The Team
Dianne Whelan: director, writer, adventurer
Dianne is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker, photographer, author and multimedia artist residing in Garden Bay, BC. With every project she tries to multi platforms the stories into films, books and interactive projects. In April 2010, Whelan traveled to Nepal and Mount Everest Base Camp to direct and shoot her award-winning documentary film 40 Days at Base Camp. Her most recent film journey began on July 1, 2015, in St. John’s NL and ended on August 1, 2021 in Victoria, BC
500 Days in the Wild, had it’s world premiere Dec 1st 2023 at the Whistler Film Festival. Her film 40 Days at Base Camp had its world premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival and was the opening night film at the Banff Mountain Film Festival. She also wrote a book about it called Base Camp 40 Days on Everest about her experience living and making a film on the world’s highest mountain. The subject of her first book, This Vanishing Land, references her experience as an embedded media person on a historical Sovereignty Patrol in the Canadian High Arctic. Her National Film Board documentary, This Land, is based on the same journey and has won several awards, including Best Short Documentary at both the Planet in Focus Film Festival in Toronto and the 2010 Leo Awards for BC film and television. A multi-media web project on her Arctic journey was released in June 2010 and won Best Small Multimedia Site at the Online Journalism Awards and was nominated for best art at SXSW. The site was nominated for a 2011 Gemini award for Best Original Program or Series Produced for Digital Media – Non-Fiction.
Dianne’s films, books and multimedia projects are based on adventures and the blending of traditional wisdom with modern cultures. To see more you can visit these links.
www.40daysatbasecamp.com
www.diannewhelan.com
www.nfb.ca/film/this_land
www.thisland.nfb.ca/#/thisland
Betsy Carson : producer
Betsy is an award-winning producer/ EP/ director with over 35 years’ experience in documentary film, television, and public art installation. Projects include the ground-breaking cinematic spectacle UNINTERRUPTED, a Canada 150 public art project directed by Nettie Wild and co-produced with Rae Hull, now adapted into VR. Recent projects include Dead Man’s Switch (EP); The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel – a followup to the groundbreaking 2003 feature doc, produced with Trish Dolman; and the Global Environmental Justice Project, directed and curated by Gary Marcuse. Selected credits include KONELĪNE: our land beautiful (producer) dir: Nettie Wild (2016); Occupy Love (EP) – dir: Velcrow Ripper; Waking the Green Tiger dir: Gary Marcuse (2011); War in the Mind (2011) Judy Jackson’s film about post-traumatic stress in the military.
Ms. Carson has also executive produced several films in collaboration with Mark Achbar: Surviving Progress – dir: Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks; Fierce Light – dir: Velcrow Ripper, Pax Americana – dir: Denis Delestrac, From Neurons to Nirvana – dir: Oliver Hockenhull, and Waterlife – dir: Kevin McMahon.
She has produced the feature docs of Nettie Wild (FIX: The Story of an Addicted City, A Place Called Chiapas, Blockade, Bevel Up), Gary Marcuse (The Mind of a Child, Nuclear Dynamite, Arktika) and Hugh Brody (Tracks Across Sand, The Meaning of Life, Time Immemorial). The films she has collaborated on have won over 50 national and international awards and honours including multiple Genie and Gemini awards, American Film Institute, Berlin, Hot Docs, IDA, Prism, Grantham and other humanities and environmental awards.
Betsy was a Vice Chair of the Documentary Organization of Canada for six years.
Christine Haebler | executive producer
In the film business since 1983, Christine Haebler started off in production on various big-budget US studio films. She then moved into producing in 1995 with her first feature film earning a Best Motion Picture nomination for Hard Core Logo. The film was picked up by Quentin Tarantino for his distribution company Rolling Thunder. She then produced a varied group of feature films including, Scott Speedman’s first feature – Kitchen Party directed by Gary Burns, Ashley Judd starrer – Helen directed by Sandra Nettelbeck, Martin Freeman in – Nightwatching directed by Peter Greenaway and Cuba Gooding Jr/Val Kilmer’s Sci-Fi action thriller Hardwired.
In 2010 she teamed up with Trish Dolman and Screen Siren Pictures- they have developed and produced many films together starting with Mike Goldbach’s Daydream Nation (2010) starring Kat Dennings, Josh Lucas and Andie MacDowell, followed by Peter Chelsom’s Hector And The Search For Happiness (2014) with Simon Pegg, Rosamund Pike, Christopher Plummer, Jean Reno and Stellan Skarsgård.
She developed and produced the multi-award-winning film Indian Horse (2018) directed by Stephen Campanelli. The film was executive produced by Clint Eastwood and won 22 awards internationally. To date it’s the highest-grossing English-Canadian feature film for Elevation Pictures. Christine produced the 10-part TV mini-series Terminal City for UK’s Channel 4 and the 5-part YA miniseries Clue for Hasbro.
She then served as Production Exec on Shut In with Naomi Watts and Warriors Gate written by Luc Besson both for Europacorp.
She also produced French Exit (2020), the feature adaptation of author Patrick DeWitt’s acclaimed novel with Sony Classics, directed by Aza Jacobs, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges, which earned Michelle Pfeiffer a Golden Globe nomination and a CSA win for Best Actress.
She was one of the producers on Dev Patel’s upcoming directorial debut and starring vehicle Monkey Man for Universal.
Her latest project that she produced and developed entitled Bones of Crows, is a dramatic miniseries and feature film from Indigenous filmmaker and playwright Marie Clements, for the CBC and Fifth Season which premiered at TIFF 2022. The film has won 32 awards to date and is nominated for 11 more. The series Premiered on CBC on Sept 20th 2023.
She is currently Exec Producing a feature Doc entitled 500 Days in the Wild by Dianne Whelen for Paramount + to premier internationally in 2024.
Tanya Maryniak : editor/writer
Award-winning filmmaker Tanya directs, writes and edits documentaries that inspire social change. Tanya has worked in film and television for over 20 years, traveling to some of the planet’s remotest corners to satisfy her storytelling addiction. Her work has screened at film festivals worldwide (TIFF, Hot Docs, IDFA) and aired on globally on many platforms (CBC, Discovery Channel, History Channel, Crave and more).
Recently, Tanya won 2 Leos for writing and editing Aitamaako’tamisskapi Natosi: Before The Sun, which follows a young woman’s rookie season of Indian Horse Relay – a dangerous male-dominated sport. Tanya won another Leo for British Columbia: An Untold History, a 4-part series that fuses the diverse voices of historians, elders, authors and families to re-tell the stories of BC. Other key works include I Am Jackie O, a biopic on the iconic yet elusive First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; a portrayal of the man in black in Johnny Cash American Rebel; and collaborations with Academy-award winner John Zaritsky on Do You Really Want To Know? and Wild Horse Redemption.
David F. Ramos : music composer
David is a Mexican award-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist. A classically-trained musician and audio engineer, David emphasizes real instruments to create rich organic scores.
He scored Spike TV’s well-received intimate biopic I Am Heath Ledger (Ang Lee, Ben Harper, Naomi Watts) which launched at the Tribeca Film Festival with 6 sold-out performances. He was awarded a Leo for Best Musical Score for his work on Johnny Cash: American Rebel (Sheryl Crow, Willie Nelson, Rick Rubin).
David had the good fortune to join forces with some greats of the music and film industries, scoring three features for Oscar-winning director John Zaritsky, and collaborating with Grammy-winning producer/composer Ben Mink (k.d. Lang, Rush, Elton John) on multiple projects including the Emmy-nominated mini-series Alice (Kathy Bates, Tim Curry) for Syfy Channel.