Shebafilms is a film production company based in Thunder Bay, Ontario established in 1996. We focus primarily on documentary filmmaking, but we also produce fiction, animation, commercial and educational films. We have filmed around the world creating documentaries focusing on history, globalization, social justice, the environment and mental health issues. ShebaFilms has built a reputation of creating strong documentary content that speaks to important issues in Canada and abroad. We produce films as both Shebafilms Studios and Franco Finn Films.
Kelly Saxberg
Director | Producer | Mentor | DOP
Kelly Saxberg is a multilingual award-winning filmmaker and educator best known for her body of work featuring Ontario history and remarkable women. With a career spanning 40 years she has made more than 100 films. In 2025, she produced and co-directed with Navalik Tologanak the 48 minute documentary A Tale of Two Qallunaat . In 2024 she co-directed Mr. Noah and the Second Flood which garnered multiple awards, most recently the top prize at the CTV best in Shorts. She is producer, co-director, cinematographer of Sniper / Tireur d’élite nominated for Best historical documentary at Yorkton. She produced and filmed Silent Cries – Kiayunik Tuhanak, nominated for best biographical documentary at Yorkton.
In 2019, she was the cinematographer and co-producer of Journey to Our Homeland. Nominated for 3 Golden Sheaf awards, it won the Research award. In 2019, her bilingual docu-drama Where the Poppies Grow – The Lakehead at War was nominated for a Golden Sheaf Award for Best Historical Documentary. In 2017, she completed Long Walk Home: The Incredible Journey of Sheila Burnford, a 34-minute documentary. She is currently completing the 6 part series The View From Up Here as Producer / Editor. Kelly was the writer/ director/ editor of Under The Red Star, a docu-drama shot on 16mm film. Citoyens du Monde is a 6-hour series she wrote and directed for TFO. The Gemini nominated Letters From Karelia won her best Director and Best Documentary at the Manitoba Motion Picture Industry Awards. Her other films include Seeking Bimaadiziiwin, Dorothea Mitchell: A Reel Pioneer, Le Printemps des voyageurs: La Genèse, the award-winning Banana Split, and the NFB production Rosies of the North.
She also edited “The Fatal flower,” a silent film shot originally in 1930 and finished by Flash Frame Film and Video Network of which she is the past chair and founding member.
Kelly has mentored and employed dozens of emerging filmmakers and artists in Thunder Bay through Flash Frame workshops and film projects since 2001. She has organized seven Docs North Doc Nord, 5-day intensive filmmaking workshops aimed at filmmakers from remote northern communities across the far north of Ontario. In 2005, Kelly Saxberg and Ron Harpelle founded The Bay Street Film Festival (Now Vox Popular Media Arts Festival) with a mandate to celebrate and promote regional films. She is the president of Friends of The Finnish Labour Temple, a registered charity. FFLT recently launched the interactive website www.Rosiesofthenorth.ca It is also responsible for the educational streaming channel: www.ResearchTV.ca
Ron Harpelle
Director | Producer
Ron Harpelle is an award-winning producer and director and he teaches History at Lakehead University. Together with Kelly Saxberg, he has worked in a variety of capacities on dozens of films and videos. He has a special interest in historical documentaries and in making Social Science research come alive in the form of films, videos. and as new media. This is one of the reasons why ShebaFilms specializes in projects that focus on history and why his films contain an educational component.
Ron’s most recent film project involved the digitization of 500,000 ft of 16 mm film footage from the nightly news in Thunder Bay, Ontario during the 1960s and 70s. The results are two experiments in producing newsreels, News From the Giant, and Sports From the Giant, and the production of The View From Up Here, a six-part “found footage” documentary series that takes a satirical look at historical themes and events in a remote region of Canada.
Prior to that he directed, Le tireur d,élite/The Sniper, about Patrick Riel, a WWI Métis sniper, Toxic Time Bomb, about Agent Orange and the water crisis is Elmira, Ontario, Where the Poppies Grow, a docu-drama to commemorate the end of World War One and Reflections on the Great War, a series of vignettes focused on aspects of the war. This is the story of one man’s experience during the war and it highlights many aspects of the participation of Canadians in the conflict. An example of a research driven film is Ron’s Pulp Friction: People, Places and the Global Economy. This is a film about the globalization of the forest industry that compares communities in Canada, Finland and Uruguay. Another example of his work directing drama is A.K.A., a film about a serial imposter who was a professor at Lakehead University in the 1960s. He also directed In Security, which is a documentary film about barbed wire, from its introduction in the 1870s to control the movements of animals on the Great Plains, to its current use to control the movements of people. Ron is also the producer and co-director of Banana Split, which won the Canadian International Development Agency’s 2004 Deborah Fletcher Award of Excellence in International Development Filmmaking. Ron also produced The Fatal Flower, winner of the 2003 Burrit/Thompson Award, and the “Port Arthur Amateur Cinema Society Collection” a series containing the first amateur feature-length films made in Canada. For information on this collection visit www.ladylumberjack.ca. Another of his producer and production credits is Dorothea Mitchell: A Reel Pioneer which can be seen on BRAVO!. This is a film about a remarkable woman who wrote and acted in Canada’s first feature-length independent film.
