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COMMUNITY STORIES: YOUTH MEDIA ARTS PROGRAM
Intensive, challenging and contemporary—this year's RPFF Youth Program is truly the gem to watch for. The program encompasses works made by young, emerging filmmakers from the local Regent Park community and the international arena. These films are raw, intriguing, imaginative and provide the most honest and insightful view of today’s world—a world seen through the perspective of youth. From documentaries of ordinary people battling gentrification, poverty and ethnic discrimination, to music videos made on the streets, to captivating animations by original storytellers from Aboriginal to South American communities, this year's line-up will entertain and inspire. Youth panel discussion to follow.
ASI SUENA
Director: Ibeth Munoz
Experimental | 3 min | Panama | 2009
In the streets of the old Panama City of Casco Antiguo all sounds become musical: the sounds of the ocean, kids playing, multiple and simultaneous conversations, the street seller´s flute sounds, improvised music with plastic bottles and wood sticks. "Asi suena" – "It sounds like this:" the remixing of daily life.
Bio: Ibeth Muñoz
This is the first work of Ibeth Zutel Muñoz, a seventeen-year-old who lives in the Casco Antiguo . She was part of the photography and video workshops called conSECUENCIAS facilitated by Canadian-Colombian artist Alexandra Gelis. This work has been shown at the United Nations, at the Cartagena International Film Festival and at Video in the Streets in Cali, Colombia as part of a larger compilation presenting the situation of youth living in violent neighborhoods in Panama. Because of lack of resources and access to equipment Ibeth has been unable to produce new works. A donation campaign for digital cameras, video cameras and portable computers for participants of previous workshops in Panama and Colombia is being planned.
YOUTH RISING
Director: Stefan Verna
Documentary | 12 min | Canada |2009
Several youth from Côtes-des-Neiges in Montréal discuss the mass killing at Dawson College on September 13th, 2006, as well as the lack of outlets for youth to express their deep and tangled emotions in the midst of the violent society, which surrounds them.
Bio: Stefan Verna
A graduate of Concordia University's Film Production program, Stefan Verna has explored various forms of filmmaking: documentary, fiction, music videos and dance videos. Two of his feature-length documentaries are presently in post-production: Diversidad, about the globalization of our food system, and ACHE!, the story of Montréal hip hop group Nomadic Massive.
PRO HOMO
Directors: Alayna Chamberland, and Emilie Seguin
Fiction | 3 min | USA | 2010
Pro Homo, a youth-produced original rap video, examines the complexities of queer identity. The film focuses on three unique, queer-identifying females who reveal, through rap parody, what lies beneath the surface of generic labels.
Bio: Alayna Chamberland, and Emilie Seguin
Reel Grrls is a Seattle-based non-profit after-school youth media organization empowering young women from diverse communities to realize their power, talent, and influence through media production. Piloted in 2001, Reel Grrls runs year-round programming, providing girls with media literacy education, as well as filmmaking skills including storytelling, scriptwriting, animation, cinematography, lighting and editing.
ROOTS TO RAP WITH
Cast in Attendance
Directors: Liz Miller and Gracia Dyer Jalea
Documentary | 8 min | Canada | 2010
No Bad Sound, a dynamic group of young hip hop artists, use their music to celebrate the diversity of Côte-des-Neiges, the neighbourhood that brought them together. Originating from the Dominican Republic, Vietnam and the Philippines, and rapping in 4 different languages, the group embodies the multi-cultural mosaic that makes up the Montréal music scene.
Bio: Liz Miller and Gracia Dyer Jalea
Roots to Rap With…was co-directed and co-produced by Gracia Dyer Jalea and Liz Miller, as part of a larger project called Mapping Memories, an initiative that seeks to personalize the refugee and immigrant youth experience in Montréal. This film was a collaboration between Mapping Memories and the Côte-des-Neiges Youth Centre.
