CitizenShift
Updates from the basement, courtesy of the CITIZENShift team.
Archive of October, 2009
Cinema Politica premiered The Experimental Eskimos in Montreal last Monday.
For folks who haven’t heard of Cinema Politica, they are great people who screen documentaries that “speak truth to power.” Just about every Monday evening Concordia’s Cinema Politica screens a new, enlightening film in the Hall building. Movies are free (pay only if you want to) and open to the public. Sometimes if you’re lucky they’ll even have a Q&A with the director.
Click here to see what docs are playing soon.
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Category : Blogroll
Tags: activism, documentary-film, human rights, social justice
Written by
tim
October 27, 2009
A little over a year ago we partnered with the folks at the Vancouver and Edmonton NFB studios to start a dossier called Harm Reduction, featuring videos by and for youth living in high risk situations and marginalised communities, such as intravenous drug users, homeless or in transitional housing and transitioning genders.
The films continued to be produced, and were recently launched as Playing It Safe: Staying Safe in a High Risk World. Over the next few months, new webisodes produced by the youth participants will be going up on the site every few weeks. You can see them all at http://playing-it-safe.nfb.ca
It’s a powerful series of films and embodies really clearly what we mean by citizen media: putting cameras into the hands of people so they can tell their own stories in their own way, all the while offering support and resources for them.
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Category : Where Are They Now?
This year’s Festival Image+Nation will be focusing its lens on homegrown artists with Quebec-made films as part of this international LGBT film festival’s showcase lineup. Playing back-to-back on the evening of October 28th, the films (others of which can be previewed on the site) screening as part of Queerement-Québec are listed here.
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Category : Blogroll, events
Tags: image+nation, LGBT, Queer
Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/christopherdewolf/2562444469/
With Montreal’s mayoral race looming near, the Comité des citoyens du Mile-End (Mile End Citizens’ Committee) has organized a debate between various city councillor hopefuls about the future of one of Montreal’s most lively neighbourhoods, the Mile End. The agenda will include discussions on the environment, cultural investments, and quality of life.
The debaters will be:
Richard Marquis, Guillaume Vaillancourt, Miche Pauzé, Juliana Contreras, Jean-François Larose, Michel Labrecque, Robert Pilon, Luc Ferrandez, Alex Norris, Richard Ryan and Elena Fakotakis-Kolaitis.
While the Comité has held many informal debates in the past, one with so many officials participating is rare.
One of the issues that the Comité is known for criticizing is the rejuvenation project set for the industrial area just East of St. Laurent Blvd. along St. Viateur St. The Comité presented concerns that gentrification of the area will increase rent prices and make the multicultural neighbourhood less affordable for middle-class households.
The debate will be held on Monday, October 26 at 7:30PM in the Sport Montréal Benfica, 100 Bernard St. Organizers are asking for $2 donations at the door to cover the cost of renting the hall. The debate will be in French.
The Montreal Gazette made a nifty electoral district map of the Mile End, see it here.
A blog called Mile End Memories that’s on topic, here.
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Category : Blogroll, events
Tags: climate-change, community, Culture, Garbage, Montreal Matters: Youth, recycling
Hey,
There’s a new blog making its unveiling at CITIZENShift this week… check back in a bit!
-D
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Category : Blogroll
The 5th annual International Symposium on Hip Hop Culture begins this month, running October 29-November 2. The bilingual event is hosted by Concordia University in room H-110 of the Hall building, located on 1455 de Maisonneuve West.
The symposium will include panel discussion fare as well as movie screenings, parties, and of course great music. Organizers say the event looks beyond mainstream understandings of hip hop culture.
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Category : Blogroll, events
Tags: Add new tag, canada, community, Culture, Montreal Matters: Youth
Dr Devendra Gupta, an organizer of the III World Congress Hypospadias and Disorders of Sex Development and member of IHSID, when asked about whether or not doctors should perform surgery on infants to change the appearance of their sex organs wrote this: “It should be the wish of the patient and the parents that has to be honoured. Doctors only advise according to the knowledge they have acquired.”
Gupta went on to say that the procedures for dealing with patients are always specific and depend on answers to these questions: “How much is the experience does the surgeon have on the subject? What are the norms of the society? What do the parents want? Will the parents have the major role to play to rearing the child and rehabilitating him/her?”
Gupta summarized his approach to intersex infants and said, “There is no single rule applicable.” Gupta’s official position is not to advocate for a single, universal way of treating all intersex children and he claims to support the wishes of parents and patients.
Also CBC has produced some interesting work on intersex issues in Canada, you can watch it here.
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Category : Blogroll
Having just come out of the long Thanksgiving weekend, many Canadians spent the last few days resting, relaxing, and reflecting on all they have for which to be grateful. Come the end of the month, however, communities coast-to-coast will be bringing historical relevance to a time largely remembered for its turkey dinners and pumpkin-picking.
October 25th marks the beginning of Indigenous Sovereignty Week (ISW), an opportunity, among other things, to “disseminate ideas of Indigenism, and generally contribute to building a cross-Canada movement for Indigenous rights, self-determination, and justice that is led by Indigenous communities but with a broad base of informed support”, according to ISW event organizers.