Ron Harpelle has also participated as a producer in the production of several Social Science projects that focused on research and researchers. The most significant was Citoyens du Monde/Citizens of the World, which is a six-part series on research for development. Filmed in Asia, South Asia, the Middle-East, Africa and Latin America, this series looks at six thematic areas of development research. It offers an introduction to the challenges of development and to some of the people who are making a difference. Associated with this film series is a separate new media project that produced 52 1-2 minute long clips that answer questions about international development. These clips are intended for use by the International Development Research Centre on its website and they can also be used in the classroom as introductions to topics on development. Other projects that highlight Social Science research are Northern Grown, an educational documentary about Food Security which was made for Lakehead University’s Food Security Research Network and Turning Points for Teens, a 14 part series about young women and body image.
Ron Harpelle has a PhD in History and a background in development economics. He has produced several books and numerous articles on various historical subjects. His specialization is in the West Indian diaspora to Central America, but he has published in other areas. Ron’s most recent major publications are IDRC: 40 Years of Ideas, Innovation and Impact, and Long-Term Solutions for a Short-Term World: Canada and Research for Development. He is the author of The West Indians of Costa Rica: Race, Class and the Integration of an Ethnic Minority, and the co-editor of The Lady Lumberjack: An Annotated Collection of Dorothea Mitchell’s Writings, and Karelian Exodus: Finnish Communities in North America and Soviet Karelia during the Depression Era. He is also a contributor and the editor of Banana Stories/Histoires de Bananes, a publication made possible with the support of the International Development Research Centre and the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain. The subject of many of these publications are companions to the films we make. Information about these publications and more can be found on his academic website. You can also visit at the publications page on this website for information about materials related to our films.
In addition to producing films, books and articles, Ron Harpelle has also developed a research tool to assist in the study of the history of the West Indian diaspora in the Caribbean basin. His academic work is used by graduate students, armchair historians and genealogists interested in the history of the 500,000 men, women and children who left the British West Indies between 1850 and 1950 in search of opportunities in the banana industry and the Panama Canal.
Other projects worth checking out are his educational websites that incorporate film and/or related technologies. The most recent is Engaging the World, a website with a Korsakow driven non-linear documentary film about international development. Another is The Lakehead Finns, a website about the history of Finnish immigration and settlement in Canada. His first website is devoted to Dorothea Mitchell and the Port Arthur Amateur Cinema Society. This website makes innovative use of the internet to bring silent film and one group of its creators back to life. On this website you can see how a film strip made in the 1970s has been animated for the internet and you can find out how to teach the history and techniques of silent film to school children.
Adrien Harpelle
Director | Producer | Audio Engineer | Composer
Adrien Harpelle is a bilingual (English, French) filmmaker, audio engineer, and composer. Harpelle specializes in documentary filmmaking, sound design, and composition.
In 2025, he was nominated by the city of Thunder Bay for the Arts and Heritage Professional Award. Harpelle is currently working on his solo EP Ghosts, which received funding by the OAC. Many of his films are set to broadcast this winter on Dougall Media and available to stream on Research TV.ca. Including Carousel of Time which I directed and follows the artists who restored the 100 year old C.W. Parker Carousel in Thunder Bay.
Adrien Harpelle is a producer and composer for the film Mr. Noah and the Second Flood which won first place at CTV’s best in shorts at Cinéfest 2025, Best Animated Film at the Luleå International Film Festival in Sweden, and several other wins and nominations in Canada and around the world.
Harpelle was the mentor, director, and composer for the 24 minute documentary Journey to our Homeland, which follows Nibinamik First Nation Elders as they travel a historic canoe route with youth to their old village site. The film won a Golden Sheaf Award for Research at the Yorkton Film Festival and was nominated for Best Emerging Filmmaker and the Kathleen Shannon Award, in 2023. The film was acquired by APTN Lumi in 2024.
Since 2020, Adrien Harpelle has been the Director of the annual Vox Popular Media Arts Festival, a 20 year old artist run not-for-profit. The festival features 100+ artists each year, disciplines include: film, music, visual and media arts. Harpelle production company LIP Media Productions and the festival made a co-production of 12 half hour concert performances in 2020 and 2021.
In 2023, he produced ‘Battery’ with his group Twisted Limbs. The song was made in memory of our deceased bandmate Riley Taylor. Using the song as a platform to raise awareness about the opioid crisis, mental health and addiction. Reunited for a highly successful fundraiser for the Riley Taylor Memorial Award Fund, a music scholarship at Carleton University.