Kelvin Redvers grew up in Hay River, Northwest Territories. He majored in film production and graduated in June 2010 with a Batchelor of Fine Arts from Simon Frasier University in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he gained the proficiency for writing and directing his first short films Playing Cards and The Night the Robber Came. His work covers both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal topics as well as First Nations community and aboriginal current affairs. Redvers received his first nationwide Bravo! Canada broadcast credit at the age of 21, for The Making of a Haida Totem Pole. Redvers' documentary television series for Knowledge Network titled Our First Voices proved Redvers as an up-and-coming filmmaker. Because of the success of Our First Voices, Redvers, at the age of 23, was hired in September 2010 by CTV as a producer of CTV-BC's First Story, a Vancouver-based television series and production company that detail Canadian Aboriginal concerns. Over the course of three seasons, as of 2014, Redvers had produced twelve episodes for First Story.
In May 2011, Redvers applied for a film grant through BravoFACT. The funding that he received through BravoFACT allowed Redvers the opportunity to make the seven-minute short filmThe Dancing Cop. In September 2012, The Dancing Cop premiered in the Short Cuts section at the Toronto International Film Festival and at the Oldenburg Film Festival in Germany.
'We Matter' Campaign (2016-present)
In October 2016, Kelvin Redvers and his sister Tunchai Redvers launched 'We Matter', a national online campaign designed to bring awareness to the struggles of Indigenous youth across Canada. It is modelled after Dan Savage's 'It Gets Better' campaign and collects videos and writings from each Indigenous community across Canada with the aim of reducing the number of indigenous teen suicides, while also providing them with mental health resources. Redvers mails the We Matter videos on USB drives to Indigenous communities across Canada who do not have internet access.
High Arctic Haulers
Redvers is the series creator for the documentary series High Arctic Haulers, and directed several of its segments. The series follows the hard and challenging work of the men and women behind the annual sealift that brings almost all of the supplies to the many Northern communities not served by roads. Redvers told Nunavut News that he first conceived the idea for the show in 2015, and that part of his motivation was dissatisfaction with how the North was portrayed by film-makers from the south. Redvers said this was his largest production so far, and that he was managing multiple crews aboard multiple vessels. Redvers said that he had included profiles of First Nations youth taking leadership roles.
