In Development
A Christmas Furey
Feature / Comedy / English
Produced by 2M Innovative
Written by Mary Walsh and Sherry White
Any family is better than no family during the holidays…
…Unless that family is the Fureys from “Hatching, Matching and Dispatching”, of course. A Christmas Furey deals with the joys, sadness and madness that are a part of every holiday season… with extra emphasis on the madness.
There are old traditions like crazy work parties, sibling rivalry, excessive drinking, holiday meals and Christmas songs. But then there are new ones like living, breathing Nativity scenes, bringing home a foster child for the holidays and, the not-so-giving present exchange idea, the “Giving Circle.”
The Fureys survive their Christmas, and learn about the joys a child can bring. But unlike that first Christmas, there’s barely a wise man and not a virgin to be found.
Don't Ask
Series / Factual-Interactive / English
Produced by Rink Rat Productions
Written by Ed Riche
“Don’t Ask” is the public affairs program that does. “Should smokers be denied health care?” “How about the obese?” “As Canadians overwhelmingly prefer to consume mass culture, why should we support indigenous artists?” “Were your RRSPs an elaborate con?”
An introductory essay is followed by documentary elements; the finding of facts needed to tackle the toughest questions going and animate a panel discussion moderated by our provocative host.
The show is totally mobile, completely unchained from the studio. The panels take place in cafes and bars, community centres always in a very public place.
Our host is sceptical, allergic to spin even, sometimes, like our audience a little angry.
Kild by Severall Accidents
Feature / Documentary / English
Produced by Rink Rat Productions and The National Film Board of Canada Written by Ed Riche
What is “risk?” When was it first conceptualized by man? When was it first quantified and then commodified? How does the human mind weigh comparative risks and why do we so often get it wrong? What strategies have we imagined to minimize our exposure to risks, from communicable disease to declines in the value of our assets?
“Kild by Severall accidents” is a meditation on “risk” an exploration of the concept and how we perceive and respond (rationally and otherwise) to possible perils and real dangers.
The film takes it title from the category “Kild by Severall accidents” as listed on a table of deaths in London for the year 1665.
Maudie
Feature / Drama / English
Produced by Rink Rat Productions and Screen Door
Written by Sherry White
“Maudie” is a coming of age story about the famous artist who learns to overcome her handicap and discover who she truly is through her art and an unlikely love interest.
After a family scandal, MAUDE DOWLEY (30) has to go and live with her kindhearted cousin Irene. Maude has everything she needs provided for her, and as long as she is content to be a guest in someone else’s home, she has a place to live. So Irene is bewildered when she discovers Maude answers a job ad posted at the local store. The person behind the ad is EVERETT LEWIS (48), an infamous miser, and crooked old soul. Maude walks for miles to Everett’s house. Everett doesn’t know what to make of the odd little woman who talks too much and chain-smokes the minute she arrives at his door, so he sends her home. But he continues to see Maude around the town, and within a few weeks he offers her the position. Maude agrees to take the job on one condition; they get married.
Maude moves into Everett’s squat little one room house, and for the first time in her life she has a home of her own. Everett is wary of her optimistic presence, and keeps himself out of the house for most hours in the day. It isn’t long before he discovers Maude has some physical challenges that get in the way of her housework - rheumatoid arthritis has turned her hands into claws. But Maude barely mutters a complaint. Neither does she acknowledge her poorly done housework. Maude spends most of her time at a little table painting her beautiful childlike pictures. Everett tries to shame Maude out of wasting her days painting, but Maude doesn’t hear him. She starts to sell greeting cards to locals and tourists, and for the first time in her life, she has everything she’d dreamed of; a house, a husband, a career, and a community. Then when an AMERICAN WOMAN recognizes the potential in Maude’s work, she encourages Maude to move from greeting cards to paintings. And when the paintings start to sell, Everett fears his cozy, safe lifestyle is threatened.
