Documentary



As Canada surpassed the tragic milestone of 100 soldiers killed in Afghanistan, voices across the country and voices across the globe debate the rising cost, both human and economic, of a conflict that rivals in length the Second World War. At the behest of J. Ivan Fenton, Major-General (Retired) Canadian Forces, Former Assistant Director International Military Staff (NATO), Crowsnest Films and Bonfire Pictures, began in April of 2008 research and development on the documentary feature film project “For Country”. This documentary film will give strength to voices unheard until now, telling the story of a fallen soldier for Canada whose legacy of courage, loyalty to family, and duty to country inspires his family to battle grief and the armed agents of the Taliban on a unique and healing journey, retaining to the last its sense of hope and human dignity.



Private Robert Girouard Jr. was slated to be a part of the First Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group - Joint Task Force Afghanistan, heading to Kandahar Province in August 2006, but on the eve of his deployment, Commanding Officer Lieutenant Colonel Omer Lavoie and his Regimental Sergeant Major, Robert's dad, Chief Warrant Officer Bob Girouard Sr., decided Robert Jr. would have to stay behind. The thinking was that the young man’s safety would have been too much of a distraction for his father, who had to put first the welfare of all the troops.  

Over the next three months, the battle group would lose 14 men from Petawawa, Ontario and another 5 men from Shilo, Manitoba, during a non-stop tour of violence and bloodshed that saw the Canadian Forces conducting the most intense combat operations since the Korean War. Each one of these deaths staggered the families of the fallen, the military family, and the communities. Private Robert Girouard Jr. had the privilege of serving in the rear party, where he helped families of the fallen to navigate the repatriation process. His mother Jackie did her part for deployment support, too, not because that is the role of the Regimental Sergeant Major’s wife, but because she cared.

Nobody was prepared for what happened next.  


Chief Warrant Officer Bob Girouard Sr. and his driver, Corporal Albert Storm, of the First Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group, Joint Task Force Afghanistan were killed on November 27, 2006, when a suicide bomber struck their Bison armored vehicle on the outskirts of Kandahar City. They were the forty-third and forty-fourth Canadian soldiers to be killed in Afghanistan since 2002. While the army properly grieves every fallen soldier equally, regardless of rank, the death of Chief Warrant Officer Bob Girouard Sr. was felt keenly not only on a personal level, but also as an enormous symbolic blow. He died at the pinnacle of his career - as the RSM of the battalion. For those six hundred soldiers he exemplified the mental toughness, the quiet confidence, and the determination to serve with honour that were needed in a difficult and dangerous place. Chief Warrant Officer Bob Girouard Sr. was the first Regimental Sergeant Major in the storied 125-year history of the battalion to be killed by enemy action. His death showed his soldiers and all Canadians that here was a man prepared to give all, to sacrifice everything, for country.


Jackie Girouard grew up with Bob in the same hometown, Buctouche, in rural New Brunswick. They were high school sweethearts who met and married as teenagers. In essence, they grew up together. When she lost her husband of 27 years, she lost everything. In January 2008, Jackie Girouard, joined the Canadian forces. The 47-year-old widowed mother of three adult children and grandmother of two newborn babies completed Canadian Forces basic training in May 2008, just two weeks after her son, Robert Girouard Jr. (now both a Corporal and a new father) followed in his late father’s footsteps and deployed to Afghanistan with the Third Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group, Joint Task Force Afghanistan. On Remembrance Day 2008, Jackie saluted in uniform her late husband's grave at the National Military Cemetery, in the very heart of Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa, but she has a bigger goal. Jackie Girouard wants to deploy to Afghanistan in 2010 as a serving member of the Canadian Forces. 



Robert Jr. is uncomfortable with the prospect of his mother going to Afghanistan in 2010, but has little to say about it given that he himself seeks atonement with his late father in the course of conducting combat and security operations with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. When Robert Jr. finally finds his father in the mythic sense, he will find himself and come to face to face with nothing less than his own character and destiny. 







