Jim Brown

"What interests me is not only the issue of suburban sprawl - but the whole nature of the documentary. When does the fact end and the fiction begin? As a journalist I am aware that even an apparently simple TV report is constructed to some extent. As soon as you put a camera in the mix, reality is mediated."
- Jim Brown

Jim Brown is a writer and broadcaster with over twenty years' experience in journalism. He was the publisher and editor of the PEI-based IslandSide Magazine from 1988 to 1993, and his written work, both as a reporter and columnist, has appeared in numerous periodicals and newspapers across Canada.

Since 1993 Brown has worked in a number of capacities in radio and TV. His extensive radio experience includes guest host on CBC radio's The Current, As It Happens, This Morning and The House. He has also hosted daily current-affairs radio programs in St. John's and Calgary, where he currently hosts The Eye Opener.

His work as a journalist and editor has been recognized by the Atlantic Journalism Awards, the Nova Scotia Press Gallery Awards and the Island Literary Awards.

Radiant City, a feature-length documentary produced by Burns Film Ltd in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada, marks Brown's debut as a film director.

"Gary and I both grew up in the suburbs," says Brown, "and we were both interested in the issue of suburban sprawl."

"Working with Gary was a remarkably easy and organic experience. Neither of us had made a documentary before - I'm a journalist and Gary had directed feature films - but our vision was the same."

Bonnie Thompson

"The National Film Board has a distinguished history of making documentaries that spark discussion and shape public debate on social issues. Gary and Jim have created an exciting variation on that theme. With Radiant City, they reinvent the tradition and give us a lively and invigorating film on an issue that affects cities across North America."
- Bonnie Thompson

Bonnie Thompson started her career at the National Film Board of Canada with the organization's Women's Marketing Group, an innovative initiative in social marketing. She went on to become the marketing manager for the NFB's documentaries in Western Canada and eventually moved into production.

Based at the NFB's North West Centre in Edmonton, Thompson works with filmmakers and producers from Alberta and the NWT.

Among her recent credits is Two Worlds Colliding, directed by Tasha Hubbard. The film won the Canada Award at the 2005 Geminis for its insightful account of the troubled relationship between Saskatoon's police force and the city's Aboriginal community.

She also produced the award-winning War Hospital, a 2005 HD feature documentary about the world's biggest field hospital, co-produced with NHK (Documentary Channel).

She has produced over 30 films on a wide range of subjects, ranging from TV documentaries and feature films to animation and educational projects. Death of a Skyline, directed by Bryan Smith, is an elegy to the disappearing grain elevators of the Canadian Prairies. Totem: The Return of the G'psgolox Pole is Gil Cardinal's moving account of an Aboriginal community's effort to retrieve a treasured artefact from a European museum.

Thompson has taken an active role in supporting women filmmakers and emerging artists and has served as jury member or curator at numerous festivals.

Shirley Vercruysse

"When Gary told me his idea for Radiant City, I thought 'of course!' The film is another step on his path - a natural extension of his earlier work. It's strong and unusual - and it's bound to provoke debate about the way we live today, the choices we make and the profound consequences of those choices."
- Shirley Vercruysse

Shirley's first collaboration with Burns was on waydowntown, which won the Toronto City Award for best Canadian Feature Film at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival and was named the best Canadian Film of 2000 by the Toronto Film Critics Association. Vercruysse herself was awarded the 2000 Artistic Merit Award by Vancouver's Women in Film and Video.

In 2001 and 2002 she produced the National Screen Institute's Features First Program - a training initiative for first-time feature filmmakers. Several projects that she mentored through First Features were later produced, including On the Corner (Nathaniel Geary, 2003) and Seven Times Lucky (Gary Yates, 2003). In 2002 she took on the role of "spiritual advisor" - a.k.a. consulting producer - on the cult hit Fubar, written and directed by Michael Dowse.

In 2003 she produced Gary Burn's A Problem with Fear (2003), an Alberta/Quebec co-production with Montreal-based micro_scope, which opened the Perspective Canada section of the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival as well as the Panorama Special section of the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival.

