Adam Garnet Jones [windspeaker confidential]

Windspeaker: What one quality do you most value in a friend?
Adam Garnet Jones: Real kindness, which is not the same as niceness.

W: What is it that really makes you mad?
A.G.J.: People ignoring or rejecting the gifts they have been given.

W: When are you at your happiest?
A.G.J.: When I am connecting with something outside myself. Whether I am connecting with words on the page, the people in my life, or the ground beneath my feet, feeling connected lets me know I am alive.

W: What one word best describes you when you are at your worst?
A.G.J.: Self-destructive.

W: What one person do you most admire and why?
A.G.J.: I’m not sure I can pick just one. I remember reading that Louis Armstrong was the only person to achieve his incredible level of success without hurting anyone else.† That sounds like the right way to live.

W: What is the most difficult thing you’ve ever had to do?
A.G.J.: Getting out of adolescence alive.

W: What is your greatest accomplishment?
A.G.J.: I’m not sure. I don’t think I’m there yet.

W: What one goal remains out of reach?
A.G.J.: Balance.

W: If you couldn’t do what you’re doing today, what would you be doing?
A.G.J.: I would be working with our youth. If I couldn’t pursue my dreams, I would want to help other people to achieve theirs.

W: What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
A.G.J.: Take every opportunity that’s offered and give it everything you have.

W: Did you take it?
A.G.J.: Yes.

W: How do you hope to be remembered?
A.G.J.: I want people to remember me as someone who did his very best.

Adam Garnet Jones is a writer and director whose work of over 20 short films has been broadcast on television, screened widely at film festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival and imagineNATIVE and has earned him recognition internationally. Most recently for his efforts, Jones has won the Toronto Arts Foundations RBC Emerging Artist Award.

Born Cree/Métis in Calgary, and raised in Edmonton, Jones currently lives in Toronto. He was 14 when he made his first short film and he managed to get it into a number of festivals. Jones left Alberta for an arts school in Vancouver but dropped out during his first year. He said of Toronto, “Everything I knew about independent film in Canada and everything I saw on the CBC seemed to be coming from this part of the country; I remember sitting at home and thinking, “What am I doing (in B.C.) when everything is over there?” Once in Toronto, Jones attended Ryerson University and received a BFA in film production and won the 2006 Nick Holleris Memorial Award for originality in screenwriting and the 2005 Award for Outstanding Community Service. Jones says of his choice of career, “There is nothing like film and video for telling our stories. Film has limitless potential to combine visual and oral traditions, broadcasting our stories into the power and prominence that they deserve. When I was in my early teens, and I started making video, it felt like I was being listened to for the first time in my life. If I hadn’t found my voice, I don’t know what would have happened to me.”

Jones’ short films include Cloudbreaker, A Small Thing, Can you Love Me? and Wave A Red Flag. He is currently working as a writer on Rezolution Pictures’ new comedy series Mohawk Girls and Big Soul Productions’ upcoming dramatic series The North End. He is also working on his first feature film.