Hello. I'm Shane Belcourt.

I like making things.

I like telling stories.

I like being alive. Immensely. Too lucky.

So, the arts - music, film, writing, photography, long quiet walks, hanging out with good food and laughter - gives me that feeling that there are fireworks in our hearts and to keep exploring this life and expressing its joys and it's sorrows/longings.

I'm going to write about myself in the 3rd person now ...

BIOGRAPHY

Shane Belcourt is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and musician based in Toronto. His feature film, Tkaronto, has played many international film festivals, most recently winning the “Best Director” prize at the 2008 Dreamspeakers Film Festival and 2008 Talking Stick Film Festival, and has since been sold to a national distributor (Kinosmith Films) which released the film across Canada during the fall of 2008. Tkaronto has also played on Air Canada and Super Channel. Shane’s two short films, The Squeeze Box and Pookums have been picked up and sold to national Canadian TV networks and are featured on Isuma.tv. Shane was also the recipient of the 2007 IFC Mentorship Award and one of 22 filmmakers chosen for the 2007 TIFF Talent Lab. More recently Shane co-wrote and directed Boxed In, a short film produced by the NFB that will be included in the Canadian Pavilion at the 2010 Winter Olympics. Shane was selected to Telefilm’s Feature Aboriginal Storytellers Program to further develop his next dramatic feature film, A Better Place. In January 2010, Shane was been selected to be the Filmmaker in Residence by the Winnipeg Film Group. Currently, Shane is working as the writer-director for a personal short animated documentary about growing up the son of a Métis rights leader, Red Car, Blue Hood along with writing his next micro-budget feature film, "Hard Feelings."

Shane makes films with Duane Murray and Jordan O'Connor under the banner of "Brokenslate Pictures" and/or "The Breath Films". Shane also makes documentaries and video projects for the web under "The Breath Films". Finally, Shane teaches filmmaking workshops throughout the year with Aboriginal youth and youth at risk through various Aboriginal outreach programs, as well as teaching a directing class at LIFT twice a year in Toronto.

(Download this biography in PDF format)

FILMOGRAPHY
(selected highlights)

F*%K Yeah, 2010
Writer/Director - HD short film, 10 minutes
Independently produced and financed short film shot in Winnipeg, MB on a one-day micro budget. When a dude is kicked out of his own band, he'll do anything to get even.

Keeping Quiet, 2010
Writer/Director/DP - HD short film, 10 minutes
Independently produced and financed short film shot in Toronto.
Inspired by a Pablo Neruda poem, a man ventures into the classified dating scene only to find himself more isolated and alone.

Red Car, Blue Hood, 2009/2010
Writer/Director - Mixed Media, Short Documentary, project run time of 20 minutes
Funded by the Ontario Arts Council & Canada Council for the Arts
A personal investigation of Tony Belcourt’s (Shane’s father) role in the modern Métis Rights movement.

Boxed In, 2009
Co-Writer/Director - HD Short, 2 minutes
Produced by the NFB & APTN for the 2010 Olympic Pavilion
A woman of mixed heritage struggles to complete a simple personnel form: "Ethnicity: Choose One."

Indian Jane, 2008
Co-Writer/Director - HD Short, 90 seconds (festival trailer)
Produced for the 2008 ImagineNative Film + Media Arts Festival
Indian Jane breaks into a high rise building to repatriate a sacred mask from a lawyers personal collection.

Tkaronto, 2007
Writer/Director/DP/Producer - HD Feature Film, 105 minutes
Independently produced and financed, released in art house theaters across Canada
Two Aboriginal thirty-somethings who come face to face on a quest to stake a claim on their urban aboriginal identities.

Pookums, 2006
Co-Writer/Co-Director/Co-DP/Producer - HD short film, 10 minutes
Independently produced and financed, broadcast on Air Canada, Moviola, APTN
A house sitter is confronted with the absurdity of the big city when she struggles to bring the dead pet dog to the veterinary hospital.

(Download a complete filmography in PDF format - hopefully it's up to date)

PERSONAL INFO

Shane is married to editor and crafter Amanda Greener and they share their home with the stomp stomping of their two year d-old daughter Claire. Shane is the son of Métis rights activist Tony Belcourt and Nova Scotian musician/actress Judith Pierce Martin and younger brother to renowned artist Christi Belcourt and graphic artist Suzanne Belcourt. Shane is usually working and creating with childhood best friend Jordan O'Connor and/or high school best friend Duane Murray.

Shane played basketball in high school and incessantly watches it today, along with other sports. Thus had to cancel cable TV in the house to get some work done.

Shane was born and raised in Ottawa and went to Roland Micher, St. Joe's, and Notre Dame before moving to Toronto to attend York University. After three years in the Film Production & Screening program, Shane dropped out to be in a rock band full time, while slinging coffee at the Second Cup. Throughout all schooling Shane played music, sports, wrote, and made films.

Shane's first big band, Woodrow, released a full-length CD and won some con writing competitions - it was a fruitful creative relationship with Marqus Bobesich. Then prior to traveling in Australia Shane began his own solo project, The Shane Anthony Band taking the full reigns in the song writing. That resulted in the release of 3 CD's which received some radio rotation in Canada and a few songwriting award nominations. That culminated producing the Juno-nominated Digging Roots CD, "Seeds". Shane then made Tkaronto, moving filmmaking into the prime focus and songwriting into the kitchen late at night.

Shane listens to copious amounts of Ryan Adams and recently the Deep Dark Woods ... basically sing-songwriter stuff, roots, and blues mostly with lots inbetween.

Shane watches everything Pixar too many times in a week (thank you Claire), the usual masters (Allen, Spielberg, Scorsese, Malick, etc), the mid-career masters (Mann, Lee, Soderberg, Tarantino, etc), the "can we call them masters" (Anderson's, Inarritu, Jonze etc), and whatever he has to watch right away because he's studying it for something he's working on.

Shane's still favourite thing is sitting with friends and laughing so hard his side hurts and he has to get to his feet to walk it off while still laughing his head off replaying the joke/moment over and over in his head ... waking him up in bed later laughing out loud again, and looking crazy walking down the street recalling it once again and laughing some more. That's good stuff ... and equally Shane can go in the total opposite direction when something is so pure, so clean, so truffle that it cuts through to the bone and rattles your core with a wake up call to the Great Spirit of all things, to bow down in praise as it were.