About the Regent Park Film Festival
The Regent Park Film Festival is dedicated to bringing high-quality independent films to communities throughout Regent Park and beyond. In addition to the annual festival each November, the Regent Park Film Festival hosts year-round school and community screenings, workshops and discussions at no cost. The Regent Park Film Festival is Toronto’s only FREE multicultural film festival.
All programming is FREE and free childcare is provided during all screenings.
OPENING NIGHT – COMMUNITY STORIES: YOUTH MEDIA ARTS PROGRAM
Wednesday November 7, 2012 @ 6:30pm
Community Stories: Youth Media Arts Program features work by filmmakers who are 26 years of age or younger. It is a tradition at the Regent Park Film Festival to begin our four-day festivities by celebrating young voices with this program.
This year’s Community Stories explores a diversity of themes such as ambition, love, violence, and feelings of loss. What unites these pieces is the filmmakers’ ability to connect individual stories to the larger context in which they exist: to find social resonance in personal stories and vice versa. A discussion with the youth filmmakers will follow the screening.
This year we offer a special addition to the Community Stories: Youth Media Arts Program, which will juxtapose rising stars with established talent from the Canadian filmmaking industry. Prior to the screening, we will host a discussion with the acclaimed filmmakers Clement Virgo and Atom Egoyan.
Some highlights will include:
In Between Stories
In Between Stories is a short documentary that features four young artists from the African diaspora communities in Toronto, Canada. This film touches on issues including media representations of Africa, experiences of second-generation immigrant youth and the role of storytelling.
Bio: Roda Siad is an emerging filmmaker who is interested in producing socially conscious films that explore the different facets of human nature. She is completing her master’s degree at Ryerson University. In Between Stories is her thesis film. You can check out her tumblr here: http://r-siad.tumblr.com/
Girls Between Two Worlds
Commenting on their personal values, first-generation Canadian girls attempt to define what it means to be a hyphenated Canadian. An exploration of identity in a multicultural land, where the pull of family values and the push of societal mores sparks as many questions as answers.
Bio: Jenny Deng, Adiba Hasnat and Miranda Hersco were participants in SkyWorks’ Real Change Girls Filmmaking Project 2012, a program that mentors youth to make their own documentary films for social change.
ABSTRACT RANDOM - MI NA WANNA
Completing our opening night program is the video for Abstract Random’s “Mi Na Wanna” — and they’ll be performing at opening night, as well!
For more on opening night, check out the website here.
For more on the overall festival, see the site here.
