 INFORMATION |
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INFORMATION |
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BACKGROUNDER
Jordan Wheeler - Cree / Irish
Born to a Cree mother (Bernelda), a CBC journalist and an Irish father (Peter), Wheeler became a journalist and published short stories. To support his writing, Wheeler worked on the technical side of a string of independent productions, from CBC anthology dramas to in-house corporate training videos, moving from production assistant to editing and directing.
Starting in 1989 he combined his two occupations by co-writing, Welcome Home Hero, a half-hour film starring Tom Jackson and Rene Highway. In 1992 Wheeler became writer and story editor with CBC’s, North of 60. After four years and nine scripts, he moved on to other projects such as, The Rez, Big Bear, Black Harbour, The Adventures of Shirley Holmes and Tales From the Longhouse.
Wheeler still dabbles in journalism with a weekly column for the Winnipeg Free Press and teaches the craft of scriptwriting when he isn’t writing scripts himself.
Barbara Samuels
Barbara Samuels began screenwriting full time in 1987, with several scripts in the Canada-France coproduction Mount Royal. She moved on to NBC’s Jim Henson Hour, then served as executive story editor (along with Wayne Grigsby) on the first two seasons of E.N.G.
Together, they contributed twenty plus scripts to the show.
This writing/producing team developed several pilots for American television. Samuels and Grigsby were the creators and executive producers of the Alliance series North of 60, which ran for six seasons on CBC-TV. The show also spawned three MOW’s. In 1995, they formed Fogbound Films; through the company, they financed, created and executive-produced the one-hour drama series Black Harbour, which ran from 1996 through 1999 on CBC-TV.
Samuels is now pursuing projects independently.
Roman Bittman - Metis
Roman Bittman, born in Fort Vermilion, Alberta and a member of the Metis Nation of Alberta, was a producer, director and writer with the CBC and executive producer and studio head at the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal.
He is on the Board and Executive Committee of the National Film Institute, is a member of the Canadian Film & Television Producers Association, an advisor to the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and former Board member, as well as a former Governor of the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design.
Bittman, a leading figure in Canadian media production and finance, is an executive with Visual Bible International Inc. which with its associated companies have provided more than $100 million in financing and investment for quality film and television projects and distribution for producers in Canada and overseas in the past 3 years. He is also President of Mobius Entertainment Corporation, a private Canadian media company associated with VBI Inc.