A second son, Michel, is also in the military, attending Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, where he is training to be a pilot. He grieves his father while overcome with fear and anxiety for his brother. 
In July 2007, less than a year after holding in his arms the lifeless body of his Regimental Sergeant Major and close friend, Chief Warrant Officer Bob Girouard Sr., Lieutenant Colonel Omer Lavoie walked down the aisle Chief Girouard’s daughter Jocelyn at her wedding to Eric Ranger, a soldier for Canada who is himself scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in 2010. Lavoie has since been promoted to Colonel and named Task Force Commander of the Canadian Forces Counter IED Task Force. Colonel Lavoie has a personal passion for attacking the enemy's weapon of choice, as more than half of the 19 soldiers killed in Afghanistan under his command, including Chief Girouard, were killed by Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).
In May 2008, we began crisscrossing the country, meeting these people and recording their stories. In the course of our preliminary research we have acquired timely 1920x1080 High Definition footage of Jackie Girouard undertaking Canadian Forces Basic Training at Farnham, Quebec and ultimately graduating from Canadian Forces Basic Training at St. Jean, Quebec. We met also and interviewed her son, Corporal Robert Girouard Jr., prior to his deployment to Afghanistan in May 2008. Other interviewees include, but are not limited to the following: General (Retired) Rick Hillier, Former Chief of the Defence Staff, Canadian Forces; Major-General (Retired) J. Ivan Fenton, Canadian Forces, Former Assistant Director International Military Staff (NATO); Brigadier-General Denis Thompson, Commander - Joint Task Force Afghanistan, Canadian Forces; Colonel Omer Lavoie, Commander – Counter IED Task Force, Canadian Forces; Officer Cadet Michel Girouard, Royal Military College; Jocelyn Girouard-Ranger; Private Eric Ranger, Canadian Forces; and Warrant Officer (Retired) Randy Stewart, Canadian Forces.
After shooting over 40 straightforward and intimate hours of 1920x1080 High Definition interview and cinema verité-style footage, and acquiring an additional 15 hours of High Definition footage from the Canadian Forces and Department of National Defence, we have a film-in-progress that is a kaleidoscopic montage of breathtakingly honest interviews, actual footage of our character’s emotional journeys through Canadian Forces basic training and through combat operations in Afghanistan, and actual footage of ramp ceremonies, repatriations, funerals, and internments for fallen soldiers. Brigadier-General Denis Thompson, Commander - Joint Task Force Afghanistan, Canadian Forces, has tasked the Canadian Forces Combat Camera Unit under his current command in Afghanistan to acquire High Definition footage of Corporal Robert Girouard Jr. in that difficult theatre, as per shot lists sent by us through e-mail. Corporal Robert Girouard Jr. has received training on the use of a High Definition motion picture camera, and has agreed (with Brigadier General Thompson’s permission) to film a journal of his time in Afghanistan until the conclusion of his deployment in February 2009.
Our film is a comprehensive portrait of Chief Warrant Officer Bob Girouard and his family, using the full potential of modern documentary techniques. We examine the broader historical context of Canada’s participation in the mission in Afghanistan, the controversies surrounding the mission, and how his family has coped with the death of a loved one. Above all, we focus on the influence this man had on his family, friends, and colleagues as a soldier for Canada. Our film goes beyond the accepted narrative of Bobby Girouard as a fine Canadian fighting and dying halfway around the world in a country that seems so far removed from our everyday concerns. The arc of the film follows the trajectory from Buctouche, New Brunswick, in 1960 to the edge of a blackened crater on the outskirts of Kandahar City in 2006, and beyond. 
Bob Girouard was born into a Cold War world in which cultural and political boundaries have now been swept into new shapes for the digital age. His surviving friends, family, and colleagues remember him now over the span of a generation, while his children and grandchildren are part of the landscape of the new century. New perspectives open on the meaning of his life and his death. Using his own words and the words of those who knew him best, this documentary will explore Bob Girouard’s life and his death, as a sculpture of time, dreams, and memories. In this way, we celebrate his legacy. Some biographical detail naturally emerges in the course of the documentary, but our centre of gravity is the Girouard family, and it is their character arcs which move the story forward in the present.
This exceptional access to these interesting and engaging characters in their unique and compelling situation is both exclusive and unprecedented. We are seeking a broadcast partner to enter into formal development with, toward a true collaboration in the shaping of this strong and timely story into an intelligent and edgy landmark documentary feature film for Canadian and international audiences. Please find below a fundraising trailer showing some scenes and highlighting some of the characters and some of the themes we would like to explore. 
It is so important for these soldiers and their families to be able to tell their stories. They are ready and willing. We have to be ready and willing to listen.