Her numerous credits also include consulting producer on A Simple Curve, written and directed by Aubrey Nealon (2005); producer on Bruce McCullouch's Comeback Season, a co-production with Accent Entertainment that premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival; producer on The Oldest Basketball Team in the World (2006), a TV documentary for CHUM Television in co-production with Blue Heron Entertainment; and executive producer on Immigrant, a first feature by Bojan Bodruzic. She is currently developing a range of new projects with Gary Burns, including the feature films Aquadale and The Marching Band Wars.

Radiant City, produced by Burns Film Ltd in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada, is Vercruysse's first feature-length documentary.

Financiers

Produced by Burns Film Ltd. in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada and in association with CBC Television and with the participation of the Canadian Television Fund created by the Government of Canada and the Canadian Cable Industry CTF: License Fee Program and with the assistance of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Film Development Program, the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit and Rogers Telefund

The Moss Family

Daniel Jeffery

Daniel Jeffery has always had an appreciation for the absurd but he began his acting career at the age of 11 when he was cast as "Turkey Boy" in Theatre Calgary's A Christmas Carol. Continuing his acting career Daniel appeared in three more Christmas Carol productions, Counsellor-at-Law for Theatre Calgary, Lord of the Flies for Sage Theatre, and numerous radio commercials. He also can be seen in the films Little House on the Prairie and Karol's Christmas. With the success of his acting career Daniel got himself a small Digital 8 camera and started exploring his love of animation and film making. An avid film watcher from epics to cult classics Daniel is interested in all areas of the medium. As fate would have it, not only did Daniel play the lead Nick in the film 'Radiant City' but his film 'Execution Paintball' also made a cameo appearance.

Bob Legare

Since moving to Calgary three years ago from Ottawa, Bob has been acting in film and on stage in and around Calgary. He lives in the farthest reaches of suburban Calgary with his wife Marlene. Bob's previous film credits include No Sense, The End, Undone, School of the Dead, Eugene's Chair, Identity Theft and Hope's Convenience. He was one of the Cowboy G's, the winner of the 2005 Big Rock Eddies first prize, and he's pretty sure that his right arm got into frame in Brokeback Mountain. Bob's Calgary stage credits include Heinrich in Rogues' Theatre's Push Up 1-3, Uncle Billy in Echo37's It's a Wonderful Life, and various roles in Company of Rogues' 24 Hours PM. In Ottawa, Bob's stage credits included The Point, Working, The Butler Did It, The Mousetrap, Arsenic and Old Lace, Fiddler on the Roof, My Fair Lady, Oklahoma and She Loves Me.

Jane MacFarlane

Jane MacFarlane is a Calgary actor, director and coach.� Some favorite roles include: Mrs Crachit in A Christmas Carol[Theatre Calgary]; Barbara Fawcett in The Constant Wife [Theatre Junction]; Kate in Taming of the Shrew and eight different roles in Jim Cartwright's Road, for which she received a Leon Rabin/Dallas Theatre League nomination for Best Actress [Kitchen Dog Theatre]; Masha in Three Sisters [Kits House].� Directing credits include: Necessary Targets [Urban Curvz]; A Midsummer Nights Dream [Carousel Theatre]; The Dining Room, Oedipus Rex and Our Town [MRC Theatre].� Jane is also a voice and dialect coach and has worked with Theatre Calgary, Theatre Junction, Alberta Theatre Projects and Sage Theatre, to name a few.

Ashleigh Fidyk

Ashleigh Fidyk, a true Calgary girl, born September 26, 1994 is the eldest of three girls. You may have seen this smiling face in a variety of TV commercials and print ads but Radiant City was her first big role. She attends Ecole St. Matthew Jr. High in the French Immersion Program. Ashleigh is a provincial level gymnast at Altadore Gymnastic Club and a Green belt in the South Calgary Wado Kai Karate Club. Ashleigh enjoys not only gymnastics and karate but spending time with her family traveling and hiking and of course playing with her puppy Tal.

Patrick McLaughlin

Patrick McLaughlin's longstanding relationship with Gary Burns goes back to 1995 when he was director of photography on Burns's short film Beerland.