TRASH IS CASH
Director: Zuh-D
Music Video | 3 min | Kenya | 2009
Acute water shortages and a lack of renewable energy sources make life hard across Kenya. Trash is Cash, written by Lilian Tende, is the most recent song performed by Wafalme. The song highlights the problems that climate change is causing in people's daily lives.
Bio: Zuh-D
With the support of the Slum Talent Trust and the Cultural Video Foundation, Lilian and her project founder Peter Jansen formed Wafalme in 2008. Brought together by their passion for hip hop as a way of life, they began writing songs and spreading positive messages to the youth in the slums surrounding Nairobi, giving others hope that they can change their lives.
SHADEISM
Filmmaker in Attendance
Director: Nayani Thiyagarajah
Documentary | 20 min | Canada | 2010
Light skin is better than dark skin, which is the basis of shadeism. This documentary short introduces that form of discrimination, common in communities of colour. Through five young women and one little girl, the film looks at both the roots and effects of the issue, ultimately exploring how we can move forward together.
Bio: Nayani Thiyagarajah
Nayani Thiyagarajah is a storyteller. She is interested in utilizing film, photography and theatre as media for documenting the stories of her community, especially its women. Shadeism is a collective creation among five recent graduates of the Ryerson School of Journalism: Brian Han, Leanne McAdams, Derek Rider, Vanessa Rodrigues, and Nayani Thiyagarajah.
NOUS SOMMES (WE ARE)
Director: Kevin Papatie
Documentary | 4 min | Canada | 2009
After meeting Zapatists in Mexico, Kevin addresses his nation with a film manifesto.
Bio: Kevin Papatie
Kevin Papatie is from Kitcisakik, an Algonquian community located in Abitibi, north of Quebec. His short film Wabak (2006) won the Main Film Jeune Espoir (Young Hope) prize at the First Peoples' Festival 2007 in Montréal, and the Best Experimental Film at the Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival in 2007. His most recent short film, The Amendment (2007), was released with Denys Arcand‘s The Age of Ignorance, shown as part of Short Cuts Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2008, and won the imagineNATIVE 2008 Best Indigenous Language Production Award.
BLACK BLOOD
Filmmaker in Attendance
Director: Tyrone MacLean
Fiction | 6 min | Canada | 2010
Two students stay late to catch up on work in the basement of a learning facility when an unidentifiable bug takes an unexpected bite out of one of them, leaving him with a strange infection...
Bio: Tyrone MacLean
Tyrone MacLean is an inspired filmmaker who grew up in Regent Park and has spent much of his time working in the community on various film-related projects. Since the success of a minor mini-series called Bike Man he has set out to create films of his very own.
MAY
Director: Ji Yuan (Mike) Feng
Animation | 2 min | Canada | 2009
I am a college freshman, just like the other girls my age, but no one knows how much effort I have exerted. During the day, dressed beautifully, I appear in the classrooms and cafeteria attracting the attention of young boys. At night, I dress sexy, appearing at different kinds of clubs and hotels, socializing among men. For quite a while I cannot tell the difference between smiles and cries.
Bio: Ji Yuan (Mike) Feng
Ji Yuan (Mike) Feng, the leader of MatchBox Studio, mainly focuses on story writing, video shooting and post-production.
CABRINI GREEN
Filmmaker in Attendance
Directors: LaFaye Garth, Jonathan Summers, Kevin Chatman and Kevin Stanfield
Documentary | 29 min | USA | 2009
This documentary was created to inform the public of the quick gentrification of the Cabrini-Green neighborhood, and to serve as evidence of the displacement and struggle of its residents.
Bio: LaFaye Garth, Jonathan Summers, Kevin Chatman and Kevin Stanfield
Putting their heart and soul into the creation of this movie, the students of the Cabrini Connections’ Innervision Youth Production’s Club undertook this project in an effort to confront stereotypes through their eyes.
OPENING GALA PERFORMANCE
Following our screening and panel discussion, we have the pleasure of introducing some of the cast from the film, Roots to Rap with, No Bad Sound, a dynamic group of young hip hop artists from Côte-des-Neiges originating from the Dominican Republic, Vietnam and the Philippines.
