Montreal Matters: Youth
CITIZENShift’s ‘youth’ bloggers are scouting the town during Montreal Matters to let you know all about the great events going on. Come back often to read what they have discovered throughout the month of October!
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Today, there is a proliferation of media that targets the youth- whether it be in advertising, commercialism, music, television and film; or computer and internet programming, such as video games and computer sites; or cellphone and ipod use- so much media targets the youth. [Apparently even the Pope has been tapping into new media- during Youth Day this year in Australia, he used wireless text messaging to network with more than 250,000 pilgrims!] Yet how much media is actually made by youth, and accurately represents them? In search to answers to such questions, last night I attended the Shoot First, Ask Questions Later: Youth as Media Producers workshop, as part of the Montreal Matters series at McGill.
The evening was led by McGill Education Professors Michael Hoechsmann and Bronwen Low (authors of Reading Youth Writing: “New” Literacies, Cultural Studies and Education), who spoke about how so much of today’s media is directed toward youth- often through the aggressive, ubiquitous marketing and advertising cultures of the 21st Century. Yet this very media often ignores the opinions of youth, and is dismissive of their ideas. Read the rest of this entry »
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Last Friday I attended a lecture at Vanier College as part of a Montreal Matters series, Social Science ‘08. The lecture was delivered by the London-born playwright and film director, Michael McKenzie, who presented his most recent work, Adam’s Wall (2008). The film follows a classic theme- the force of natural determination versus human will-, focusing on the relationships of different ethnic communities in Montreal and showing the willingness of some youth today to do away with previous, imposed cultural barriers. The story goes as follows: in the midst of a budding, unexpected romance between a young Jew named Adam and a Lebanese girl named Yasmine, the couple finds themselves confronted by the intolerance of their communities, and implicated in larger world events. Indeed, their respective backgrounds seem hard to avoid: the tragic loss of Adam’s parents while he was a child living in Israel still bears him psychological pain, and his domineering orthodox grandfather/ guardian keeps him under close surveillance; in the wake of the Lebanese-Israeli war of 2006, Yasmine’s Montreal community is in a panic, and she finds that her mother is missing in Beirut. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: adam, adam's, cultural, diversity, documentary, film, montreal, wall
