Jillian Fargey Cleans up at Leo Awards

And the Leo Award for "Best Supporting Performance by a Female in a Feature Length Drama" goes to...
Jillian Fargey for her performance in The Green Chain.
Congratulations to Jillian and Green Chain co-star Babz Chula who won the Leo for "Best Guest Performance by a Female in a Dramatic Series" for her role in jPod.
The Green Chain also received major kudos from Mockfest in Los Angeles where it was one of only three nominees for "Best Feature."

The Green Chain Podcast: Antony Marcil, Forest Stewardship Council of Canada

The Forest Stewardship Council of Canada was an early supporter of The Green Chain. They helped with our research, wrote a letter to support us when we applied for a grant (which we didn't get, but still...) and former FSC Canada board member, John Wiggers, played a major supporting role in the making of the movie.

So when I started The Green Chain podcast series, I knew I had to interview the head of the FSC, Antony Marcil. I met him when I was in Toronto interviewing movie stars for The Georgia Straight at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. And this was definitely one of my favourites interviews during the festival. Okay, Sir Richard Attenborough, Paul Schrader, Kevin Bacon, Gabriel Byrne, Ewan McGregor, Jude Law, Michael Caine, Marjane Satrapi and Sidney Lumet weren't too dull either, but they didn't talk trees.

Here's the link to listen on iTunes.

Here's the intro from The Tyee podcast and the link to the story and audio options posted there.

One of Harry Potter's biggest magic tricks was letting the world know about the Forest Stewardship Council. When J.K. Rowling announced that the final installment of her beyond bestselling saga was going to be released on FSC certified paper, it was hard to miss the existence of an international organization that was founded in Toronto back in 1993 to look for better ways to manage the world's forests.

And when Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty made switching government papers to FSC certified paper part of his recent reelection campaign, it was a major triumph for Antony Marcil, president and CEO of FSC Canada since 2005.

Before taking over FSC Canada, Marcil spent 10 years as president and CEO of the World Environment Center. In 1997, he was included in the first worldwide listing of "The Top 100 Figures in Environment, Sustainable Development and Social Issues" by The Earth Times. He did a two year stint as "planner-in-residence" at the School of Planning, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo after devoting five years of his life to an unexpected way to save the planet: tax reform.

I met Marcil at the FSC office in downtown Toronto to talk about the history and future of the FSC, how tax reform could save the world and why he'd trash Canada's Ministry of the Environment.

And when I checked in just before posting this he was thrilled to tell me that there's so much demand for FSC-certified paper that FSC certified mills can't produce it fast enough. Fortunately, we don't need to worry about that since you're reading this online. . .

The Green Chain featured at Citizenshift

The Green Chain now has a featured blog at -- The National Film Board of Canada's social networking site, Citizenshift. And we're the only fictional film that's part of the NFB site.

Other featured Rebels With a Cause include Nettie Wilde -- whose movie Blockade was helped inspire me in making this film. Both our cinematographer Kirk Tougas (seen above) and our sound designer, Gael MacLean, worked with Nettie to bring Blockade to life and were able to share their knowledge of that experience to create the world of The Green Chain.
Another featured filmmaker is Velcrow Ripper who offered to loan us footage when we were searching for transition images. We didn't end up needing the footage, but the offer was most appreciated and I'll be interviewing Velcrow for one of my upcoming podcasts. Velcrow took his own non-fiction look at trees with his film, Bones of the Forest.
The Citizenshift site also features filmmakers Mark Achbar, Avi Lewis and Alanis Obomsawin and the leader of Canada's Green Party, Elizabeth May.

The Green Chain in The Williams Lake Tribune

Vancouver Film Fest entry inspired by Cariboo Chilcotin
Gaeil Farrar
Tribune Staff Writer

Former Tribune reporter Mark Leiren-Young is making a big splash at the Vancouver Film Festival this week with his Cariboo inspired film called The Green Chain. Leiren-Young wrote and directed the film.
So far he has been interviewed by the Province, Vancouver Sun, CanWest newswire, and Global TV about the film which filled the house for its first showing Monday.
The Green Chain combines seven stories about people willing to risk their lives to save the forests and the people who survive by cutting them down. The film is playing at the Vancouver International Film Festival September 27 to October 12.
Among other things Leiren-Young covered the police beat and forestry beats for the Tribune in the 1980s. “I’d been in Williams Lake for however many minutes it takes to drive from the ‘Welcome to Williams Lake’ sign to the Mohawk Station on Highway 97 when I had my first story. The gas station had been robbed. After I finished interviewing the cashier, she smiled at me and said: “Welcome to Williams Lake.”
Several aspects of the forestry beat inspired him to write The Green Chain. “I think my first assignment for Casual Country was doing profiles of all the local mills. And some of the people I interviewed -- and the stories I heard -- very much inspired this movie.” The mountain pine beetle was just showing up in the region. “I wrote a few pine beetle stories for The Trib. I remember the first day that I experienced 30 below weather -- and I couldn’t believe human beings could survive at 30 below -- and someone in the Forest Ministry told me they were hoping the cold would stay long enough to kill the beetles.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t. It was the coldest winter I’d ever experienced in my life, but I think it was one of the earliest of the warming winters that allowed the beetle problem to turn into an epidemic. So the movie definitely mentions the beetles, but it doesn’t focus on them.”
Leiren-Young says he was also struck by the irony of one interview he did with a logger who was excited about getting his new machine which he described as “a mill on wheels” and at the same time complained about the damn environmentalists from the cities who were taking away all the jobs. He says the interview always stuck with him and created the first link in The Green Chain.
One of the biggest challenges in the film was finding a feller-buncher or a danglehead processor for the film’s logger that was accessible and safe. Driving along real logging roads, looking for such equipment, he says it became very clear to him how so many loggers die in the woods each year.
He says he wanted the film to feel like a documentary and it was fun hearing after the first screening at the Montreal World Film festival that The Green Chain captured the voices of rural Ontario, and after the second screening that it captured the voices of rural Quebec.
Leiren-Young says it is important for him to show The Green Chain in Williams Lake and Prince George as it is to show it in Vancouver and Toronto. “And it’s just as important to me to see this play in Oregon and Washington as it is to see it in LA or New York. The idea behind the movie is to get people listening to all sorts of different points of view.
The goal is also to use the movie to start a dialogue on the various issues effecting the forests -- and forest communities -- like the beetles.”
To facilitate this dialogue, Leiren-Young says he’s connected with the publication, The Tyee (www.thetyee.ca), and set up a podcast series where he interviews a wide variety of people -- including William’s Lake’s Wade Fisher -- about forestry and environmental issues.
“The series is set up to encourage comments and get people talking. I’d love to start reading postings on the site from Cariboo country.”
This is Leiren-Young’s first film, although he has had a lot of festival experiences in theatre, comedy and music festivals. He has written for several television series and written and acted in stage shows over the years including Local Anxiety and Escape from Fantasy Gardens.
Tuesday, Leiren-Young says he was rehearsing for his first Local Anxiety gig in nine years. “We’re playing at a special (Vancouver) Film Fest event. Big fun, but seriously nerve-wracking!”
His most recent writing has been for the television series Blood Ties, about a vampire with a conscience. “Now I’m working on developing Moon Knight, which was/is a Marvel Comic. It’s a pretty amazing gig because I loved the character as a kid and had every issue of the first three series Moon Knight appeared in.”