I'm a nationally-recognized media scholar, professional photographer, and award-winning filmmaker, taking a 1998 Alberta Motion Picture Industries (AMPIA) award for Best Producer, a 2020 Merit Award at the Canada Shorts film festival for Wheels – a short film on the visual poetry of skateboarding – and then myriad awards for The Orchard – a dark drama produced in 2022 in the Creston area of British Columbia and currently streaming on Tubi and Prime Video (see: www.theorchard-movie.com). More details on IMDBPro and here on FilmFreeway.
In August, 2024, Mark and partner Kerry McArthur launched the Bleeding Tree International Dark Drama Film Festival, garnering rave reviews. See: https://filmfreeway.com/BleedingTreeDarkDramaFilmFestival.
All our feature films stem from our successful completion and distribution of The Orchard (Tubi, Prime, Roku) -- including our 2025 re;lease of Exophoria (Screamify). Future project include Dysphoria and Hexe -- two sequels in one way or another to both The Orchard and Exophoria. We also make films using a community film making model, whereby we script characters to match people -- many of whom have never acted before -- and rely on local musicians to collaborate closely with us to get compelling and professional soundtracks. However, several of our actors have also gone on to complete acting school, film school, produce their own films, and/or are planning on some combination of industry involvement. Along the way, Kerry and I have launched a very successful film festival (see Bleeding Tree, here on FF) in our region that continues to attract some of the best short films in the world, including Paper Horse Production's As Easy as Closing your Eyes, Aaron Goffman's Darcine's Day, and especially strong films coming out of Spain, Mexico and Germany.