Joan Prowse – President and Co-Founder

Joan Prowse is a documentary-maker with two decades experience as a writer, producer, director and video editor. She co-founded the Toronto-based independent production company, CineFocus Canada, in 1991 to make thought-provoking, insightful television shows and documentaries. Since then she’s created more than 20 hours of prime-time arts, biography and social issue documentaries and 50+ commissioned videos for government, health, environment, and labour organizations and for non-profit groups. Throughout her career, Joan has produced programming for a slate of national and international broadcasters including CBC and Radio-Canada, CHUM (now CTV), Global, Discovery, Vision and APTN. Several documentaries she produced in both French and English. All have aired on educational channels across Canada.

Joan's notable credits here include the international documentary hit, Beauty and the Beach (1997), a documentary that examined women’s contentious relationship with their bathing suits and Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life (2006), the first biography made on the achievements of the groundbreaking Native American singer/songwriter and Native rights activist. Along with her documentaries, she produced and directed the biography series Lucky Breaks that aired on A&E’s Biography Channel and CHUM Television for two seasons and produced 28 profiles of Canadian musicians, directors and actors for Global’s Northern Lights series.

In 2006, Joan produced and edited From Field to Studio: The Art of Paul Kane, an interactive documentary on DVD and museum exhibit. This innovative storytelling approach used the power of interactivity to explore Kane's controversial artwork of First Nations people. The project is now an interactive exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.  Joan also edited, co-wrote and co-produced CineFocus’s most recent documentary, Museum Maestros, a biography of the revolutionary cultural planners Gail and Barry Lord.

Joan is a graduate of Ryerson’s Radio and Television Arts program and is an alumnus of the Interactive Project Lab at Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre. In 2001 she went to MIPTV in Cannes as part of the National Screen Institute’s Global Marketing Program

John Bessai has been producing, writing and directing television documentaries and videos for over fifteen years. Through CineFocus Canada, the Toronto-based documentary production company he co-founded, John has produced a body of work that has garnered public attention and recognition with broadcasts and screenings in festivals and forums across the country.

John’s latest project Museum Maestros takes a look at cultural movers-and-shakers Gail and Barry Lord who have shaped the museum world on a global scale. These exceptional Torontonians travel to exotic places like Abu Dhabi and China helping to create a better understanding of the local culture through their work coordinating and developing museums.

John also recently directed From Field to Studio: The Art of Paul Kane, an interactive DVD based on his award-winning television documentary, Visions from the Wilderness: The Art of Paul Kane. This groundbreaking project fuses the documentary form with interactive technology, enabling the user to gain greater insight into the mind, work and times of one of Canada’s most culturally influential and controversial artists. An interactive exhibit created out of the DVD is a permanent dual screen exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum's Daphne Cockwell Gallery of Canada: First Peoples. In addition to Paul Kane, John has produced a range of arts biographies including the Juno nominated, Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life, the first-ever screen biography of the well-known activist, singer-songwriter and digital artist.

Before turning his attention full-time to his work at CineFocus Canada, John was a researcher for both CTV News and the CBC. He has a Master's Degree in Political Science from York University and a BA in History from Carleton University. John also attended Ryerson University's School of Journalism.

Stella Hawke comes from a varied background in the broadcast, educational, and corporate sectors. Stella has 18 years of experience in the television industry, beginning in the 70’s with on-air television operations in Sault Ste. Marie, continuing in the 80’s with video production for the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto and then freelancing as Stellavision Production Services.

During the 90’s and into the new millenium Stella worked in the dot.com sector as a Sales Support Administrator for Cisco Systems Canada. In her spare time, Stella enjoys African drumming (djembe). Over the past 7 years she has been performing in the GTA with Muhtadi’s World Drummers and Flambeaux Performing Arts. She is also a volunteer tutor in the Adult Literacy Program at St. Christopher House

Amy Davis is CineFocus Canada's assistant editor and production coordinator. A graduate of York University’s BFA Film program, Amy specialized in production planning and video editing. She recently directed her own short film, Amazing Potatoes and also worked as assistant editor on Museum Maestros by John Bessai.