Since then McLaughlin has worked as DOP on three of Burns's feature films - The Suburbanators, waydowntown and Kitchen Party (DOP on 2nd unit), as well as the short film F**k Coke. Most recently McLaughlin shot Burns's first feature-documentary, Radiant City, co-directed with Jim Brown and produced by Burns Film Ltd in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada.

His total credits number over 30, ranging from feature films and documentaries to music videos and shorts. His feature credits include Six Figures, directed by David Christensen; Posthumous, directed by Jay Ferguson; and Solitude, directed by Robin Schladt. He was the 2nd unit DOP on the acclaimed NFB documentary Project Grizzly, directed by Peter Lynch, and has shot music videos for Mathew Kershaw, Steve Goldsworthy and Michael Dowse.

Jonathan Baltrusaitis

A recent graduate of McGill University (Film and Communication/Cultural studies) and the Vancouver Film School, Baltrusaitis has worked in various capacities in film and television production, including camera operator, director of photography and editor.

His recent editor credits include the HD series Half Mile of Hell, produced by Zoom Media; Fixing Dinner, produced by the Joe Media Group; and the Genie-nominated Why Don't You Dance, produced by Charlotte Bernard Entertainment.

Radiant City is his first feature-length documentary. It is co-directed by Gary Burns and Jim Brown and produced by Burns Film Ltd in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada.

