Jon Mann is a graduate of Acadia University (POLS, 2011) and the New York Film Academy (Screenwriting, 2013). In 2012, he wrote the documentary Drink ‘Em Dry which premiered at Harvard Law School, making Jon the youngest person in the school’s history to present written work (at age 22).

After Harvard, the film Drink ‘Em Dry is now in universities and colleges in North and South America, Europe, and Australia. Drink ‘Em Dry was also nominated for Best Canadian Documentary at the Canadian Labour International Film Festival (2012).

In 2014, Jon completed his first feature-length documentary, Project Power, which follows the social movement against the sale of NB Power to Hydro-Quebec in 2010. In 2015 Jon co-wrote and directed the short-film Rearview which racked up wins and nominations at film festivals worldwide.

In 2017, Jon and production partner Rob Ramsay‘s project Wolfville won the 2018 National Screen Institute’s Totally Television program. Filming for the short film’s Cahoots & Missy, written and directed by Jon, completed Fall 2017. In 2018, Jon was a Production Coordinator for TIFF Pitch This! short film winner Wildfire.

In September 2018, Wolfville was optioned by Take The Shot Productions.

In October 2018, Jon adapted Stephen King’s short story Popsy into a short film. The film is currently in post-production.

In February 2019, Cahoots won Best Canadian Film at the Canadian International Comedy Film Festival in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In March 2019, Cahoots was nominated for Best Comedy at the DeReel Film Festival in Dereel, Australia.

Missy is now on CBC GEM

Check him out @jonnyman

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Jackie Torrens is a Halifax-based actor, writer and film director. She and producer Jessica Brown have, under their company Peep Media, completed four documentary films for CBC, the Documentary Channel and Bravo which include Edge of East, My Week on Welfare, Small Town Show Biz and Bernie Langille Wants to Know Who Killed Bernie Langille, which premiered last spring at Hot Docs.

Jackie has also done two documentary films for Telltale Productions, Free Reins and the feature-length Radical Age. Torrens’ radio documentaries include The Poet Laureate of Youth Now, which received an Atlantic Journalism Award and Camp Mini Ha Ha, which received a CBC Award of Excellence.

As an actor, she was nominated for a Canadian Screen Best Actress Award for her work in Thom Fitzgerald’s mini-series Sex & Violence. In January, she played Hamlet at Neptune Theatre, produced by Below The Salt Theatre.

Her film, Bernie Langille Wants to Know Who Killed Bernie Langille just won Best Short Film Award at the Screen Nova Scotia Awards and Jackie also won Best Director Award from Women in Film & Television – Atlantic.

Check her out @torrensjackie

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Born on the West Coast and living on the East, Jessy-Jean Kafka hopes to share her passion and love for creatures with the world. Having a passion for horror movies, it inspired a lot of spooky and grotesque art. Though her creativity and humour landed her the most recent position in Vandal Doughnut’s design team.

An alumnus of NSCAD University, Jessy-Jean Kafka has graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Minor in Illustration. Digital Media is her primary medium, she hopes to fully establish herself as a Halifax creative.

Check her out @wyrmskin 

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William loves business, marketing and telling stories.

In this week’s episode, he shares his reasons for deciding to study in Halifax, starting www.halifax.business and a lot more.

I had a wonderful time getting to know William a lot better.

Check him out @williamwzc

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Jon is a Haligonian and a proud father of two girls. His work for the Nova Scotia Health Authority (IT Division) keeps him busy but he always makes time for cycling as an avid cyclist.
Jon loves his long rides and his team the “Roadents”. The longest solo ride was 250km this past summer and he will be working on a 300 km ride this September.
He loves being part of getting new folks on bicycles and believes that as a country we need to try harder in looking at alternate avenues of transportation and the bicycle is one. “Hell of a way to make an impact”.
I had a wonderful time with Jon and I’m sure you’ll enjoy this episode.

