Biography
Keith Clarkson is a ground-breaking innovator in the production of interactive media, documentaries, children's programming and web and mobile games. His career spans almost 30 years as a Producer and Executive Producer. Voices of Change (1995), a feature-length documentary he produced with the National Film Board of Canada, PBS, the CBC and the Aga Khan Foundation, was shot in Guatemala, Australia, Pakistan and Latvia. It was featured at the Toronto, Montreal and Bombay Film Festivals and had its world premiere at the UN's World Conference on Women in Beijing. The CBC also commissioned him to produce Our Daughter's Pain, about the practice of female genital mutilation going on in secret in Canada. This film was, in part, responsible for the Canadian government amending the Criminal Code to specifically outlaw this custom. Prior to that, Keith produced the feature documentary Grass, narrated by Woody Harrelson (Cheers), which won the 2000 Genie Award for Best Documentary. Keith then developed a feature film script with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields, based on the life of the famed Canadian pioneer writer, Susanna Moodie. He later turned this script into an interactive novel app and graphic novel, entitled "Susanna Moodie: Roughing It in the Bush" with Xenophile Media. Previously, Keith created the interactive entertainment division for Toronto's ExtendMedia. As Supervising Producer, he pioneered some of the earliest interactive television content work produced in North America, such as the cross-platform TV/web drama series, Drop the Beat (2000), and the convergent cooking show Dish It Out (1999) - both produced for Alliance Atlantis. In 2005, Keith joined Xenophile Media as Executive Producer and oversaw production on the ReGenesis (2004) Extended Reality Game (2007 International Emmy® Award - Best Interactive Project, 2006 Banff World Television Award - Best Convergent Project, 2006 Gemini Award - Best Cross-platform Program) the "Fallen Alternate Reality Game" for ABC/Disney (2007 Primetime Emmy® Award, 2007 Banff World Television Award and 2007 South by Southwest Award - Best Experimental Interactive Project), Total Drama (2007) Island - Totally Interactive! for Cartoon Network and Teletoon (over 10 million registered users in 16 countries in 13 languages) and the M.I.High (2007) - Whack the Mole Game (2009 Rose d'Or Award - Best Multiplatform Production) for the BBC. Keith also produced xPod, the online game version of Douglas Coupland's novel JPod (2008). His most recent projects with Xenophile include the web series/feature film Anxietyville (2015) and Time Tremors (2013), a kids TV series and companion augmented reality, location-based mobile game. Keith earned his Master of Business Administration Degree and Diploma in Arts and Media Administration from the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Film and Television Production from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he was born and raised. Keith's first foray into filmmaking, at the age of 16, won him the Best Film Award at the BC Student Film Festival (1974).
