COHORT 3 PARTICIPANT

Judy Iseke (Métis) is a producer, director, writer, and researcher who began filmmaking as a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Education (endowed chair/university professor) creating 7 educational documentaries with Métis themes. Drawing on B.Ed, M.Ed, and PhD, her independent film projects focused on sharing community-based storytelling research, engagement, and film and website productions. Her animated and live-action short docs have been shared in educational and community settings, broadcast on Shaw cable, and premiered at film festivals including ImagineNative, Back to Batoche, and Vision Maker.

Judy founded Turquoise Sky Entertainment Inc. in 2020 to produce Wasi’s Adventures - a fun and engaging animated children’s comedy series with Cree-Michif language dialogue for language revitalization, inspired by Cree and Métis storytelling. There is an English-language version too. Judy draws upon experiences creating ourelderstories.com – a website sharing 170+ Michif-language Elder stories in creating Wasi’s Adventures and her 15+ years of research into Indigenous storytelling practices.

Judy works collaboratively with committed and creative teams and community Elders, storytellers, language specialists, and musicians, as well as sound designer and animators - to focus attention on creative storytelling and engage children in thoughtful stories that help them explore the world.

Turquoise Sky Entertainment and Judy’s business acumen are expanding. TSEI’s immediate goal is to complete production of season 1 of Wasi’s Adventures. As an evolving animation studio and production company TSEI is inspired to produce thoughtful content through engaging storytelling and strives to innovate in developing this new company and future projects.