TRAILER

Hollie Barrett
as Mary Counsel
AltFF - ​Best Actress
​(Nominee, Summer 2023)
Marcus J. Smith
as Mike Counsel
Keith Bonnell
as Father Muldowney
CNA Digital Filmmaking
Jim Pretty
as Radio Announcer

STILL FRAMES

CREDITS
Directed by
James Newhook

Original story from
Marion Counsel

Produced by
College of the North Atlantic
Peter Buckle
Keith Bonnell

Starring
Hollie Barrett as Mary Counsel
Marcus J. Smith as Mike Counsel
Keith Bonnell as Father Muldowney
Jim Pretty as Radio Announcer

Cinematography
Nick Duncan

Gaffer/Key Grip
Ben Power

Sound Recordists
Harshdeep Singh
Josh Smith

Script Consultant
Marion Counsel

Music used with permission from
​Pinniped

St. Luke's Interior Photos
Christopher Newhook

Filmed on location
Stephenville, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada (Studio & Exteriors)
St. Luke's Cultural Heritage Centre, Placentia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada (Background)
SPECIFICATIONS
​Genres: Drama, History, Biography
​Runtime: 5 minutes, 7 seconds
​
​Production Companies: CNA Films & Focusyn Films
Aspect Ratio: 2.28:1
Quality: 1080p (1920x1080 HD)
Recording Format: ProRes 422
Camera: BlackMagic Production 4K
Editing Software: Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro
Sound Mix: 4-Track Stereo (Tascam DR-70D)
Colour: Colour (HD)
​Country of Origin: Canada
Filming Date: April 10th, 2021
Platforms: YouTube, Vimeo, FilmFreeway, FilmHub, Facebook, Nuclear Home Video, Cineverse, Viddsee, Future Today
AWARDS/SCREENINGS
CB Nuit After Dark Arts Festival 2021 🇨🇦​
Featured Artist

AltFF Alternative Film Festival (Summer 2023) 🇨🇦​
Best Actress - Nominee (Hollie Barrett)

A TO Z CINEMA FILM FESTIVAL 🇮🇳
Best Student Short Film 🏆
​
Cinema Ticket International Film Festival 🇮🇳
Best Student Short Film 🏆
​
Kino Monthly Film Festival 🇨🇦​
Honourable Mention 🎗️

​WideScreen Film & Music Video Festival 🇨🇦​
Honourable Mention 🎗️
​
Kansas City Independent Film Festival 🇺🇸
Semi-Finalist
SNAPP 2021 🇨🇦​
Featured Movie

​Student Live Film Festival 🇫🇷
Official Selection

Golden Eyes 🇫🇷
​Official Selection
Last updated - October 9th, 2024
EXTERNAL LINKS

About Red Island

Red Island is a former village in Placentia Bay, not far from the town of Placentia. It was home to many families, including the Counsel family who are the basis for "Gift From Above". The island was remote, so getting resources weren't as easy to come by as they are today, and the entire village was interconnected and passionate about where they lived. When the Newfoundland government created the Resettlement program, they urged many outport communities including Red Island to resettle to bigger communities such as St. John's and Placentia to keep costs down for healthcare and schooling, after of which left many places abandoned. Many families would float their houses out to sea, which is the basis for many historic photos of Newfoundland of people's struggles transporting their homes to a new location. Red Island has long been abandoned, but still retains a passionate community on the internet of people remembering their home and connecting each other to a place that was so small and taken away so quickly.
Marion and Donnie Counsel in their Communion dresses (1958)
Photo courtesy of Marion Counsel.

WHERE TO WATCH

The parachute story was adapted from "Red Island - Resettlement Girl - I Remember When..." by Marion Counsel, available for purchase via her email or at many Newfoundland stores.

[email protected]
The album cover for
Red Island - Resettlement Girl by Marion Counsel
DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY
"Gift From Above" was my first film project during my time in the Digital Filmmaking program at CNA (College of the North Atlantic), and was a massive undertaking at the time. I consulted with many different people and decided on the parachute story off of Marion Counsel's CD "Red Island - Resettlement Girl", as it was a simple but true story that I could adapt and help tell Marion's story to a variety of different people. As it was my first film, I wanted to keep things simple, but remain as accurate as possible with a variety of different things as it was filmed during a spike of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021. As a result, there were limited resources and less people going in and out of the college at that time. We all managed to pull it off, and the cast and crew were all excellent to work with and had the same passion for preserving this story on the silver screen, and Marion Counsel was an amazing help as well, consulting on different things such as dialogue and information about Red Island itself. As an added bonus, I decided to have my grandfather Jim Pretty record some voice lines for the radio, as apposed to using a regular stock sound effect. The rug that is hanging in the house was a rug made by Marion's mother Mary for my family many many decades ago, a rug that I saw growing up and felt it was important to include it in my film in one way or another, as a physical object to remind everyone that these were real people, and that my main focus is to preserve many stories such as the parachute story, hoping to continue finding true stories to adapt that many take for granted.
© James Newhook/Focusyn Films 2025