In Montreal, for example, on the evening of Thursday, October 29th, Le Frigo Vert will be hosting its 6th Annual Anti-Colonial Thanksgiving, expected to include films, speakers and a feast to boot. Presentations will be made by Tracey Deer, director of Club Native, and Billie Pierre, a Nlaka’Pamux/Saulteaux woman based in Vancouver and engaged in Native struggles on Coast Salish Territories. Pierre will speak on one of the foremost of these struggles today, Indigenous organizing against the 2010 Olympics (here’s some audio, to wet your palette). The Olympics have been a hotly contested issue –not least of which because of the longstanding Indigenous land claims that Olympic organizers, provincial/municipal governments, and corporate sponsors alike have allegedly ignored.
Starting this Fall, the CITIZENShift site will be drawing your attention to, and providing a critical forum on, the social, economic and environmental dimensions of the Vancouver Olympic Games. Stay tuned for details!
In the meantime, check out the schedule for ISW in Montreal! Details can be found here. Of particular note, a screening of “Muffins for Granny” on Wednesday, October 28th at 7:30pm, showing at 1455 de Maisonneuve Ouest, H-110 (métro Guy-Concordia). This documentary film examines the residual implications of the residential school program in Canada. See the trailer below.
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Category : Blogroll, events
Tags: First Nations, Indigenous Sovereignty, Olympics, Thanksgiving
This evening, the annual Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) will be screening the West Coast premiere of H2Oil, a film on the Fort Chipewyan people’s struggle to defend themselves, their resources and rights, from Alberta’s tar sands projects. The screening of H2Oil begins at 1:15pm, Monday, October 12th, at the Vancity Theatre on 1181 Seymour St in Vancouver.
In Shannon Walsh’s film, members of the community (situated roughly 200km downstream from the tar sands), are discovering a disturbingly marked increase in diagnoses of cancer. With interviews from residents, ecologists, oil sands profiteers and more, Walsh weaves together a story that is both straightforward and complex. As a review in the Calgary Sun recently read, H2Oil “links multiple issues — water scarcity, climate change, disease, environmental devastation — to the precious petro that pumps through the sticky, black veins of our oil-jonesing world. It’s grim. It’s political. It’s compelling. But it’s also not without welcome humanity, adding dimension to a debate usually illustrated in extremes: Flat-topped industry mouthpiece versus Greenpeace smokestack sitter.”
Tonight’s premiere will be followed by a discussion with the film’s director, Walsh, along with voices from, and representative of, some of the affected communities including George Poitras of the Mikisew Cree First Nation and Eriel Tchekwie Deranger of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. Tying the issue to other regional struggles pivoting around land, justice, and rights, speakers from Wet’suwet’en territories (in northern BC) will discuss resistance to the Enbridge pipeline, an 1170km conduit to carry oil from Alberta’s tar sands to a tanker port in Kitimat, BC. Additionally, community opposition to the project’s development has come from the Nations of Kelly Lake Cree (BC), Nadleh Whut’en (BC), Kitkatla (BC), Haida (BC), Nisga’a (BC), Alexander (AB) and many others.
H2Oil comes at a time when the tar sands development are facing growing criticism for environmental devastation, including a recent report uncovering the underestimated greenhouse gas figures used by industry and government to downplay the apparent damage. As public pressure mounts to address these and other concerns, companies profiting from the tar sands are inexorably intent on responding to such protest by spending more on private security than on public health.
To see a powerful snippet from this timely documentary, check out the CITIZENShift feature page here.
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Category : Blogroll, events
Tags: alberta, First Nations, H2Oil, Oil, Tar Sands
Two engaging series of events are happening this month, definitely worth checking out for anyone in Montréal interested in either social justice or contemporary films addressing provocative issues.
From October 7th until the 18th, an array of screenings as part of the 38th Festival du Nouveau Cinéma are underway and, running simultaneously, the Forum Social Québécois will be hosting workshops, seminars, music, and artistic events at Cégep du Vieux Montréal and UQAM between October 8th and 12th. There will also be screenings of socially relevant films as part of their Ciné-Paix programme.
Fortunately, these two events intersect in a single, much-anticipated, happening being held on Sunday, October 11th at 5pm in the Agora Hydro-Québec. This panel discussion, entitled “Faire du cinéma engagé à l’ère du numérique“, will invite a number of seasoned directors from diverse backgrounds to discuss the varying dimensions of creating socially engaged documentaries. Discussion is intended to touch on opportunities and limitations of funding documentary projects that tackle politically sensitive topics, or require filming in dangerous regions of the globe.
Among the panel of filmmakers are: Patricio Henriquez (Yasser Arafat et les Palestiniens, Images d’une dictature), Hélène Choquette (Les Réfugiés de la planète bleue), Carmen Garcia (L’affaire Coca-Cola), and Santiago Bertolino (Cohabitation difficile à Hébron, La Crise du café au Guatémala). Whew!
For more information on the event, check out the following page.
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Category : Blogroll, events
Tags: Documentary, Film Festival, Social Forum
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