Film Credits

Written & Directed by	GARY BURNS & JIM BROWN
Producer	SHIRLEY VERCRUYSSE
Producer for the National Film Board	BONNIE THOMPSON
Cinematographer	PATRICK MCLAUGHLIN
Editor	JONATHAN BALTRUSAITIS
Featuring Songs by	JOEY SANTIAGO
Music Supervisors	JOHN BISSELL & NATALIE BAARTZ
CAST
Nick Moss	DANIEL JEFFERY
Evan Moss	BOB LEGARE
Anne Moss	JANE MACFARLANE
Jennifer Moss	ASHLEIGH FIDYK
Ken	CURT MCKINSTRY
Karen	KAREN JEFFERY
Nicole	MICHAELA JEFFERY
Tina	AMANDA GUENTHER
Hong	HONG CHENG
Kyle	KYLE GRANT
Austin	AUSTIN PENNY
Terry	CAYLA WOLEVER
Aaron Elekes	HIMSELF
Play Director	DELPHINE BROOKER
Play Actor	STIRLING KARLSEN
Play Actor	CHANTAL PERRON
Play Actor	KEITH WHITE
Play Actor	NATASHA GIRGIS
Piano Player	OLIVER WESTHALL
Woman at Play	MINA SIMI
Woman at Play	DORIS LATRIELLE
Heather Fidyk	HERSELF
Darren Fidyk	HIMSELF
WITH
KEN GREENBERG
JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER
MARK KINGWELL
JOSEPH HEATH
PEGGY SCOTT
MARC BOUTIN
ANDRÉS DUANY
BEV SANDALACK
CREW
Co-Producer	NEALE JOUDRIE
1st Assistant Director	RICHARD FRIEDMAN
Script Supervisor	SABRINA BIRRELL
Accountant	LESLIE MAYNES
First Assistant Camera	BRIAN SHIER
Stills Photographer	DONNA BRUNSDALE
Production Designer	JOHN SHERRINGTON
Hair, Makeup, Wardrobe	CAROLINE DEHNER
Unit Manager	MARK VOYCE
Location Manager	BRIAN DUNNE
Sound Mixer	IGAL PETEL
Gaffer	DEREK WAITE
Key Grip	WARREN GIBSON
Casting	DEB GREEN CDC
Extras Casting	ALYSON LOCKWOOD
Craft Services	MELODY THOMPSON
Production Assistant	JENN VINCENT
POST PRODUCTION
Supervising Sound Editor	PATRICK BUTLER
Sound Editors	BENNETT SUBA & RYAN SCHRIML
Foley Recordist	PATRICK ANDREWS
Foley Artist	CAL HARLE
Re-recording Mixers	PATRICK BUTLER & BENNETT SUBA
Assistant Picture Editor	TRISHA TODD
Research Services	ANDREA MARANTZ
Animation	CAROLINE & FRANK MOURIS
Title	SOLID GREEN
Colourist	ANDREA DIXON
Laboratory	RAINMAKER DIGITAL PICTURES
Re-recording Studio	TWISTED PAIR SOUND
Laboratory Services	RAINMAKER DIGITAL PICTURES
Auditors	DAVID DARRAS CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS
Legal Services	FRASER MILNER CASGRAIN, Vancouver
Production Financing	ROGERS TELEFUND
Production Insurance	JONES BROWN INC.
For CBC Televison	JERRY MCINTOSH & CARL KARP
For National Film Board	GRAYDON MCCREA
SPECIAL THANKS TO
George Baptist - Melanie Guenther - Wendy Graffunder Philip Bess - Susan Dobson - Elizabeth Plater Zyberk Al, Laurie, Tim, Andrew, Callie, Bryan & Stacey Houghton Brenda, Les, Nick & Harrison Kuhn The City of Calgary, Alberta SUBURB THE MUSICAL Book by David Javerbaum and Robert S. Cohen Music by Robert S. Cohen Lyrics by David Javerbaum PAINTBALL Provided courtesy of Daniel Jeffery Written & Directed by Daniel Jeffery Starring Kyle Grant, Hong Cheng, Alex Greaves Adam Clyne, Elliot Lindsay, Jay Blitzer Kevin Lieske, James Pantuso ©2005
SONGS
"Radiant City Intro" "Power Cente" "Stat Growth" "Sting Nick" "Stat Injuries" "Stat Space" "Promotional" "Cars" "Overhead Shot 2" "Suburban Shot"	"Construction" "Overhead Shot 1" "Long Drive" "Car Back Out" "Stat Weight Problem" "Stat Walk and Cycle" "No Community" "Stat Suicide" "Stat Land" "Family Photo"
Written and Performed by Joey Santiago
"If I Had Changed My Mind" Written by Thomas Timothy Vernon Kell Used by permission of EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC Performed by Tom Vek Courtesy of Universal-Island Records Ltd. Under license from Universal Music Enterprises	"Those Pockets are People" Written by Verity Susman, Emma Gaze, Mia Clarke, and Rosamund Murray Performed by Electrelane Courtesy of Too Pure Records Ltd. Published by Chrysalis Music Publishing
"Casanova Cowboy" Written by Stephen Easterling and Freddie Gildersleeve Performed by Easterling and Gildersleeve Courtesy of Crucial Music	"Light of Our Love" Written and Performed by Neil James Harnett Courtesy of Crucial Music
"All Fired Up" Written by Harold Wayne Griffin, Nicole Claudine Lang, Joshua Madell, Christopher Jon Talsness, Stella Psaroudakis, Liane Moccia and Erin Mary Marszalek Performed by TRALALA Courtesy of Audika Records By Special Arrangement with Bank Robber Music	"Easy Life" Written and Performed by Keith Perry Courtesy of FirstCom Music, a unit of Zomba Enterprises, Inc. "Do I Have Your Attention?" Performed by The Blood Arm Courtesy of City Rockers and / Because Published by Fairwood Music (USA) Inc.
This program is purely fictional. Some elements are based on real people and events. This motion picture is protected un the laws of Canada and the United States and other countries. Unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution. © Sprawl Alberta Ltd. 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Marc Boutin

Marc Boutin is a Calgary-based architect and principal of Marc Boutin Architect. He is the winner of the 2002 Prix de Rome, which recognizes exceptional talent in the field of contemporary architecture. He is the Director of the Architecture Program at the University of Calgary.

www.mb-architect.ca

"A city that propagates a suburban model is a city that propagates pure private space as opposed to any notion of public space. And when you only advocate private space, you get to the point where people cannot tolerate one another. In some ways, a suburban city can be understood as an intolerant city."

