Our Team

Tom Mae and Reet Mae are a Canadian-Estonian brother and sister team who have made several documentaries about the Estonian Diaspora and its connection to global historical events with support from the wider Estonian community. Their parents fled from Estonia in the Great Escape (Suurpõgenemine) of September 1944.

Filmmakers statement

We have been recording the oral histories of Estonian elders for over 10 years, as a way to capture our history before it is forgotten or lost forever. Our focus was to interview people who were born in free Estonia, who fled the Soviet incursion in 1944 during the Great Baltic Escape 1944, as children with their parents, or as young adults. We have recorded over one hundred interviews that we are working with as we bring focus on the ones most compelling for films. We also recognize the importance of preserving each individual story, as these first person accounts of life in Estonia and the flight to exile provide valuable insights for future generations.

People

Tom Mae

Tom Mae is a digital artist, producer, editor, and filmmaker. His work has included multiple projects in adult and child mental health, including innovative interactive apps for youth in custody. Mae Production’s corporate clients have included the likes of DHL, General Mills, Gillette, Hitachi, and Ford Motor Company of Canada. Theatrical films Tom has produced and directed are Raising the Flag (short doc, 2018), Patterns of Freedom (feature doc, 2015). These documentaries have received awards at a number of film festivals. Some of Tom’s other productions have also won various awards including a Clio.

The Government of Estonia awarded Tom the People's Diplomat award (together with Reet Mae) in 2017 and the Annual Award in the Field of Folk Culture from the Cultural Endowment of Estonia (with Reet Mae) in 2015. Tom worked as editor with Kalli Paakspuu on her feature-length documentary film Maestro Roman Toi Beautiful Songs I Dedicate to You. This documentary featured the voice of A.C. Peterson as Roman Toi. The film was awarded Best Editor in two festivals – Tokyo & Ukraine

People

Reet Mae

Reet Mae is an interfaith/metaphysical minister, producer/director, artist, and researcher whose work includes award-winning video training for mental health workers, as well as animation and video-based apps for children’s mental health created in collaboration with Tom. Reet shares Estonia’s People's Diplomat award, 2017 and the Annual Award in the Field of Folk Culture from the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, 2015, with her brother Tom Mae. Earlier, Reet was awarded the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal (1992) for her work in the community. Her work has been included in Nuit Blanche, and juried art exhibits in Canada, the US and Estonia.

As a co-producer and co-director of Patterns of Freedom (Vabaduse mustrid) Reet values the ISOOF projects, given her interest in understanding the impact of generational trauma and Estonian identity in exile, the culture in which she and Tom were raised. Reet believes that Russian colonialism remains largely unrecognized, even after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, thus stories of the Baltic countries are increasingly important in understanding and combating this in the present day.

People

Kalli Paakspuu

Consulting Producer Kalli Paakspuu is a filmmaker, writer, educator, and new media/theatre artist.

As a producer with writer/director Maureen Bradley, Kalli developed Two 4 One, a feature film that was awarded Telefilm Micro-Budget funding in 2013. She created the [1] interactive installation World Without Water for the Canadian Film Centre’s Telus Interactive Art and Entertainment programme.

The installation was later curated into CODE Live, an international exhibition of interactive new media at Vancouver’s Cultural Olympiad in 2010. It was also featured at the Nuit Blanche Festival in 2007.

Kalli is a contract faculty member at York University and a professor at Sheridan College. Her short film Awakening - as told by Roman Toi (2018) was awarded a Gold Remi Award at Worldfest Houston International Film Festival. This short has done the festival circuit with screenings in Scotland, Italy, Ecuador, Canada, the United States, Romania, India, Kenya, and Serbia. She produced/directed a film adaptation of Maestro Roman Toi's autobiography, featuring his beautiful, romantic choral music, Maestro Roman Toi, Beautiful Songs Dedicated to You.

People

Dan Philips

Dan is a producer, visual artist, and our animation consultant.
Past credits and roles of his include:

Vice President and Head of Production for LAIKA Studios (2006-2009)
Artistic Liaison and Co-Head of Effects on the movie The Prince of Egypt and The Road to El Dorado (both for DreamWorks, 1995-2000)

People

Roland Ujj

Roland Ujj, MPI's Key Programmer and Programming and Testing Supervisor has been a key team member of Mae Productions Inc. for over 10 years, working on programming for web development, mobile technology, and apps.

Roland has over 30 years of experience in programming on different platforms including microprocessors, Windows, QNX (similar to Unix but with real-time processing), iOS and others. His familiarity with different languages ranges from ASM, BASIC, C, C++, Objective C, HTML5, JavaScript and others is a benefit to all our clients. As a former hardware designer, Roland has an excellent understanding of how hardware relates to software, networking, and security