Powys Dewhurst is an award-winning independent director, director of photography, and occasionally a photojournalist and writer for magazines and newspapers. Recently his work was selected to represent Canada at EXPO 2010 by the Government of Canada and Cirque du Soleil in China with 70-90 million international visitors.
His short films explore humanity and social issues by looking through the prism of satire, magical realism, fables, science fiction and fantasy. He believes much can be explored in those genres than in straight drama and has an 11 year old’s passion and excitement in an adults body. Invited to festivals, or won awards in Toronto, South Africa, Boston, Amsterdam, France, Poland, Texas, Kenya, Chicago, Trinidad, Brazil and London, England. He has shot in Africa. His work has aired on Bravo. He strongly believes in having something real to say.
He grew up with drive-in movies and one TV channel in the Caribbean. When his family got the first VCR the floodgates opened and he experimented with mixed results. He grew up watching badly muddily pirated VHS movies for $5 Bajan dollars. At age 11 or 12 he was embarrassed after watching A Clockwork Orange, 2001 and King of Comedy not knowing what the hell he had just seen until much later. Once as a kid in Barbados he prank called Golden Age Oscar Winner Claudette Colbert who he discovered lived on the island. Not knowing who she was and having never seen any of her films at the time. An avid comic collector by 14/15 once his mother lit a back yard bonfire and set fire to his comic books after he stupidly left them on the floor, he burnt his damn hands reaching into the flames to try to save them. As a high school teen in Canada his friends were baffled why he would take the bus from home at McCowan and Steeles to listen to vinyl movie scores at the Toronto Reference library.
His favourite period of movies is 1935-1980 but has difficulty watching films after the advent of sound in 1929 to approximately 1934 because of the audio quality. He was selected as a Reelworld Film Festival ‘Emerging 20,’ new filmmakers in Canada and awarded 1 of 6 TELEFILM/CMPA/CFTPA producer internships among other accolades, grants and awards. He frequently works with a small but loyal group of talents that he is proud to call friends.
Producer’s Bio
Andy Marshall, along with Powys Dewhurst produced “Where Do White People Go When The Long Weekend Comes? The Wondrous Journey of Delroy Kincaid” (Dir. Powys Dewhurst) and “Acalanto” (Dir. Mateo Guez), and “A Silent Wish” (Dir. Mateo Guez).
Andy is also the co-creator of SOUL, a one-hour drama produced by Halifax Film Co. for Vision TV. He was Creative Producer, drawing on his experience of producing award winning short films such as “The Sadness of Johnson Joe Jangles” and “Shaolin Delivery Boy”. He wrote the pilot and co-wrote two other episodes, giving expression to the mentorship of showrunner Peter Lauterman and the NSI-VisionTV DiverseTV program.
Among others his credits include “Monk” and “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” as an actor. He directed the inaugural year of the Rexdale Outreach Choir. Born in Trinidad, Andy holds a BA in music and an MFA in theatre from York University.
He is a graduate of the Canadian Film Centre’s Producers Lab.