Despite Maude’s increasing success, Everett continues to horde their money and they continue to live in absolute poverty. Maude barely complains, until she realizes that Everett had been stealing money from letters requesting paintings. Maude crosses a line with Everett in returning this money without his consent, and he goes out of his way to destroy some of the beauty she had created. This causes Maude to rethink her relationship with Everett, but it isn’t long before they realize they both improve each other’s life far more than hinder it. And though Everett is beyond changing his miserly ways, he learns to appreciate Maude enough to try. By the time Maude’s ailing health overcomes her, Everett has learned to accept Maude as his wife, and his love for her gives meaning to his life for the first time.
In their odd, mysterious relationship, they manage to give each other the things they thought they were destined to live without. For him, it was virtues. For her, it was legitimacy.
Love can be so profound.
Mending Fences
Series / Factual / English
Produced by Rink Rat Productions
Written by Ed Riche
An original prime time, multi platform reality series, which finds the conflicts between Canadian neighbours that have escalated into all out war and does its best to resolve them.
This show is about the people next door whose kid’s thrash metal band practices into the wee hours, the stench of Kim chi fermenting in the yard or the sausages hung to cure on the clothesline, the fat guy who insists on walking around in nothing but a throng – sometimes the fence can’t be high enough to make good neighbours and there’s trouble.
Sometimes it’s as simple as a dispute over a property line, other times it’s as messy as an unwanted sexual advance at a drunken pool party twelve years ago. Whatever the cause our *host gets in there to settle the matter.
Over the course of 10 hour-long episodes, “Mending Fences” will visit rural and urban neighbourhoods across Canada, showcasing our country’s cultural and geographical diversity while entertaining the audience with real stories of neighbourhood wars that we can all relate to, sympathise with and laugh at.
Our host isn’t above taking sides. Sure he’s a conciliator but sometimes one party is just in the wrong or, in the view of pretty much everyone on the block, a giant asshole and then our host becomes arbiter. The judgement can be harsh but, hey, people gotta live.
Monchy Nine
Pilot / Docu-Drama / English
Co-produced by Hell Creek Entertainment, Rink Rat Productions and M9 Productions
Not a message could be heard from the front. This worried the Commanding officer of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, Lt. Col. Forbes-Robertson. Immediately, he sent forward the signalling officer, Lt. Kevin Keegan. When Lt. Keegan arrived at the front what he say was horrific – not a single Newfoundlander left standing… all either badly wounded or dead. Moreover, five hundred Germans were continuing their advance.
It is what happened next, at 10am on the 14th of April 1917, that truly extols the Regiment’s motto: “Better Than The Best”. Forbes-Robertson collected every man he could from his headquarters staff, armed them with rifles and ammunition from the scores of wounded strewn at the scene, and over the next few hours, nine men held off a massive German attach.
So soon after the slaughter of the Somme, The Battle of Monchy-le-Preux, proved yet another bloody day for the regiment, 166 killed, 141 wounded and 153 captured. Those nine brave men, however, over incredible odds, held the line – essentially saving the day.
Ninety years later, M9 productions return to the now serene village of Monchy-le-Preux with present day members of The Royal Newfoundland Regiment, to rededicate their World War One monument. Included in that group are two soldiers whose family members fought on that fateful day – never to return to their island home. It is through those families, interviews, first-hand accounts and chilling battle scene re-enactments that we retell one of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment’s most incredible honors, the day the none men saved Monchy!
Regarding Our Father
Feature / Documentary / English
Produced by Rink Rat Productions
Written and Directed by John W. Doyle and Marjorie Doyle
Gerald Stanley Doyle was an astute businessman and one of Newfoundland’s first collectors of folk songs and ballads. He was also a avid cinematographer who left a collection of more than twelve hours of 16mm colour film – images shot in costal Newfoundland and Labrador in the 1930’s and 40’s. Now two of his children – filmmaker John W. Doyle and writer Marjorie Doyle – are using this footage to create a portrait of Newfoundland during a period of profound change.
Gerald S. Doyle was born in 1892 in Kings Cove, Bonavista Bay. By the time he was in his mid-thirties, he had built a flourishing business processing cod liver oil and acting as an agent for imported goods. His customers were mostly in the outports and he made personal contact with them by sailing around the island and up to costal Labrador every summer. He had his own motorboat, the Miss Newfoundland, and he called into all inhabited harbours, meeting with his customers and promoting his products.