Andrés Duany

Andrés Duany is a founding principal at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ), a leader in New Urbanism, an international movement that seeks to end suburban sprawl and urban disinvestment. DPZ first received recognition for its 1980 design of Seaside, Florida, and has since designed close to 300 new towns, regional plans and community revitalization projects. DPZ has exerted a major influence on the direction of urban planning in the USA and abroad.

"New Urbanism tries to bring everything back together so that people can walk to their daily needs and, above all, be allowed to live without a car if they wish. Everybody who lives in North America has seen suburban sprawl - how it looks and functions - and they've also seen marvellous, traditional towns. What the New Urbanists propose is to revert to the pre-war development practice because in every way it works better."

Ken Greenberg

Ken Greenberg is the former Director of Urban Design and Architecture for the City of Toronto, an architect and urban designer, and the principal of Greenberg Consultants. His broad range of work includes the rejuvenation of downtown areas, waterfronts and neighbourhoods, as well as regional growth management and new community planning. His many projects include the award-winning Saint Paul on the Mississippi Development Framework, Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York, the Downtown Hartford Economic and Urban Design Action Strategy and the Master Plan for the renewal of Toronto's Regent Park.

www.greenbergconsultants.com

"In the end, economic conditions - a combination of the cost of housing, an energy crisis, demographic pressures and other things - may cause a reassessment of the suburban paradigm to occur. But until that happens, it's a very intractable pattern. It has a tremendous momentum which is very, very hard to change."

Joseph Heath

Joseph Heath is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He co-wrote the bestseller, The Rebel Sell and is the author of Communicative Action and Rational Choice, winner of the 2003 Canadian Philosophical Association Book Prize; and the bestseller The Efficient Society, selected by the Globe and Mail as one of 2001's best books.

www.chass.utoronto.ca/~jheath/

"The most unhelpful idea is that people who move to the suburbs are somehow brainwashed. The fact is that people live in suburbs because they have incentives to do so. As long as suburbs continue to offer those attractive characteristics - like a very large home, with a backyard, with a reasonable cost of property and reasonable access to city and country side - people are going to keep living there."

Mark Kingwell

A philosopher and critic, Mark Kingwell is the author of numerous books, including In Pursuit of Happiness: Better Living from Plato to Prozac; Catch and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life; and most recently, Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire State Building and American Dreams. Currently a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, his articles have appeared in a wide range of academic journals and mainstream publications, including Harper's magazine, the NY Times Magazine, Adbusters and the Globe and Mail.

"My particular worry is the deteriorating sense of citizenship when people live so isolated from each other. What is suburbia doing to the idea of citizenship - when we don't share public spaces and spend no time whatsoever in any kind of communion with our fellow citizens? The car is a handy bashing point, but it's not about the car, it's about the way we have chosen to live."

James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler is a writer with a longstanding interest in urban and cultural issues. He is the author of The Geography of Nowhere, Home From Nowhere and The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition. His latest book, The Long Emergency, examines the impending global oil crisis, climate change and other "converging catastrophes of the 21st Century." He has lectured at many universities, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell and MIT.

www.kunstler.com

"Eighty percent of everything ever built in North America has been built in the last 50 years - and most of it is brutal, depressing, ugly, unhealthy and spiritually degrading... Suburbs are the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world, and in the energy-scarce future that we're facing, they're probably not going to work very well."

Bev Sandalack

Bev Sandalack is Professor and Coordinator of the Urban Design Program at the University of Calgary. She has a special interest in urban design, the quality of the public realm, and sense of place and she just released a book on Calgary's urban form called "The Calgary Project". She is director of the award-winning Urban Lab Downtown Centre and is involved in neighbourhood design, small town studies, and other urban research projects.

"Land use bylaws now require developers to include some higher density multi-family dwellings, but often you find these at the corners or on the edges of neighbourhoods... Developers set up a kind of social apartheid where the multi-family areas are really seen as being much less desirable than the single-family developments."

Production Partners

Produced by Burns Film Ltd. in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada and in association with CBC Television and with the participation of the Canadian Television Fund created by the Government of Canada and the Canadian Cable Industry CTF: License Fee Program and with the assistance of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Film Development Program, the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit and Rogers Telefund