The credits are now rolling on this stage of Richard Lawrence's and Rachel Grantham's lives.

The married couple have produced an impressive body of film work since 1999, the vast majority of which has been filmed and produced in the Yukon, but the couple will be leaving the Yukon later this month and moving to Nova Scotia.

They'll be packing suitcases and film gear into their trailer for the crosscountry drive to Western Shore, a small town with a population of about 1,500 just south of Halifax.

But before they leave, they'll be honoured by a retrospective screening of their works organized by the Yukon Film Society.

The screening will take place at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Old Fire Hall. The 80-minute program will feature six of their films.

'I'm flattered to even have a retrospective on us,' Grantham said in an interview this week.

'I think we've come really far in a short time and just made some huge strides. We've jumped on the filming bandwagon, and we're pretty lucky to have the chance to pursue that.'

They certainly did jump on the filming bandwagon: prior to 1999, neither of them had any experience in the filming business, nor were they trained in it.

Grantham has lived in the Yukon for 18 years and worked as a professional musician, conductor, and teacher.

Lawrence first arrived in the Yukon in 1978 and worked as a reporter for several years.

He left in 1983 to obtain a master's degree in English and Drama. When he returned to the Yukon in 1989, he did a number of jobs with Yukon College and the Yukon Literacy Council, and provided Macintosh computer sales and support.

He'd always had an interest in theatre and film, but never pursued filming because at the time it was too expensive.

'I remember going for a walk with Rachel 10 years ago, and I really wanted to get into film at that point in time,' Lawrence said.

'I asked her, What should I do? Do I leave for film school? Do I try to get work on a film project?' Neither of those things happened, but things have still worked out pretty well.'

Because Lawrence had worked a lot with technology, as soon as nonlinear editing became affordable in the late 1990s, he jumped at the chance to begin working in film.

In 1998, Grantham was heavily involved in the Whitehorse music community, and was narrating a musical show called Voices of the Klondike, which toured from Skagway to Dawson City.

Lawrence filmed the choir portion of the show, and that served as their introduction to the filming business. They started their independent production company, Elsa Entertainment, the same year.

The first real film intended for a general audience was Lost Cabin: Jack London's home in the Klondike, a documentary which focused on the cabin where Jack London lived near Henderson Creek during the winter of 1898.

They worked in collaboration with well-known author Dick North, who was living in Idaho. The film was released in 2000.

The Yukon Filmmaker Development Fund had just been launched, which provides aspiring filmmakers with seed money to get started on a film.

Lawrence and Grantham were among the first group to receive funding, and the $4,000 they received only covered their travel to Idaho, California, Dawson, and the helicopter trip to get the aerial shot of where London's cabin had been.

'The rest we funded ourselves,' Lawrence said.

'We were talking to a lot of elderly people during the making of that movie, and we're lucky that we worked on that project when we did because a lot of them have passed away since then,' Grantham said. 'I think we're both still proud of that piece. It's not perfect, but we're proud of it.'

They then began to move away from the documentary form and into drama. Me, Music was an experimental project released in 2002 which straddled the documentary and fictional form. Lawrence said the project didn't really work out, and that his interest in the documentary form was waning by that point.

Their departure from documentary came with Snowbirth, a classical musical video shot for CBC's Opening Night program.

Snowbirth featured the work of three local musicians, and filmed Donald Watt and Gisli Balzer as they created a snow sculpture of a nativity scene.

'We really wanted to do it because we feel that classical videos are real boring,' Grantham said. 'It was a challenge for us to try and do something that was interesting and kept people engaged.'

Their breakout piece was a short film called Mother's Day, which was released in 2005, and shown at two significant film festivals: one put on by the National Screen Institute Film Exchange in Winnipeg, and another in Toronto by the Canadian Film Centre.

'We were so pleased it got the exposure it did,' Grantham said. 'We were just floored.'

Mother's Day became a springboard for their most ambitious project yet. The 15-minute smallfilm had a $150,000-budget and was funded mainly by the Canada Council for the Arts, but also received support from the Yukon Sound and Film Commission and local investor.

It is the first Yukon-produced film to be shot on 35-milimeter. It is intended for theatrical release, features Dolby Digital Surround Sound, and used professional actors Henry Woolf and Jean Boht.

Lawrence spent two years writing the script, and smallfilm spent a year in production and post-production before they started sending it out to festivals this year.

They've already submitted it to 15 festivals, and plan to submit it to at least that many more in the fall. However, they have yet to hear anything back from the festivals they've submitted it to.

'It's in film purgatory right now,' Grantham said. 'Waiting to hear anything back is really tough.'

The film was shot in Toronto. With the couple moving to Nova Scotia, Lawrence said, they will most likely benefit from being closer to a major filming centre. They hope it will help them achieve their next goal: filming and producing a low-budget feature film.

'Having said that, we don't want to leave here at all,' Lawrence said. 'It's so hard to leave this place. It's got to be one of the toughest places in the world to leave.'

They're moving to Nova Scotia for financial and family reasons, but Grantham admitted they knew they would have some tough choices when they got into the film business.

In their nine years since they started filming, Lawrence said there's been a huge amount of growth in the territory's film industry, thanks largely in part to the Yukon Film Commission, the Northern Film and Video Industry Association, and the Dawson City Film Festival, which provided a venue for films to be shown.

'There's been some really top-notch stuff put out here recently,' Lawrence said. 'A lot of people are used to filming being done by outsiders who came in here to tell stories about the Gold Rush or first nations elders.

'Thanks to the convergence of technology becoming cheaper and more accessible, and the support from within the Yukon, there's been a bunch of great Yukon-produced pieces.'

Admission to the retrospective screening on Sunday night is by donation, with all proceeds going to Lawrence and Grantham in support of their move to Nova Scotia.