CitizenShift
Updates from the basement, courtesy of the CITIZENShift team.
Archive of December, 2007
Manikunta filming Nanjunda and Surya
Journal Entry
August 10 :: Vancouver, BC
It is such an emotional ride, revisiting the footage of the young street kids in Mysore.
We came home from India with 12 mini DV tapes full of video. The footage was filmed on two of our cameras, some by Mark and I, but predominantly by the kids we met in India.
Capturing, logging and watching the footage, I wasn’t prepared to be re-submerged into their lives.
I didn’t know I needed to be prepared.
I captured the footage, and logged it into ‘best shots’, ‘B-shots’, ‘alternate angles’, ‘context shots’ and ‘interviews’, then arranged it according to whose story it illustrated best.
The video was filmed as a story about street kids in Mysore, but it quickly became a story about three young boys in particular; Surya, Manikanta and Nanjunda. The boys were inseparable and lived together on the streets, overseen by Nanjunda’s mother.
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Tags: glue-huffing, Goonda, India, Mysore, Reel-Youth, sniffing, street-kids, video, videomaking
Written by
denise
December 20, 2007
For those of you interested in documentaries with a green focus, check out The Green Reel Environmental Film Festival in Vaughan, ON January 4 to 5, 2008. The festival features a great collection of environmentally-themed documentaries including Who Killed the Electric Car? Black Gold and NFB films Being Caribou and Toxic Trespass. While you’re there check out the on site environmental vendors, information kiosks, and activities. For more information please visit: http://www.city.vaughan.on.ca/community/playhouse/.
For more info on Being Caribou, check out these links:
http://www.beingcaribou.com/
http://www.nfb.ca/collection/films/fiche/?id=51499
Citizenshift’s Biodiversity dossier http://citizen.nfb.ca/node/1108
For info on Toxic Trespass visit: http://www.nfb.ca/collection/films/fiche/?id=54100
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part of an email from Tracy, the Director of Operation Shanti
July 27 :: Mysore
we just dropped the kids off at boarding school today - four of them got admitted. two (venkatesh and chumi) are returning, and two (pallavi and latta) are new. they all seemed really excited to be there! the moms were a bit sad, and even pallavi’s mom (see earlier blog “sand in the eye”) - she was a bit teary as we were walking away. three days earlier she told me that pallavi was going to school and wouldn’t need to come back to mysore for holidays (the kids get to come home for holidays). so i had not quite expected her tears.
Pallavi in Mysore
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Tags: monsoor, Mysore, operation-shanti, Reel-Youth, street-kids
Written by
reisa
December 10, 2007
Here’s a little heads up on an interesting project to be featured on CitizenShift sometime in the new year. Patrick Beaulieu and Daniel Canty are just back from a transcontinental journey following the Monarch Butterfly’s migration path.
Here’s how the artists describe it:
Monarch Vector is a poetic reflexion on flight and the fragility of frontiers, real or imagined, inspired from a true-life adventure. Over thirty-four days in October and November of 2007, multidisciplinary artists Patrick Beaulieu and Daniel Canty piloted the Monarca Mobile, a modified 1978 postal truck incorporating a portable art gallery. In this archaic vehicle, at once lumbering and delicate, they followed, by way of land, the aerial path of the monarch butterflies’ migration over North America.
Their travels led them from Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Québec, across the United States and to the province of Michoacan, México, into the mountains where the monarchs gather by the millions every year around the Day of the Dead. Meandering their way across the backroads of the continent, stopping to interact with the people of various towns, big and small, the artists kept a poetic record of their journey and encounters.
In the coming months, their regular paper postings to a transfrontier correspondent in Montréal, webmaster Ghassan Fayad, will be reshaped into an online version of their cross-border odyssey. You can keep abreast of this upcoming serial by registering at www.vectormonarca.com.
Keep your eyes on CitizenShift for more on this fascinating trajectory…
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Written by
denise
December 6, 2007
Saturday, December 8, 2007 is the International Climate Day of Action. To mark this day, the Toronto Climate Campaign will be holding an Eco Fair at The University of Toronto’s Hart House. Eco Fair is an excellent chance for people to connect with individuals and organizations committed to action on important environmental issues. Citizenshift will have a table set up at the event, so if you’re in the area please stop by! For more information on this event please visit http://www.torontoclimatecampaign.org/.
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Written by
denise
December 3, 2007
http://citizen.nfb.ca/media/csnuitblanche.flv
Citizenshift and Toronto’s ACA Gallery have developed an ongoing relationship based on our shared belief in the ability of art and media to affect social change. Examples of past collaborations include ACA’s director Carol Mark’s contribution of a video interview with outspoken Afghan MP Malalai Joya and Citizenshift’s blog posts on ACA events. ACA’s motto is “Art can change the world” and Carol, her friend and colleague Carol Mann from FemAid, and their team of committed friends have worked hard to use art to make a difference in the lives of others. One such example of this is ACA Gallery’s fundraising efforts to build the Malaila Joya Library in Farah, Afghanistan, built especially for the children and youth of Farah.
This year’s Nuit Blanche marked Citizenshift’s most recent collaboration with ACA Gallery. The ACA event included an outdoor film projection, live music and an interactive collaborative art project, where participants were invited to create bookmarks for kids who use the library. Citizenshift participated by hosting a “speaker’s corner” where I invited individuals to share their opinions on art’s ability to make change in the world. We got some really great perspectives on this question from an interesting bunch of people. Check out what they had to say in this video.
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