Rob Viscardis says Reframe makes him feel “spoiled as a filmmaker”

Peterborough filmmaker Rob Viscardis has been a regular at the Reframe Film Festival since 2016, when the festival screened his first feature documentary.

This year, Viscardis is back at Reframe with his latest full-length production, My Dad’s Tapes, which he edited and produced. It’s one of two films at this year’s festival that Viscardis worked on — he also edited The Monarch Ultra.

My Dad’s Tapes tells the story of the film’s director, Kurtis Watson, as he gathers his family for a weekend to review old videos filmed by his late father. Watson and his loved ones use the time together to unpack the pain and confusion surrounding his father’s death by suicide.

“Kurtis and I worked really closely on all the creative things,” Viscardis said, noting that getting on the same wavelength so that Watson felt confident in his editing decisions was an important part of the process. Their conversations about the film’s story were drawn out over the course of about a year before editing began. 

“It’s Kurtis’s story. It’s very personal to him,”  Viscardis said. “But I think it’s an advantage, too, for storytellers to have a team … it allows a little more attention to the audience’s perspective.”

Viscardis has embraced the role of helping others to tell personal stories. “A strength for me is sort of helping people take their project to another level, or help them realize it, see past the self consciousness of working on one’s own story,” he said.

Viscardis added that living in Peterborough has allowed him to pursue his filmmaking dreams. “If I had moved to Toronto a long time ago, I may have needed to work my way up a ladder,” he said. “Whereas here, I’ve kind of had to get my own projects going for the most part… It’s been a huge film school, in a way.”

“There is a growing filmmaking community here, more and more people who are working on really great stuff,” Viscardis said. Peterborough is also home to several veteran filmmakers, like James Cullingham and Peter Blow, who Viscardis credited for mentoring and supporting his work over the years.

And then there’s Reframe, which Viscardis said holds a special place in his heart and makes him “feel spoiled as a filmmaker.”

At the 2020 festival, Viscardis premiered the feature-length version of Town of Widows, which followed a group of local GE retirees and their widows as they fought for compensation related to incidences of occupational cancer. Viscardis co-directed Town of Widows with Natasha Luckhardt.

“I’ve had some amazing screenings that are kind of like the highlights of my career,” Viscardis said of his experiences showing films at Reframe. “Packed houses and really emotional screenings … The way they care about filmmakers, the way they care about the stories; It’s not just for show.”

My Dad’s Tapes screens on Saturday, Jan. 25, at 12:00 p.m., at the Market Hall.

Peterborough Currents is happy to publish this story about the 2025 Reframe Film Festival. As a sponsor of the festival, Currents committed to providing coverage of it, but we maintained editorial independence over our content throughout.