John Brett

This is a documentary about the fragile and complex marine ecosystem in the Bay of Fundy. The film traces relationships within the food chain - from tiny plankton to birds and seals and finally to whales and humans. The film is a plea for careful management of our ocean resource and was first telecast as part of CBC's Nature of Things series.

This docucumentary by John Brett conveys the impressions of cultural loss felt by an elderly Acadian man living on the south shore of Nova Scotia after his homestead has been deserted.

In 1755, ten thousand French Canadian settlers were thrown off their land, loaded on ships, and exiled. Island Memories explores the past in a small Acadian community in Nova Scotia where the last survivor of this great deportation is reputedly buried. A lively film full of adventure, people, and history.

Arthur and Ernest are two bachelor fishermen who occupy the proverbial end-of-the-road on Morris Island, an Acadian community in southern Nova Scotia. Sober or not, they carry on with and for the filmmaker who is attempting to find out about their lives. The resulting encounters owe a smuch to Harold Pinter or Samuel beckett is they do to the documentary genre of film-making.

Meet Lewellyn James Henneberry: fisherman, yodeller, home-spun philosopher and creator of a very strange museum full of gaping shark jaws, nautical paraphernalia, model ships, and glittering, embalmed fish that might be taxidermy and might be art. Lewie has lived all his life in the fishing village of Sambro, Nova Scotia. The unlikely patriarch of a multi-million-dollar fishing dynasty, he's a man who tackles it all--fair weather or foul--with compassion, pragmatism, infectious humour and a healthy sense of life's absurdities. One Man's Paradise mixes sea-going adventure, humour and great humanity to tell the story of this extraordinary 'ordinary' man who has spent most of his life hunting the largest fish in the sea. The North Atlantic Ocean is harsh and unforgiving--not most peoples' idea of paradise. But seen through Lewie's eyes, it becomes a magical place where we catch a glimpse of what makes life worth living ... not just for him, but for all of us.

Fishing the treacherous North Atlantic is everything a modern job tries not to be: it's brutal, dangerous and gruelling. Family and friends are left behind for weeks at a time. In The Voyage of the 7 Girls filmmaker John Brett joins skippers Wes and Marty Henneberry on four voyages aboard their 32-metre longliner - the 7 Girls - for an up-close look at the extreme demands of a job that tests body and soul.