, he was writer and executive producer of the critically acclaimed, multiple award-winning CBC miniseries Dragon Boys.  Previously he was creator, head writer and executive producer of the long-running teen drama series Edgemont.  Along the way, he has written more than 100 episodes for nearly two dozen other series, ranging from Beachcombers, Odyssey and Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy, to Cold Squad, Flashpoint and One Life to Live.

His stage plays, which include The Idler, Bloody Business and St. George, have been produced across Canada, as well as in the U.S. and England.  Hope and Caritas premiered this past fall in Vancouver (Solo Collective), and his newest play, The Man Who Shot Chance Delaney, premiered in February at Western Canada Theatre. Other credits include nine radio plays (three for the BBC, and six for the CBC). Awards include two Geminis, four Leos, a Writers Guild of Canada Screenwriting Award and a Jessie.

His novel Daniel O’Thunder will be published in Fall, 2009 by Douglas & McIntyre.  Ian lives in Langley, B.C., with his wife Jude and their daughter Amy.

Mina Shum

Award-winning writer/director Mina Shum has made three feature films: Double Happiness, Drive, She Said and Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity. Her work has garnered international distribution (Fine Line Features, Film Movement), numerous festival accolades (Sundance, Toronto, Berlin) as well as industry nods (Director’s Guild Awards, the Genies, the Leos). She has made short films, documentaries and installations, as well as directing for prime time television. She is currently developing her next feature project and hopes to begin production next year in Vancouver, just when the city is paralyzed by the Olympics.

Gregory Middleton

Gregory Middleton is an award-winning cinematographer who has won two awards from the Canadian Society of Cinematographers (CSC) and been nominated for five Genie Awards from the Canadian Academy of Cinema and Television. He received Genie nominations for Kissed, The Falling, The Five Senses, Between Strangers and Falling Angels.
Born in Montreal he moved to Vancouver to study Cinema at the University of British Columbia. After shooting many films for fellow students he worked as the Camera Operator on John Pozer’s black and white debut feature The Grocers Wife which was selected for Intl. Critics Week at the Cannes Film Festival. Middleton worked as a Camera Operator on several films before shooting his debut feature Kissed. Kissed won International acclaim at the Sundance, Directors Fortnight at Cannes and Toronto Film Festivals. (Profile ASC magazine March 97’)
Middleton’s long list of features includes Better Than Chocolate, After the Storm, Punch, Mr. Rice’s Secret, Going the Distance, Slither, They Wait, Possession and Fugitive Pieces which was selected to open the 2007 Toronto Intl. Film Festival. For television, his credits include the Hallmark miniseries Snow Queen, and movie-of-the-week films such as Murder Unveiled and After the Harvest, as well as the pilots for Psych and Kyle XY.
Most recently he recreated the World War 1 battle of  Passchendaele for Director Paul Gross.

Daria Ellerman

Daria Ellerman is a picture editor with over 20 years experience working in documentaries, television series and feature films. After receiving a bachelor of arts from The University of British Columbia in Film and Television Studies, she was awarded one of the first apprenticeship awards from the Canadian Academy of Film and Television.

In 1990 Daria produced an educational documentary with partner Sharon Gibbon called “There is No Such Thing as Garbage” which was directed by Moira Simpson and continues to be in distribution.

Credits include over 150 hours of television series including “Jpod”, “The Dead Zone”, “Stargate”, “The Outer Limits”, “The Chris Isaak Show”, “The Collector” and “Blood Ties” with directors Bryan Singer, Holly Dale, Jon Cassar, Bryan Spicer, Michael Robison, Rachel Talalay and Mike Clattenberg.  Most recently Daria worked on “Samurai Girl” a four-hour mini-series for ABC Family and “Exes and Ohs”, a half hour dramedy for LOGO, Showcase and Superchannel.  Long form work includes “Christmas on Chestnut Street” directed by Anne Wheeler.

She has been nominated for 6 LEO AWARDS and a GEMINI AWARD as picture editor and won a LEO AWARD in 2005 for her work on the television series, “The Collector”.

Daria is a founding member of the Canadian Cinema Editors.  Volunteer work includes jurying for the Geminis and working for the Vancouver International Film Festival.  She was a mentor editor for the 2008 and 2009 Women in the Director Chair at the Banff Centre.

She is a native of Winnipeg, Manitoba and currently resides in Coquitlam, British Columbia with her husband and son.

Cal Shumiatcher

Cal Shumiatcher (BA, 1981) is a versatile filmmaker with over 20 years experience as a producer and director, working in both the fiction and non-fiction genres. As a partner in Paperny Films, he oversees all production and is actively involved in the creation and development of new projects, including drama and new media opportunities.