Born in Ontario and trained in Los Angeles, Brent worked internationally as a fashion photographer for eight years creating campaigns for clients in London, Paris, New York, Vancouver and New Delhi before meeting a lovely girl from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, settling down and refocusing on portrait, wedding and local commercial photography.

In addition to his primary commercial work, Brent has also dabbled in landscape, wildlife and sports photography, seeking a broad range of photographic experiences.

Highlights of his career so far include two expeditions to Antarctica, shooting fashion runway shows in New York City, photographing the Brier and World Hockey Championships, finding himself less than 5 meters from a huge polar bear in Svalbard, Norway, barely surviving being charged by a walrus on the Arctic ice pack, doing the only fashion editorial ever done after dark in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and photographing his own wedding. Brent is also the first Atlantic Canadian to be published in British and Italian Vogue.

Brent was recognized as a ‘Master of Commercial Photography’ in 2013 and was named the Portrait Photographer of the Year for 2017 by the Professional Photographers of Canada in Atlantic Canada.

He now lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia with his lovely wife Sarah, their four birds, 1 cat, and 1 horse.

I had an amazing time chatting with Brent.

Check him out @alteregohalifax

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A new act on the streets of Toronto, Earl Donald is the recording project of multi-instrumentalist/producer James Cuvilier. Cuvilier introduced this new project with the release of the EP Where You Know Yourself in the fall of 2018. On WYKY, Cuvilier explores a laid-back minimalist electronic sound featuring melodic vocals and swirling synth lines.
Cuvilier began writing early song ideas that would later become the basis of Earl Donald following a relocation to Toronto in 2017. Both the excitement of city life and the feeling of isolation in a modern metropolis play heavily into the sound and quality of Cuvilier’s music.
Originally from Edmonton, Cuvilier played in the local indie and punk scene for years. In his most recent project, MoonMuseum, Cuvilier opened for the likes of Teen Daze, Beach Season, and Old Man Canyon, and toured extensively across Western Canada.

Chris Henningsen is an inventor that believes that we all have a part to play in the healing of the planet. He is passionate about building things, figuring how things work out and making them better.

He got a patent which he talks about in this episode. We also talk about Elon Musk, time travel and how he is like Leonard da Vinci. This was a fun episode.

Enjoy.

You can follow Chris

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Nicole Steeves is an award-winning Writer/Director/Actor.

She has written and directed six short films and two feature films. Her first feature, Head Space was made possible through the 1K WAVE ATLANTIC program created by WIFT-AT and Ingrid Veninger of pUNK Films. Her most recent feature, Aliens with Knives (Co-Directed with Struan Sutherland) was created in partnership with Cinema 902 and Eastlink Television and is currently in its award-winning festival run.

Nicole is one of the five winners of the 2017 national screenwriting competition From Our Dark Side. She was also the winner of the 2015 WIFT Pitch Competition for her project Getaway and is an alumnus of the Women in the Director’s Chair mentoring program.

Along with co-writer Struan Sutherland and producer Andre Pettigrew, Nicole became one of the CineCoup Top 15 finalists in Canada with their concept for Namas-DIE. Gnaw, a short film created for Cinecoup was picked by Telefilms Not Short On Talent Program and screened at Clermont Ferrand short film market.

I’ve learned so much working with Nicole and I learn even more in this episode.

Check her out at @nicsteeves

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Ruth Marsh is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist of settler ancestry based out of Kjipuktuk,(Halifax, NS, Canada) whose practice employs an absurdist approach which seeks to queer the intersections between DIY culture, art practice and science fact/fiction/fabulation to address memory, healing, cybernetic enhancement and responsive mutation both in bodies and environments.

She approaches her practice from a perspective which is part mad scientist and part devoted repair technician. Through processes which are inherently labour intensive, repetitive and painstaking; she is interested in playfully exploring the ways in which modalities of labour can translate into a study of enacted care and hopeful mourning.

I had a blast talking to Ruth.