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| Australia, working with Gryphon Productions and Biggest and Baddest. 2013 Photo - Andy Ditrick |
I am a Canadian environmental documentary director and videographer. I have a master's degree in environmental studies from York University in Toronto, Canada, and I studied creative cinematography at Humber College Institute of Technology and Television Broadcasting at Mohawk College of Applied Arts. As an editor, camera operator, journalist, producer, and director, I have worn many hats professionally for television stations and networks such as CityTV in Toronto and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
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| Uganda, 2014. On the lookout for tree lions, shooting for Biggest and Baddest. Photo: Andy Dittrich |
Over the decades, I have directed, filmed, and written over 50 environmental documentaries, television specials, and videos about themes such as overfishing, illegal logging, climate change, nuclear energy, and more. A number of these productions have won prestigious environmental film awards.
From 1998 to 2000, I was based in Amsterdam, working with Greenpeace International's communications department as the Senior Creative Features Producer, coordinating the video production work of 30 Greenpeace offices around the world.
In 2000, I gave up my desk in Europe and traded continents to be more closely involved in investigative fieldwork. For the past 15 years, I have been based in Brazil and have focused most of my work on one of the world's most intriguing and essential biomes – the Amazon.
Working in the Amazon, I have used my passion for video and storytelling to help international and Brazilian groups such as Greenpeace, Action Aid, Amazon Watch, Xingu Vivo Para Sempre, and Conservation International, as well as Indigenous communities like the Xavantes, Kayapo, Yanomami, Enawenê-nawê, and the Deni.
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| A citizenship honour from the City of Florianopolis for the documentary "A Questao Animal" |
Images I have produced from Amazon have been broadcast by the BBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, the CBC, O Globo, and various other channels and networks around the world. My productions and documentaries have also been widely received internationally.
The 2005 documentary Soy: in the Name of Progre$$ was translated into several languages and distributed throughout Europe. The documentary tells the story of soybean farming expansion in the Amazon and how it affects forests and communities that rely on them. It won the viewer's choice award as Best Environmental Documentary at MIDCAM 2006: the Environmental Film Festival in Natal, Brazil.
Paramount Pictures distributed a documentary I wrote and directed in 2007, Mudanças do clima, mudanças de vidas (Changes in climate, changes in lives), throughout Brazil for home DVD together with the Brazilian release of the Oscar Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. The documentary later won the iBEST Award for best online video in Brazil, and Brazil's Ministry of Education included a DVD copy of the video in over 500,000 school textbooks about ecology.
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| West Papua, 2009. Photo: Daniel Beltra |
In 2010, my extensive work in the rainforest attracted the attention of the group Amazon Watch. They invited me to be part of a special team led by AVATAR creator James Cameron to document the Oscar-award-winning director's work opposing the Belo Monte hydroelectric project in the Amazon.
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Sailing with Brazil's famous vilfredo Schurman on the sea-hunt for a lost WWII german U-boat off the coast of Brazil.
Spoiler alert: we found it. |
My images from that campaign appear in a James Cameron documentary called A Message from Pandora, which won the Cinema for Peace International Green Film Award. I filmed again with Cameron in 2011 when he revisited the Amazon, this time with former California governor and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and again with the Avatar Alliance in 2014.
I continued to highlight the issues with the Belo Monte dam, and I went on to direct a multiple award-winning documentary for the international NGO Birdlife called DAMocracy, which debunks much of the "green and clean" propaganda used to promote new dams in the Amazon and throughout the world.
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| Filming with James Cameron's Avatar Alliance, Arnold Swartzennegar and the legendary Raoni, my friend. |
Some other highlights: I was the Director of Photography for the Schurmann Film Company's feature-length documentary Lone Wolf, which follows the search for a German submarine that sunk off Brazil's southern coast during WW II. I also teamed up again with the Schurmanns for their 2013 film The Disappeared.
I just finished as the director of photography for season two of the Discovery / Animal Planet series Biggest & Baddest for Gryphon productions.
The Dirty Little War over Chico's Bar, which I co-wrote, filmed, directed and edited is a powerful feature-length documentary about development and community activism in Brazil's south. It is currently on the festival circuit and won best documentary (from the popular jury) at FAM, an international festival in Florianopolis. |
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