Producer, Director Tobi Elliott, Arise Enterprises Ltd.

Tobi Elliott lives and works on Gabriola Island, B.C., Snuneymuxw First Nation territory. She lives in a tiny house, has too many hobbies, and somehow got into local government as an elected Trustee (Islands Trust). Tobi’s unlimited curiosity about how people make sense of their world has taken her from Brazil to film a project about natural horsemanship changing the lives of young orphans, to Nunavut as production coordinator for the six-part docudrama series Watchers of the North (APTN, Picture This Productions). She was associate producer for a feature-length documentary about activist grandmothers, Granny Power, (dir. Magnus Isacsson, Pleiades Productions), Goodwin’s Way (2014, dir Neil Vokey), and continues to  produce local documentaries on Gabriola, including The Land Provides, Stories of Silva Bay, and short docs for non-profits.

Camera and Editor (2023) Janelle Huopalainen, Screen Alchemist Productions

Janelle Huopalainen is a media content producer and filmmaker, and a graduate of Capilano University’s Documentary Production program. Since graduating in 2011, Janelle has filmed documentaries, weddings and special events, produced shorts screened at festivals, created content for web and edited for television. She has followed her passion of surf filmmaking to Tofino, and capturing the beauty of the rugged coast has grown her love for adventure filmmaking. Janelle has a love for non-fiction film and sharing the stories of real people. She can often be found filming nature, shooting in the surf or holed up in her edit suite.

Camera and Editor (2019-2023) Simon Stiles, Finding Simon

This Youtube sensation started out as a humble bike mechanic in Ottawa, but his life of off-grid adventure has spawned a massive following of fans who won’t leave him alone, no matter what boat project he’s currently messing up. Interspersed by epic motorcycle trips, raising dead boats from the ocean floor, and creating meyhem in multiple mediums, mostly viewers tune in work on his giant liveaboard catamaran, Old Dog. Carving a path through countless “learning opportunities” as a carpenter, sailmaker, mechanic, welder, diver, sailor and solar tinkerer, Simon is also finding time to refit Perihelion, a giant 58-foot ketch. Simon also found time one dark winter to edit most of the first episode of the Dorothy story and to shoot a lot of the restoration work in 2021-2022.

Camera and Editor (2012-2013) Kate Bradford, kmb productions

Kate Bradford b-wKate Bradford’s creative work was for many years in Toronto as a Senior Production Editor at the CBC. Among other projects, Kate created award-winning documentaries for the national CBC art series, Adrienne Clarkson Presents. After leaving the network in 2000, Kate turned her attention to sculpting, training in Austria with master sculptor Gabi Berger. Sculpture and video make interesting connections visually, one informing the other, making Kate’s work behind the camera unique.

Kate continues to produce a body of tightly edited, beautiful short films for art galleries, corporate and government, which can be viewed at vimeo.com/katebradford.

 

Zee Kesler profile pic, Zee is standing in the front doorway of her tiny house whic is a small cedar sided house with red and teal trim. Zee is wearing glasses and a black long dress.

Outreach and Web Optimization (2023-) Zee Kesler, Magic Trout Imaginarium

Zee is a Community Organizer and Project Manager with a wide range of skills learned from her many years working with not for profit organizations. Zee recently moved to Gabriola from Vancouver where she spent many years spearheading maker education initiatives such as the co-founding the Maker Education Meetup, creating the ITA Maker Club Manual, and building 2 mobile classrooms; the MakerMobile: Workshop on Wheels and the Magic Trout Imaginarium; originally a classroom in a tiny house (now a needle felting supply company)

Following the maker trajectory, Zee moved on to manage a national disability program through Neil Squire Society called Makers Making Change featuring an online community that pairs people with disabilities with makers to collaboratively build and design affordable open source alternatives to commercially available assistive technologies using 3D printing, laser cutting and off the shelf electronic components. The program hosts over 50 chapters and the website hosts thousands of assistive device designs and files which are free to download.

And because makers gonna make, upon moving to Gabriola, Zee was asked to become the Director of the soon to be developed on island makerspace.