Des Walsh

Close to the Bone: The Film

The film accompanying the album "Closer to the Bone" by Ian Foster.

Under the Weather

There is no ‘best thing’ about having terminal cancer, but for forty-year-old Joe, being welcomed back into his childhood home, feeling the warmth and support of his sister and her husband and observing his young niece’s blossoming emotional maturity seem to give new meaning to a life he feels he had wasted. With unexpected humour, stark realism and quiet insight, Under The Weather is an uplifting meditation on one man’s graceful surrender to the inevitable and the palpable impact his passing has on those he leaves behind.

Little Orphans

The wedding of their youngest sister, Janet, brings Gwen and Kay home to St. John’s, Newfoundland. While Janet struggles to hide her family’s dysfunction, Kay can’t help but create chaos wherever she goes and Gwen finds herself paralyzed by a past secret. The complicated web of relationships between the sisters, their Aunt Maureen, their absent mother, and Kay’s young daughter Billie, is only illuminated by the wedding. Gwen’s attempts to get Kay to take responsibility for her daughter highlights her own abandonment of her ex, Tom, leading them all to a not-so-perfect storm of a reception.

Hunting Pignut

Bernice, a 15 year old misfit runs away from her rural Newfoundland community in search of Pignut, a tormented and violent gutter punk, after he steals her father's ashes right out of his urn.

Riverhead

A blood feud divides a small town in rural Newfoundland.

Keystone

When Jack begins to forget, he visits Keystone, an organization with an unlikely mandate: making your most important memories truly unforgettable.

The Tour

Alice, a bus tour guide in St. John's Newfoundland with a broken heart unexpectedly tells her tales of love and loss to a group of life-weary tourists and realizes the power of the moments she has experienced in the city.

Clipper Gold

It's a fine, frail line between fantasy and reality when the doleful, downtrodden state of a couple's relationship unfurls against the backdrop of a feed of moose sausages and tea. Sexual frustration, co-dependency, domestic despair and just a hint of missing male libido all play out within the crestfallen subtleties of opposing table manners and passive aggressive tea-brewing rituals.

Cast No Shadow

One wild and tumultuous summer in the life of young Jude Traynor as he attempts to navigate his way through a life of delinquency and petty crime.

Sadie

In 1940s outport Newfoundland, young Sadie struggles to cope with the tragic death of both her parents.

Hold Fast

Two teenage boys escape an unhappy home, embarking on a perilous journey of self-discovery that takes them deep into the Newfoundland wilderness.

Still Rowdy After All These Years

A documentary retrospective on the prolific career of acclaimed Canadian actor, writer and director Gordon Pinsent.

Snarbuckled

An itinerant cook survives a shipwreck, paddles himself to an island in a stock pot, and finds himself on a surreal journey through his past to discover the ineffable connection he has with a clown living a desultory existence in a dilapidated lighthouse.

Four Sisters

An old flame dredges up family secrets. Will four sisters finally put their jealousies and misconceptions to rest?

Mum's the Word

A group of youngsters discover that Mr. Templeton has 40 grand hidden in his home. They figure they can get their hands on the cash by masking themselves as Newfoundland Mummers.

Down to the Wood

An unusual request forces Delph the barber to come to terms with possible loss.

Down to the Dirt

Thirty-year-old Keith Kavanagh (Joel Thomas Hynes) ekes his way through life in a small town. A hard-drinking hooligan, he keeps his ragged collection of poetry a closely guarded secret... as secret as his regret for the shattered relationship with his father. When Keith meets the darkly exotic Natasha (Mylène Savoie), his life is changed forever.

Spoiled

A young girl named Pearl tries to help her father navigate the world of online dating.

To Dublin with Love

Inspired by the late poet Al Pittman's 'March Hare' late winter music and literary celebrations, director Barbara Doran-along with a clutch of her close friends, associates and artistic collaborators from St. John's and the rest of the Rock-travel to Dublin to examine the close cultural relationships between Newfoundland and Ireland in this boisterous documentary film.

Random Passage

This award winning miniseries traces the difficult passage of young Mary Keane (Aoife McMahon) from servitude in Ireland to the squalor of rough-and-tumble Newfoundland in the early 1800s. Escaping attempted rape and abuse, Mary moves on with her infant daughter to find shelter at a remote fishing station run by Thomas Hutchings (Colm Meaney). In a time and place where life and death are a hair's breadth apart, Mary joins the community's struggle for survival against sickness and starvation. All of the Cape's people are fugitives of one kind or another, but by pulling together through hardships and tragedies, they forge a new life of hope - and even love.

Rain, Drizzle, and Fog

St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, is North America's most easterly landfall. For half a millennium, its perfect harbour has provided a safe refuge in the middle of the treacherous North Atlantic. For 300 years of its history it was an actual crime to try and settle--Newfoundland was the private preserve of British fishing merchants. But people stayed, despite the colonial masters, despite the lack of law and order, despite hellish weather and raging seas. And the city grew--lurching through centuries of crisis, disaster, privation. For filmmaker Rosemary House, "This is still a hard rock land, a dirty old town at the back of beyond. And yet the St. John's townie is so proud, you'd swear we lived in Paris." In this documentary, she explores her city with the help of six locals, Mary Walsh, Andy Jones, Anita Best, Brian Hennessey, Ed Riche, Des Walsh, writers and performers all. (Source: National Film Board)

Finding Mary March

This film discusses the search for the last remains of Demasduit (Mary March), one of the last of the Indigenous Beothuk people, set in the Red Indian Lake area of Central Newfoundland. A young girl, Bernadette Buchans, believes that she is related to Mary March. Throughout the whole film, Bernadette and her father Ted are searching for the grave of her mother. An archaeologist/ photographer, Nancy George, accompanies them and she also believes that she has family connections to the Beothuks.