Canada Wild Productions is an independent documentary film and television production established in 1991 and based in Vancouver. We specialize in making accessible and engaging documentaries about controversial issues. We believe that behind the politics in our communities lie human dramas with lessons that deeply affect our lives. We have developed a unique form of distribution which blends broadcast television and theatrical screenings in cinemas with community based forums in order to bring these stories to the Canadian public.
We have produced 5 feature documentaries –KONELINE: our land beautiful (2016 Hot Docs Best Canadian Documentary, 2017 UNESCO Dolomites Prize); FIX: The Story of an Addicted City (2004 Genie Award), A Place Called Chiapas (1998 Genie Award), Blockade and A Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution. Bevel Up: Drugs, Users and Outreach Nursing, an interactive teaching DVD, was a coproduction with the National Film Board and the BC Centre for Disease Control. Together, these films have won over 45 international and national honours including the Berlin Emerging Filmmakers Award, Hot Docs Best Documentary, 2 Genies, and the International Documentary Association’s Award for Best Feature Documentary.
Current projects are taking us into new territories of interactive media, public art, projection mapping and VR.
We are known throughout the industry for putting a great deal of effort into the distribution of our films. All our films have been both broadcast and theatrically distributed in cinemas nationally and internationally. FIX: The story of an Addicted City played in over 35 Canadian cities and towns; A Place Called Chiapas opened in over 80 cities throughout Canada and the United States and was instrumental in raising significant funds which went directly to the indigenous peoples of Chiapas.
The principals of Canada Wild Productions are Director Nettie Wild and Producer Betsy Carson.
Nettie Wild
Director/Writer/Producer
Nettie is one of Canada’s leading documentary filmmakers. Her highly charged and critically acclaimed feature documentary films have brought audiences behind the frontlines and headlines of revolutions and social change worldwide. They include KONELĪNE: our land beautiful (2016), FIX: The Story of an Addicted City (2002) and A Place Called Chiapas (1998).
In 2017, Nettie joined forces with Betsy Carson, Rae Hull, Michael Brockington and ultimately a crew of 50, to create UNINTERRUPTED – first on the bridge using digital mapping; and then in 2020, Nettie and her fellow creators migrated the fish and their story into virtual reality. See our other website: www.uninterrupted.ca
In 2023, working with fellow filmmaker Scott Smith, Nettie co-directed the 3-channel video, GO FISH which explores the mayhem and wonder of the herring spawn in the Salish Sea.
Then, collaborating with soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp and pianist Rachel Kyo Iwaasa, Nettie directed the experimental performance video, KLAVIERKLANG (2024.) Nettie’s current work explores “Moving Paintings” as she continues to attempt to “frame the familiar in an unfamiliar way”.
Nettie’s films have been distributed theatrically and broadcast in Canada and internationally. She has been honoured at film festivals around the world and has twice won the Genie Award for Best Feature Documentary in Canada. Among other honours, she has won Best Feature Documentary from the International Documentary Association (USA) and from the Hot Docs International Film Festival (Toronto); plus top honours from the Forum of New Cinema at the Berlin International Film Festival. Her installations have been exhibited across Canada and internationally, including GO FISH at the Aga Khan Museum (Toronto) and the National Gallery (Ottawa); and UninterruptedVR at the Kaohsiung VR and Film Archive in Taiwan.
Nettie has received an honorary doctorate from Emily Carr University, recognizing her lifelong commitment and contribution; and in 2023, she was a recipient of the prestigious Governor General’s Award in Visual & Media Arts.
Betsy Carson
Producer
Betsy Carson is a producer/ EP/ director with over 35 years’ experience in documentary film, television, and digital projects. She has collaborated for decades with filmmakers Nettie Wild, Mark Achbar, Velcrow Ripper, Gary Marcuse and Hugh Brody and has produced over 100 hours of innovative projects ranging from television, theatrical features, VR and websites to public art installation. As an early adopter of “impact distribution” since 1988, her career has been focused on activating social and political debate in communities around the world, and the films she has collaborated on have won numerous awards and honours including multiple Genie and Gemini awards, AFI, Berlin Forum of Young Cinema, Hot Docs, IDA, Prism, Grantham, two Cinema for Peace nominations and other awards. She also served as Co-Vice-Chair of the Documentary Organization of Canada for 6 years.
With Gary Marcuse she has also created classroom materials for the National Film Board of Canada, Pearson and Nelson publishers. Recent film credits include: 500 Days in the Wild, directed by Dianne Whelan; The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel directed by Joel Bakan and Jennifer Abbott (coproduced with Trish Dolman); the Global Environmental Justice Documentaries Project, directed and curated by Gary Marcuse; and UNINTERRUPTED, a public art project directed by Nettie Wild and co-produced with Rae Hull.
Rae Hull
Producer
Canada Wild is lucky to be working with Producer Rae Hull as a principal producer on Uninterrupted. She joined the project in 2014, guiding the creative development of the accompanying website uninterrupted.ca and helming the diverse public engagement aspects of the project . Rae has developed and led media projects that have been recognized worldwide for their innovation. She focuses on using media and art to create collaborative forms of engagement with the public, often on a very large scale.
As Creative Director of CODE (the Cultural Olympiad’s Digital Edition) for the 2010 Winter Olympics, Rae and her team created a series of digital art program streams that connected people across the country and around the globe, winning both national and international praise. As a senior programming executive at CBC, she developed the concept and led the creation of ZeD, which earned an Emmy nomination as one of the world’s first multiplatform interactive television series.
With a background in journalism and broadcasting, Rae has program credits on CBC, CTV, PBS, History and Discovery Channels as a director, producer, writer and production executive. She has a BA in Journalism and an MA in Intercultural Communication Studies and has served as a board member for the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Vancouver Contemporary Art Gallery, and Canadian Women in Communications.