*Please note that this trailer is for fundraising purposes only. The film is in progress and all outstanding rights will be cleared prior to completion.

Digital Media

Ubisoft Entertainment: Subsessed! Silent Hunter IV Wolves of the Pacific






Short Films

ATHLETES IN MOTION: HARDCORE BONSPIEL
Small town Tuesday night Ladies’ League curling couldn’t be more humdrum until iconic writer Douglas Coupland offers an accidental glimpse into the strangely beguiling daydream of local skip Jen, played by World Champion Curler Jennifer Jones. Directed by John Kerr, various touchstones of our shared experience are thrown down the ice to the idiosyncratic rhythms of Gordon Downie in a wry and blissful celebration of nothing less than what it is to be Canadian.


THE EMPEROR
Set in 1922 against the wild landscape of Canada's Rocky Mountains and based on actual Prohibition-era incidents along the Alberta-British Columbia border, "The Emperor" is a dramatic restructuring of the events surrounding the tragic shooting death of Alberta Provincial Police Constable Steven Oldacres Lawson,and the subsequent trial, conviction,and execution of notorious Crowsnest Pass bootlegger Emilio "Emperor Pic" Picariello and his housekeeper, Florence Losandro, for the policeman's murder.

Imitating the tones and textures of early silent films, "The Emperor" traverses a landscape of memory, history, myth and nostalgia, marrying music and spectacle with the language and syntax of cinema to create a thrilling and dramatic wordless play, complete with a chilling ending that will haunt audiences for years to come. Like a vast distorting mirror, the same events are seen through the eyes of both Emilio Picariello and Florence Losandro as they await their executions, forcing each of us to reflect on the very nature of reality and truth as we are confronted with the question: Who killed Constable Lawson?


















Television

CBC George Canyon: My Song Is My Gift

(John Kerr as Co-Producer for Corkscrew Media)

http://www.cbc.ca/georgecanyon/


CMT Paul Brandt’s Christmas In Banff

(John Kerr as Co-Producer for joe Media Group)

http://www.joemedia.tv/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=221

 

CMT Live & Up Front: The Road Hammers

(John Kerr as Line Producer for joe Media Group)

http://www.joemedia.tv/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=225

 

CMT Live & Up Front: Sara Evans

(John Kerr as Line Producer for joe Media Group)

http://www.joemedia.tv/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32&Itemid=222

Corporate



Calgary Stampede "The Letter"
Brand Awareness Video 
*A Co-Production with Just Me Productions for KARO

Corb Lund & The Hurtin' Albertans 
"I Wanna Be In The Cavalry" 
EPK

joe Media "Prison Break" 
New Location Announcement Video

Commercials

John Kerr is neutral and self-represented as a Commercials Director in Calgary, Alberta Canada.


Horse Racing Alberta (John Kerr as Producer for STIR Films)
“Gold Digger”
“The Big Break Up”
“The Good News”
“The Party’s Over”

All Weather Windows (John Kerr as Producer for joe Media Group)

Ford (John Kerr as Producer for joe Media Group)
Matt & Lori – “Intro”, “Comedy Club”, “Furniture Store”, “Great Handling”, “Ski Day”, “Prairie Oyster”, “Oil Field”, “Trailer”, “Surprise”, “Vulcan”, ‘Climbing Date”, “Champ Party”

Calgary Stampede (John Kerr as Producer for joe Media Group)
“Cha Ching”
“World’s Toughest Athletes”

