ABUNDANCE OF TALENT
Creative Calgarians finding success
CAM CHRISTIANSEN, FILMMAKER
After toiling away for seven years, Calgary filmmaker Cam Christiansen’s provocative National Film Board animated documentary Wall premièred at the Calgary International Film Festival in 2017 and proved more than worth the wait. Based on British playwright and Oscarnominated screenwriter David Hare’s monologue, Christiansen’s exploration of how a wall separating Israel and Palestine has affected the people of the region is a stunning visual feast.
GLENN DIXON, AUTHOR
Calgary travel writer and former school teacher Glenn Dixon took a unique trip to Verona in hopes of mending his broken heart. He then turned the trip into a bestselling memoir. Juliet’s Answer: One Man’s Search for Love and the Elusive Cure for Heartbreak chronicles his time volunteering as the sole male “secretary” for Shakespeare’s Juliet, joining a group of Italian women who answer missives sent from sad, lonely and lovelorn letter writers from around the world seeking advice from the Bard’s most famous doomed heroine.
LINDSAY ELL, SINGER- SONGWRITER
Calgary native Lindsay Ell has had an eventful 2017, filled with career-topping success and even a little controversy. Ell’s The Project, produced by Sugarland’s Kristian Bush, was released on Aug. 11 and became the No. 1 selling country album that week. She was also in the news after her former boyfriend, iHeartMedia’s Bobby Bones, accused competing radio stations of blacklisting Ell because of their relationship. The couple made headlines again when they broke up in October.
JASON FILIATRAULT, SCREENWRITER
Calgary writer Jason Filiatrault had worked on sitcoms such as Young Drunk Punk and Spun Out, but proved himself to be a master of imaginative and dark comedy with his screenplay for 2017’s Entanglement. The twisty and melancholic rom-com, which screened at the Calgary International Film Festival, stars Thomas Middleditch as a suicidal divorcee who becomes obsessed with unravelling the moments and choices in his life.
GHOSTKEEPER, BAND
Now four albums in, Ghostkeeper can hardly be considered new. But Sheer Blouse Buffalo Knocks was one of 2017’s best and may be the band’s high-water mark. A concept album that is part love story and part dystopian cautionary tale, it dipped into the Metis heritage of husband-and-wife singer-songwriters Shane Ghostkeeper and Sarah Houle and proved both epic and intimate.
JOHN HOFFMAN, ANIMATOR, STORY ARTIST
Former Henry Wisewood High School student John Hoffman spent three-and-a-half years painstakingly working on Cars 3 for animation giant Pixar as a story artist. He is hard at work on his second Pixar film, although he has been sworn to secrecy about it.
TODD KIPP, FILMMAKER
Calgary filmmaker Todd Kipp spent years making his passion project, the intriguing and stranger-than-fiction documentary Some Other Guys. The film chronicles the rise and fall of The Big Three, contemporaries of the Beatles who were pegged as the next-big-thing before fizzling into obscurity. Kipp offers a compelling and lively look at the Liverpool scene of the 1960s and offers a what-ever-happened-to tale about the trio, which included the now Calgary-based guitarist Brian Griffiths.
SCAACHI KOUL, AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST
Former Calgarian Scaachi Koul already had a reputation as an exceptionally funny writer for BuzzFeed before releasing her debut collection of essays in 2017. One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter tackles everything from a disastrous stint in the fitting room of a clothing store, dealing with obtrusive body hair and a friend’s burgeoning alcoholism with fearlessness and laugh-outloud humour. Koul is currently developing a half-hour comedy series based on the book.
CLARE MCCONNELL, ACTRESS
Calgary-born, Second City-trained actress Clare McConnell may not have had a whole lot of screen time yet in Star Trek: Discovery, but she went full Klingon for her role of Dennas. That meant spending hours in the makeup chair and learning the Klingon dialect for the muchhyped sci-fi series.
RALEIGH, BAND
Like Ghostkeeper, Raleigh has been a part of the Calgary scene for some time now. But the band’s third record, Powerhouse Bloom, represents a creative peak for the four-piece. After attracting the attention of Canadian indie-rock heavyweights Brendan Canning, Kevin Drew and Charles Spearin of Broken Social Scene while in Toronto, Raleigh was accepted into a residency at the Banff Centre, which Canning was overseeing and where much of the inventive indie-pop found on the new album began to take shape.
MILAINA ROBINSON, ACTRESS AND DANCER
Actress Milaina Robinson joined the cast of the Family Channel’s The Next Step for its fifth season, playing competitive teen Zara in the hit tween mockumentary. The 16-year-old is a relative newcomer to acting but has been dancing competitively since she was four.
CHAD ROOK, ACTOR
This Lethbridge thespian had a banner year in 2017, thanks to his role as one of the chief antagonists in the summer blockbuster War for the Planet of the Apes. He played Boyle, one of the more enthusiastic of the anti-ape contingent of humans led by Woody Harrelson.
BRAD SAUNDERS, COUNTRY SINGER
This Gander, N.L., native has been steadily working on his craft since moving to Calgary with his family as a child. The hard work is paying off, with Saunders taking home first prize and $100,953 from the Project WILD artist development program in late 2017. He will release a new single this spring.
SANDRA SAWATZKY, VISUAL ARTIST
It took artist Sandra Sawatzky nine years to complete Black Gold Tapestry, a 60-metre handstitched tapestry that tells the complex story of our relationship with oil through the ages. It will remain on display at the Glenbow Museum until May 21, 2018.
JJ SHIPLETT, SINGER- SONGWRITER
As with most who seem to enjoy an “overnight success,” JJ Shiplett’s increasingly high profile on the national stage comes after spending years developing his craft in his hometown. His major-label debut, Something to Believe In, is made up of songs both new and old, with some dating back six years.
SANDI SOMERS, FILMMAKER
An award-winning filmmaker who has crafted more than 75 short films over the years, it’s hard to believe that Sandi Somers had not made a feature film before directing her debut. But her experience behind the camera is evident in Ice Blue, a twisty, assured and well-acted thriller that had its world première at the Calgary International Film Festival.
JILLIAN TAMAKI, ILLUSTRATOR, GRAPHIC NOVELIST
Calgary-raised artist and graphic novelist Jillian Tamaki drew the artwork for 2014’s This One Summer, a collaboration with cousin, Mariko Tamaki, that won a Governor- General prize. In 2017, she released Boundless, a solo project that was inventive, occasionally surreal and confirmed her position as an imagi- native talent in the crowded field of graphic novelists.
JAMES TEEJ, DJ AND PRODUCER
His star has been on the rise for a number of years in the world of electronic music, but Calgaryborn DJ James Teej’s Grammy nomination for his darkly pulsing remix of Paul McCartney’s Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five, which he crafted with world-renowned producer Timo Maas, lifted him even higher in 2017. It didn’t win the Grammy, but did win a thumbs up from Macca himself.
THI VO, FILMMAKER
Calgary filmmaker Thi Vo’s debut feature documentary, Made in Vietnam, was a profoundly personal story that nevertheless found a big audience when it debuted at the Calgary International Film Festival. The film documents Vo’s attempts to find his father in Vietnam. Demand was so high that programmers added a third screening.
DEBORAH WILLIS, AUTHOR
The Dark and Other Love Stories is Calgary author Deborah Willis’s second book since her 2009 debut, Vanishing and Other Stories. While perhaps not the most prolific of writers, Willis’s reputation as one of Canada’s up-and-coming stars of the short story form was only strengthened by the new collection, which landed the author on the Giller long list this year.