nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up Key Bios

Tasha Hubbard – Producer, Director, Writer

Dr. Tasha Hubbard is a writer, filmmaker and associate professor at the University of Alberta. She is from Peepeekisis First Nation in Treaty Four Territory and has ties to Thunderchild First Nation in Treaty Six Territory. She is also the mother of a 12-year-old son. Her academic research has focussed on Indigenous efforts to return the buffalo to the lands and Indigenous film in North America. Her first solo writing/directing project, Two Worlds Colliding (NFB), about ’s infamous “starlight tours,” premiered at imagineNATIVE in 2004 and won the Canada Award at the Gemini Awards in 2005. In 2017, Tasha directed the NFB-produced feature documentary Birth of a Family, about a family coming together for the first time during a holiday in Banff. It premiered at Hot Docs and landed on the top-ten audience favourites list. It also won the Audience Favourite for Feature Documentary at the Edmonton International Film Festival and the Moon Jury prize at imagineNATIVE. Her latest feature documentary is nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, a personal exploration of the cost of the death of Colten Boushie.

George Hupka – Producer, Director of Photography

A graduate of Ryerson University’s School of Radio and Television Arts, George Hupka started as a staff director at CTV, where he directed the CanPro Award winning documentary Obmin, which followed a student exchange group to Soviet Ukraine in the months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He has been a freelance director and DP since 1992, shooting several projects with the UK’s Windfall Films, including a documentary in Egypt entitled Rescuing Ramesses, Canadian portions of PBS Nova: Making North America, episodes of Rise of the Machines, and episodes of the NSA-nominated series Strip the City. He has served as cinematographer on the NFB films Gift of the Grandfathers, Donna’s Story, Two Worlds Colliding, Flight from Darkness, First Stories, and Twixt Heaven and Earth. For CBC’s Witness, he contributed to Quints and Quads: A New Baby Boom and The Season. In 2012-2013, he co-produced the Rogers Sportsnet series On the Edge with Toronto’s Fadoo Productions. Most recently he was a cinematographer for two documentaries on the Humboldt Broncos tragedy, for TSN and ESPN. George has also won a Promax Screen Award, a Gemini Award and a National Screen Award.

Jon Montes – Producer, NFB

Based in Winnipeg, Jon has been a producer with the NFB’s North West Studio since 2016, working on themes of social justice, identity, and culture with filmmakers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories. His projects include the short documentaries Stories Are in Our Bones (Janine Windolph), Talking at Night (Eric Thiessen), To Wake Up the Nakota Language (Louise BigEagle), and Ride (Kristin Catherwood), the last three produced through the Doc Lab Saskatchewan project. Additionally, the short docs Breaths (Nyla Innuksuk) and Music in the Prairie Night (Mike Maryniuk) were produced for the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards. As associate producer with the NFB in St. John’s and Montreal, his work included the feature docs Gun Runners (Hot Docs 2016) and Danny (Hot Docs 2015), the animated short 54 Hours, the interactive documentary Bubble Dancers, and the 10th and 11th editions of the acclaimed Hothouse animation mentorship program.

Bonnie Thompson – Producer, NFB

Veteran National Film Board producer Bonnie Thompson has worked on more than 70 documentary, interactive, and animation productions out of the North West Studio. Her work has aired on national and international television and online, and has screened at prestigious festivals in Canada and worldwide.

Bonnie’s credits include Birth of A Family, which premiered at the 2017 Hot Docs film festival; Skin for Skin, an animated short that premiered at 2017 Fantasia; the feature documentary Angry Inuk, which won the Hot Docs Audience Award, the People’s Choice Award at TIFF’s annual Canada’s Top 10 Festival, and several other honours; the Oscar-nominated animated short Wild Life; and the online interactive documentary Bear 71, which won a Webby and was named FWA Site of the Year.

Janice Dawe and Kathy Avrich-Johnson – Executive Producers

Janice Dawe and Kathy Avrich-Johnson formed Toronto-based Bizable Media in 2015 to provide business and strategic support to creative producers working in film, television and digital media. Through Bizable, they have served as executive producers on a diverse group of projects, including the acclaimed feature doc A Better Man (Hot Docs 2017), three seasons of the Inuktitut-language comedy series Qanurli?, and the quirky CBC comedy series Crawford.

Both Kathy and Janice have owned their own production companies and held key roles in established production and distribution companies. They’ve each produced hundreds of hours of dramatic, documentary and digital-media content for television, film and the web. Janice was Vice-President of Production at White Pine Pictures where, for eight years, she oversaw their active documentary and drama slate. Subsequently, she executive produced Sugar Coated, winner of the 2016 Donald Brittain Award for Best Social/Political Documentary, and Sponsorland, among other feature docs. Kathy is a senior entertainment lawyer and she executive produced Allan King’s last three feature documentaries, Dying at Grace, Memory for Max, Claire, Ida and Company and Empz for Life.

David Christensen – Executive Producer, NFB

David Christensen is an Executive Producer at the National Film Board of Canada. He manages the North West Studio, which oversees NFB documentary, animation, and interactive production in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Recent films from the North West Studio include Tasha Hubbard’s We Will Stand Up, Supreme Law directed by Katerina Cizek, Alethea Arnaquq- Baril’s Angry Inuk, WALL, directed by Cam Christiansen, and Metamorphosis, directed by Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper. In total, the NWS has about 25-30 projects in development and production at any one time.

Hans Olson - Editor

Hans Olson is a film editor with a passion for observational storytelling. He has edited the NFB documentaries Birth of a Family, directed by Tasha Hubbard, and Things Arab Men Say, directed by Nisreen Baker. In addition to editing work for several Edmonton production companies, Hans’s credits include the independent feature films Until First Light (dir. Kyle Armstrong) and Figurine, which he also produced and directed. Other directing credits include the NFB documentary The Auctioneer (Hot Docs 2013, documentary Channel) and the short drama Champagne (TIFF 2010, CBC Reflections). Hans studied screenwriting at Langara College and was a Directors’ Lab resident at the Canadian Film Centre. He is a recipient of the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award and an alumnus of Berlinale Talents.

Trudy Stewart – Associate Producer

Trudy Stewart is a storyteller based in Regina, Saskatchewan, and a proud member of the Flying Dust First Nation. She co-wrote, co-directed and produced the documentary RIIS from Amnesia (2015) and wrote and directed the short documentary From Up North (2017), which won the International Indigenous Award at the Wairoa Maori Film Festival in New Zealand. Trudy is also a film programmer for the imagineNATIVE festival, and is currently writing her first feature film.