Selected Screenplays by Kevin Arthur Land
STATIC
Mitchell was a keyboard player in a cover band during the early nineties until the rainy and foggy night when, driving home with his wife and three-month old daughter, he slams into the back of a truck parked on a country road. His family are killed immediately, and his leg is crushed in the impact. Ridden with guilt and self-loathing, he swears off music and alcohol. Now 25 years later, still walking with a limp in the leg in which he never had surgery, he is about to retire as a mail carrier. He remembers the nine songs he wrote in the early years after the accident and decides to rent the busy recording studio owned by a former client to purge himself of them. As he records these painful songs, he connects with Corey, the trans female sound engineer, and the two bond unexpectedly through the music, leading them both to a place of healing, self-respect and redemption. Currently being workshopped for the stage.
MIA
A recovering crack addict, Todd Stettner has managed to put his life back on track, restoring the family auto parts business and establishing a friendly relationship with his ex-wife. What he wants more than anything is to re-connect with his daughter Mia, now twelve, who lives in Saskatchewan. Although he feels ready to function as a parent again, Mia’s therapist does not share the view that she is ready yet. One night, while getting gas, he sees the picture of a missing girl on a monitor and, in a van a couple of rows away, the same terror-struck girl appealing to him from the backseat. Before he can react, the car drives away, and he is left feeling helpless. Until he notices, flapping in the breeze, a receipt from the transaction. This begins his journey to find someone else’s daughter, not his own.
MANOOSHA
Mark Bentick is a screener at a film festival in Toronto when he receives an entry that was shot in the rural community where he grew up. He is disturbed to see that the final image of the film is that of the pond at his childhood home where his younger sister Lianne drowned. Believing this to be a sign, he takes a leave of absence from the festival in order to return to the hometown he abandoned in order to investigate her death, which he had always believed to be suspicious. This story also exists in the form of a 6-part limited series for television.
HEYDAY
Based on his play of the same name. In 1977, Canadian-born Florence Kinrade, an opera singer and vaudevillian, is suffering from dementia in a Californian nursing home. A strange visitor appears and asks her if she murdered her sister Ethel in 1909 in Hamilton, Ontario, prompting Florence to tell her life story as a vaudeville show.
CHANTS
Based on his play of the same name. Adele Carrier welcomes her three boys to the family home for a weekend to celebrate the ordination of their youngest brother as a priest, but the presence of their dead sibling Mark seems to haunt the celebration.