SKIMMERHORN PRODUCTIONS
An eclectic upstart film production company in the magnificent Kootenay region of British Columbia.
We produce a range of independent feature films and documentaries responding to pressing societal concerns: trauma, social justice, cultural conflict, personal identity. Our Bleeding Tree International Film Festival invites filmmakers from across the globe to explore these same themes during our annual summer festival weekend in Cranbrook, BC.
We draw upon abundant regional talent, both trained and novice, to realize our film projects. Our writers, actors, cinematographers, musicians and sound designers come together with us to create meaningful projects on a manageable scale. In the process, we’ve helped create a small but vibrant centre of independent film production in western Canada.
FILM and DOCUMENTARY
THE ORCHARD: Our first feature film, four years in the making, went on to win multiple film festival awards before getting picked up for distribution by Bayview Entertainment in 2023. The dark drama is now streaming on Tubi, Vudu, Screambox and Prime Video, and is available on Blu-ray through Amazon.
EXOPHORIA: Currently in post-production, this dark drama features Best Actress winner Kate Webb (The Orchard) as
Dr. Jo Terringer -- a newcomer to the Creston Valley who finds herself in a race to save two local teens in comas after a drug experiment goes terribly wrong. Also features best Supporting Actor Hubert Brandys (The Orchard).
HEXE: This feature film is heading into production and rounds out The Orchard story world and is the sequel proper to the original film. It's twenty years later, and with both parents passed away, Mariah Bauer reluctantly takes ownership of her great grandfather's infamous orchard, only to discover the real story behind its power – and those in the community bent on wielding it.
MEMOIRS: OF A WESTERN NEWSPAPERMAN: Scripted by Kerry McArthur and produced by Mark Wolfe, this 13-minute docu-drama won the 1998 Alberta Motion Picture Industries Award for Best Producer, Vignette. Told through the eyes of Calgary Albertan cub reporter Fred Kennedy, the film depicts the famous 1922 City Hall bomb prank perpetrated by Chief Buffalo Child Longlance – a larger-than-life character from the United States whose exploits included being a reporter for the rival Calgary Herald, going to war as a member of the Canadian Expeditionary Force and starring in a Hollywood movie called The Silent Enemy. Directed by Devon Bolton and filmed by Emmy winner Douglas Munro, Memoirs was eventually broadcast on W.
DOCS and COMMUNITY WORK
WHEELS: This official selection and Honourable Mention winner at the 2020 CanadaShorts film festival uses multiple cameras and a warm August evening to capture the poetry of skateboarding at Creston's state-of-the-art Recreation Park.
STOP THE STIGMA: An unvarnished look at one community's ongoing struggle with safe supply and overdose issues, as seen and heard through the eyes and voices of advocates, clients and institutions on the front lines of drug use and addiction.
WATER IS LIFE: A poignant look at traditional use and ways of understanding the importance of water, as told by the Tobacco Plains people within the Ktunaxa Nation of British Columbia.
ON TRADITIONAL LANDS: A cultural training video produced by North Coal and Jonathan Brewer, this video keys on creation stories and interviews with elders such as Sophie Pierre to bring to light the significance of first peoples in this region of southeastern BC.
WHO WE ARE
Kerry McArthur is a life-long reader and writer, picking up screenplay writing in her 20s and working with Hollywood-based mentors, including Jack Sowards (Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn; Star Trek TNG) and TV producer James Schmerer.
The Orchard was her first produced feature-length script, with several others completed or in development – including Clouds, an international crime drama set in the Kootenay region of British Columbia funded in part by by Creative BC and Bayview Entertainment.
Mark Wolfe is a former journalist/editor and photographer, with experience in film production stemming back to an Alberta Motion Picture Industries Award win for Memoirs: Of a Western Newspaperman in 1998.
The Orchard was his first feature-length project as producer and director of photography, and is now heading production on Exophoria, Hexe, Clouds and The Ring as future projects, while also adding an international film festival to his credits. A more complete background on Mark can be found on IMDB.
Key Associates
Marty Agabob is a photographer and drone operator based in the Creston Valley, having shot most of the aerial photography for The Orchard, Exophoria and Hexe as well as myriad corporate and community projects Skimmerhorn has produced. A natural MacGyver type engineer, Marty is also a Director of the Creston Valley Film Society and an avid outdoorsman.
Mike Moore is our local go-to guy for making things happen in the community, whether it's securing a location for shooting or filling in as
an actor in both The Orchard and Exophoria. A former coroner and fire chief with a Master's degree in emergency response policy and practice, Mike is also a big-picture advocate for all things economic development in the region.
Jason and Gary Deatherage
Jason is a musician, author, paramedic, poet, martial artist, and outdoors enthusiast. When not pursuing strange and iconoclastic musical paths of his own – including improvising live to visual elements, carefully crafted studio creation, cross-genre exploration, and deep experiments into the creative underpinnings of music as art and expression – Jason is composing and records soundtrack music for Skimmerhorn Productions. Gary is a musician, songwriter, novelist, actor and a former tenured neuroscientist. Several of Gary's songs have been used in The Orchard, Hexe and other Skimmerhorn work, and he remains a beacon of inspiration for many creative folks in the Creston Valley.
BLEEDING TREE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Coming this August 9 to Cranbrook's Studio Stage Door theatre. Cinephiles attending the event will be treated a variety of "dark drama" films from around the world in short, animation, documentary and feature-length forms.
Tickets and discounts to partnering local hotels and restaurants will be announced in May.
We gratefully acknowledge that our lives and work take place on the unceded traditional territory of the Yaqan Nukiy within the Ktunaxa Nations.