Western Canada Lottery Corporation (John Kerr as Producer for joe Media Group)
“Dam Big”
“Lightning”
“Play By Play”
“Texas Hold ‘Em”
ATB Financial (John Kerr as Producer for joe Media Group)
Horse Racing Alberta (John Kerr as Producer for joe Media Group)

Alberta Securities Commission (John Kerr as Producer for joe Media Group)

Alberta Dental Association (John Kerr as Producer for joe Media Group)

Alberta Foundation For The Arts (John Kerr as Producer for joe Media Group)

The City of Calgary Waterworks (John Kerr as Producer for joe Media Group)

Travelodge (John Kerr as Producer for joe Media Group)

Jayman Master Builder (John Kerr as Producer for joe Media Group)
“Energy Obsession”
“Interior Obsession”
“Kitchen Obsession”

Music Videos

Corb Lund "A Game In Town Like This"


Dan Mangan "The Indie Queens Are Waiting"


Joshua's Habit "Whiskey & Women"
(Produced And Directed By John Kerr for Corkscrew Media)



Corb Lund & The Hurtin' Albertans "Tool For The Job AKA Hard On Equipment"


Corb Lund & The Hurtin' Albertans "Family Reunion"


Corb Lund & The Hurtin' Albertans "I Wanna Be In The Cavalry"


Corb Lund & The Hurtin' Albertans "The Truth Comes Out"


Joshua's Habit "Drama Queen"

Leadership

John Kerr is an award-winning writer, producer, and director in motion picture, television, and digital media. His track record as producer and director boasts award-winning short films, commercials, music videos, viral campaigns, corporate projects, and television. John creates memorable characters and tells compelling stories in a business fueled by dreams. 

Mr. Kerr has produced many television commercials, music videos, and broadcast concert shows for various clients, including but not limited to: CBC, CMT, Corb Lund & The Hurtin’ Albertans, George Canyon, Johnny Reid, Paul Brandt, Sara Evans, Aaron Lines, Aaron Pritchett, The Road Hammers, All Weather Windows, Canadian Mental Health Association, AUDI, Chrysler, AMA, The Calgary Stampede, Jayman Homes, Alberta Dental Association, Bayer Crop Sciences, Milestone Homes, ATB Financial, Alberta Motor Transport Association, Calgary Waterworks, First Calgary Financial, Western Canada Lotteries Corporation, Travelodge, UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, and AXE Body Spray.                         

Mr. Kerr’s directing credits include but are not limited to: “For Country”, “Cowboys” (Pilot), “City Chase” (Calgary 2008), Joshua’s Habit “Whiskey & Women”, Corb Lund & The Hurtin’ Albertans “Family Reunion”, Subway “Sub! Sub! Sub!”, Alberta Teacher’s Association “Stories”, United Way “Red Handed”, SHAW Communications “One Channel At A Time”, Corb Lund & Ian Tyson “The Rodeo’s Over”, Ubisoft “Subsessed!”, Joshua’s Habit “Drama Queen”, AXE Body Spray “Ravenstoke Alaska” (Additional Photography), Milestone Homes “The Brownstones”, and “The Emperor”.             

Mr. Kerr is also involved in local independent film and video production in Calgary and is a production member of the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers. In July 2002, John joined the board of directors for the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers as Executive Vice-President, and later served two consecutive terms as President in 2003-2004 and 2004-2005.       

John is currently completing “For Country” a feature length documentary about a fallen soldier for Canada whose legacy of courage, loyalty to family, and duty to country inspires his family, who are themselves all soldiers, to battle grief and the armed agents of the Taliban on a unique healing journey, retaining to the last its sense of hope and human dignity.

Who We Are

Crowsnest Films is a Calgary, Alberta Canada based private company established in September 1999. Our mission is to create entertaining and enduring motion picture, television, and new media content for domestic and international markets. 



This blog is a temporary measure to showcase the work of Crowsnest Films and John Kerr while the main site www.crowsnestfilms.tv is under construction.