A constant companion on Doyle’s trips around Newfoundland was his Cine-Kodak Model K 19mm movie camera. From the late 1930’s until the mid-50’s he captured images ouf outport Newfoundland: its people and their ways, the sea and the landscape. The Kodachrome footage is in excellent condition with vivid colours and has been transferred to Digital Betamax with scene-to-scene colour correction.
It’s an extraordinary collection. No one else was documenting Newfoundland on such a scale during this period. Many of the films were shot from the deck of the Miss Newfoundland, providing an unparalleled historical view of the outports from the water. The collection constitutes a unique archive of moving images taken at a time when Newfoundlanders were abandoning nationhood and sowing the seeds of an uncertain future.
There are scenes of the fishery – men in dories hauling huge codfish with hook and line, women salting and drying the fish on the beach. There are boat builders and lumber camps and wagons laden with hay. A woman stands in front of her house holding an exotic plant. Families in their best clothes crowd into trap skiffs for a trip to Sunday Mass. The costal boat arrived in a remote community bringing passengers mail from the outside world. In one surreal sequence, two local teenagers outfitted in Lifesaver Girl costumes stroll along the wharf giving out candies to the men splitting fish – a vision from the 1940’s stepping into a scene that would have changed little since the 17th century.
Interviews with historians and musicologists give context to the original material, along with people who still remember the Miss Newfoundland sailing into their childhood homeports.
This documentary also tells the story of Doyle’s other great contributions to Newfoundland life; the songbooks he published for free distribution containing folk songs he collected on his trips, and The Doyle Bulletin, a nightly radio program that was a fixture in Newfoundland homes for thirty years – a community bulletin board linking hundreds of isolated communities in a deeply personal way.
Gerald S. Doyle knew that Newfoundland was changing fast as time and something was being lost beyond recovery. This documentary is a personal attempt to understand a man and the country he passionately loved through the stunning images he captured on film.
Searching For Peter Kerrivan
Feature / Documentary / English
Produced by Rink Rat Productions
Written by Linda Conway
Drive from St. John’s to Renews, an outport of 375 people, located on the Southern Shore of Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula. Look west. Beyond the marshes and forests of stunted spruce, a bold, solitary peak of red and grey stone dominates the landscape. This is the Butterpot, and for residents of Renews, it stands in a place where legend and history meet.
Here, in the high barrens surrounding the mountain is where Peter Kerrivan and The Society of Masterless Men took their chances living in an unknown wilderness, rather than face the squalor and brutality of indentured servitude. Here, in kitchens, and on the wharves of Renews, local residents will point towards the Butterpot, and tell you about the Masterless Men. Some may even mention that they are the descendents of those very outlaws.
However, academics and historians insist that Peter Kerrivan and The Society of Masterless Men never existed—a “mere folktale caught on the wind”—although they will admit the legend certainly reflects the social and economic conditions of fishing plantations on the Southern Shore in eighteenth-century Newfoundland.
But if oral accounts, shared in Renews, fail in offering the explicit detail demanded by historians for establishing an authoritative record, there is no doubt that these stories are profoundly embedded in local landscape and identity. You are listening to a community’s own memory of itself, layered with anecdotes that have been preserved and transmitted for generations.
If story-tellers are sometimes vague on the specific timing of events, they are precise about location—their intimacy “of place” is present and tangible. They don’t ignore the construct of time, but in telling their stories, they operate in a unique temporal plane, neither purely in the past, nor absolutely in the present, but in both simultaneously—thus creating a poetic alchemy of time, and authenticity, that will never exist in the dry data of academia.
Within the stories of Peter Kerrivan and The Society of Masterless Men, lies the DNA of authentic indigenous culture—stories created out of a community’s deep engagement with the landscape in which they reside. Stories that summon forth what the Irish indentify as “duchas”, a word that suggests: “a collective soul; one’s native place; a shared tradition; where one belongs.”
“Searching for Peter Kerrivan” is a meditation on the intangible power of story-telling tradition encountered at the intersection of legend and history. And, how these stories shape identity, form community, and confer meaning to the landscape people consider home.