Cal’s dramatic television production credits include the series “Beggars and Choosers”, “The Chris Isaac Show”, and “Tracker”. He produced the feature films “North of Pittsburgh”, “Matinee”, “Boys Will Be Girls”, “Tomcat”, “My Kind of Town”, and co-produced “Cuba Libre” starring Harvey Keitel. He also produced the computer animation pilot “Weird-Ohs”. Cal directed episodes of “Beggars and Choosers” and the computer animated series “Beast Wars: Transformers”. In addition, he acted as the line producer for the feature “Saved!”, starring Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin and Jenna Malone. As a sound designer, Cal has won two Genie awards while being nominated five times.

As a documentary producer Cal’s credits include the four-hour series “Chasing the Cure”, History Television’s “Murder in Normandy” and “Victory 1945”, as well as the bios “To Russia With Fries”, “The Deal Maker”, “Mordecai”, “On the Edge” and “Whisky Man”. He is executive producer of “The Blonde Mystique” (1 x 60’, W Network); “Kink” (63 x 30’, Showcase); and “First Comes Love” (13 x 60’, LOGO). His latest documentary credits include CBC’s “Devil Plays Hardball” which pairs homeless people with volunteer mentors to help turn their lives around and the feature documentary “Confessions of an Innocent Man”, CTV/NFB, (Gemini winner, Best Documentary Biography, 2008) the story of William Sampson, the British/Canadian who survived three years of torture in a Saudi prison for a crime he did not commit.

As a partner at Paperny Films, Cal oversees the creation and production of several series.  His executive producer duties include the fifth season of Slice’s “Crash Test Mommy” 65×60; OLN’s “Road Hockey Rumble” 26×30  (Gemini Nominated, Best General Entertainment Series) and Food Network’s “Glutton for Punishment” 52×30 (Gemini Nominated Best Host 2008) ; Discovery Channel’s “Jetstream”8×60 (Gemini Nominated Best Director, Cinematographer 2008), the high-power series on Canada’s elite fighter pilot training school in Cold Lake, Alberta; Also for Discovery is “Combat School” 6×60, an in depth, embedded account of a Canadian infantry platoon’s deployment in Afghanistan in 2008, CBC’s “The Week the Women Went” 16×60 (Gemini Nominated Best Reality Program, 2008) which explores what happens when all the women in an ordinary Canadian town leave for seven days; and HGTV’s “The Stagers” 26×30 which chronicles the activities of the busy Vancouver home staging company Dekora. New for this year, is the docusoap, “Chop Shop” (13×30) for SLICE, which chronicles the lives of the stylists at Granville Street’s most rock ‘n roll salon.

Bill Hurst

Many years ago, Bill graduated from UBC with a BFA and MFA in Creative Writing.  Prior to joining Telefilm Canada in 1993, Bill freelanced as a writer and story editor, creating fiction for fun and television scripts for profit.  His duties as a Senior Content Analyst at Telefilm are wide ranging but his area of expertise is in evaluating the creative aspects of feature film projects, both in development and production.  Simply put, Bill has read a lot of scripts.

Lynne Stopkewich

Lynne Stopkewich is a filmmaker whose UBC thesis feature KISSED created a critical and commercial stir in 1997. Her surprisingly tender story of a female necrophiliac embalmer enjoyed worldwide theatrical and festival play, including the Cannes Director’s Fortnight, Sundance, London, and Toronto festivals. KISSED also won the Best Actress Genie Award, TIFF’s Jury Citation for Best Canadian Feature, and VIFF’s Best Western Canadian Filmmaker.

Lynne’s follow-up feature, SUSPICIOUS RIVER, stars Molly Parker (Deadwood), as a motel receptionist choosing extreme measures to exorcise her demons. The film premiered at the Venice, Toronto and London festivals and was nominated for nine Leo Awards, winning Best Cinematography, Best Actor, and Best Feature Film.

LILITH ON TOP, Lynne’s third film, humourously documents the final year of Sarah McLachlan’s “Lilith Fair” and features Sheryl Crow, Chrissie Hynde and Sandra Bernhard. The film premiered at the Toronto, Berlin and SXSW festivals, aired on Global, and won Best Documentary at the Victoria Film Festival.

In the world of television, Lynne’s directed multiple episodes of The L WORD, TERMINAL CITY, DA VINCI’S INQUEST, THIS IS WONDERLAND, and Global’s THE GUARD. She helmed the CTV feature THE LIFE and was twice nominated for a DGC Best Director Award.

Lynne’s producing credits include THE GROCER’S WIFE (Assoc. Producer), KISSED (Producer), LOOKING FOR LEONARD (Exec. Producer), and FALLING ANGELS (Co-Producer). Most recently, she produced (with Stephanie Symns) Cameron Labine’s first feature CONTROL ALT DELETE, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and sold to Maximum Films worldwide.

Lynne holds a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from UBC, where she won the UGF and Wagner Fellowships. She is a member of the WGC, the DGC and has juried and lectured widely. She is a stalwart indie film supporter and sits on the Board of the Whistler Film Festival.