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School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design Professor Patrick Alcedo is the featured interview in Podcast or Perish. Alcedo is an award-winning filmmaker whose documentaries capture the beauty of motion and the dreams of possibility among dancers in the Philippines.
By Krista Davidson
Since 2009, Ontario schools are mandated to implement culturally responsive pedagogy in response to the Ontario Ministry’s Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy. However, Canadian Black cultural arts educators face significant challenges when they implement culturally responsive teaching in GTA schools, according to a recent publication by Collette Murray, a PhD student in dance studies at the School of the Arts, Media Performance & Design at York University.
These challenges include Anti-Black racism, institutional unpreparedness, cultural appropriation and delegitimization of Black Canadian cultural artistry by school administrations.
The qualitative study “Educating from Difference: Perspectives on Black Cultural Educators’ Experiences with Culturally Responsive Teaching” was released in the Canadian Journal of History’s special issue on Black Canadian Creativity, Expressive Cultures, and Narratives of Space and Place, in December 2021. Murray engaged in semi-structured interviews with an intergenerational group of Black artists to capture their experiences working across school boards.
“The research represents a nuanced conversation with Black artists, in a first-time inquiry of their career teaching culturally relevant work,” explains Murray.
“We’re not just here for performative reasons but that is sometimes what is defined. We can teach and relate to the curriculum themes and bring our cultural knowledge and epistemologies,” she says. In addition to her role as a dance educator and cultural arts programmer, Murray holds a master’s of education and specialized honours in race, ethnicity and Indigeneity from York University. She is also a renowned artist and an award-winning performer.
“The work of cultural art educators centers the frames of reference of culturally and ethnically diverse students, so they can engage in relatable and new learning. We offer arts-based learning outcomes that promote cultural competency and tap into their critical consciousness,” she explains.
However, some Ontario schools are often not prepared when it comes to implementing cultural arts into the curriculum. The cultural arts, which integrates oral (words, speech, text, song), visual (imagery, dress, artifacts), auditory (innovative music, rhythms, instruments) and kinesthetic (physical practices) play a critical role in shaping the identities and offering intergenerational values, specifically to Black and diverse students. Murray’s research gave examples of teachers who displayed racial bias, who appropriated or misrepresented their cultures. In several instances, teachers did not attempt to communicate or collaborate with cultural art educators to implement their experiential learnings and weren’t prepared with the necessary space or logistical requirements to successfully engage students.
One example includes an art educator who uses percussionist storytelling to relay important themes and lessons around kindness and anti-bullying, but due to a lack of communication with the teacher, was provided with an inappropriate environment for which to carry out the lesson. Furthermore, his teachings were delegitimized with reductionist comments such as “it’s just drumming. You don’t need to have a specific space.”
Murray also indicates that discrimination, unconscious bias and microaggressions continue to persist among teachers who often didn’t understand the value-add that cultural arts can provide in the classroom. This results in racist or ignorant comments, sometimes even in front of students. In past instances, a few teachers left the room during lessons or refused to engage with the teaching, which sent a strong signal to both the artists and students that the lessons were not a valuable part of the curriculum.
The hiring of Black Canadian artists only for the purposes of Black Heritage Month is not new, but generated some feelings of tokenism among artists, that the culturally relevant education they provided was transactional rather than relational to the curriculum.
“It’s disrespectful to Black Canadian cultural art educators,” she says. “Many of whom have degrees and work professionally in the arts industry for decades.”
Murray’s research makes several recommendations to improve the Canadian educational institutions relationship with Black creatives in inclusive education. One goal is understanding the cultural art educator’s role.
“Arts educators wished to be valued as assets, in a collaborative role that is a visible part of the curriculum,” says Murray.
She recommends that schools should move beyond “checking the box” with regards to inclusion and intentionally improve relationships with a vetted, qualified roster of cultural arts educators. She advocated for the creation of full-time positions for Black cultural art educators across school boards to facilitate and guide curriculum initiatives.
To reduce anti-Black racism within schools and from teachers, she recommended ongoing equity training among boards and administrations, including an improved understanding of complicity in cultural appropriation, cultural representation and issues surrounding shadeism/colourism.
Finally, Murray recommends the collection of race-based data on the impact of cultural art educators across Ontario education institutions.
“This data would recognize evidence-based artistry that is funded and critical to diversifying knowledge exchange that occurs between students and cultural art educators,” she says.
While small changes occur, Murray’s research amplifies the issue and is optimistic.
“We are shifting stereotypes. We are debunking the negative perceptions towards our cultural arts and we’re supporting the internationalization of the classroom. Students are connecting with that, and in some cases, it’s a pivotal moment for them – to become very engaged, curious and confident,” she says.
Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) cannot be addressed without questioning existing land distribution schemes and their relationship with the rights of the most excluded population groups in the region – Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. For two centuries, this issue has caused more wars, population displacements, social conflicts, hunger and inequality than any other. This conversation highlights the importance of addressing the challenge of deep-seated inequalities through land redistribution and the resurgence of social movements in response to the intensification of violence and the undermining of democracy in the region.
Panellists participating in this event are Stephen Perz, University of Florida, Lottie Cunningham Wren, CEJUDHCAN, and Yaroslava Avila Montenegro, York University. The panel will be moderated by Tameka Samuels-Jones and Miguel Gonzalez, York University. The discussant will be Kimberly Palmer, York University.
Register in advance for this webinar by visiting: https://yorku.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_tSv0-c4rQom9pc6s1Rf-wg. All registrants will be sent a personal link for the webinar.
Stephen Perz received his PhD in sociology with a specialization in demography from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997. He is an affiliate of UF’s Center for Latin American Studies and UF’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. He has conducted research in the Amazon on migration into frontier regions, socio-economic drivers of land use and land cover change, socio-spatial processes of road building, the social-ecological impacts of infrastructure, and the political ecology of environmental governance. He has received more than $17 million in funding from NASA, NSF, USAID, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and other sources, for research as well as applied conservation and development work. He focuses primarily on the southwestern Amazon, specifically the tri-national frontier where Bolivia, Brazil and Peru meet. His work features collaboration across disciplinary, national and organizational boundaries. He has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications in scholarly journals and books. In 2016, he published his book on the challenges and strategic practices of spanning boundaries in research and environmental management, Crossing Boundaries for Collaboration: Conservation and Development Projects in the Amazon. In 2019, he edited an international volume on the topic, Collaboration Across Boundaries for Social-Ecological Systems Science: Experiences Around the World. In addition to serving as a member of nearly 40 graduate committees, he has chaired over 30 PhD dissertation and master’s thesis students in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the School of Natural Resources and Environment. In 2014, he was named a UF Foundation Preeminence Term Professor. In 2015, he was selected as the UF International Educator of the Year for Senior Faculty. From 2016-19, he was named a UF Term Professor. He won a CLAS Teacher of the Year Award in 2018-19.
Lottie Cunningham Wren is a lawyer from the Miskito indigenous group in Nicaragua, defending the rights of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples to their land and resources. She has been instrumental in ensuring legal protections, including initiating the process of demarcation and titling of indigenous lands. Cunningham has fought to uphold the human rights of Indigenous Peoples and Afro-descendants, protecting them and their livelihoods from armed settlers. Through the use of international and domestic law, Cunningham has secured Indigenous land rights in Nicaragua, pioneering legal strategies that have been successfully used by Indigenous communities around the world to demarcate their lands. Cunningham has also shown that the protection of Indigenous land is instrumental to the protection of local ecosystems. A fierce advocate for her people, Cunningham has also advanced the rights of Indigenous women, including establishing programs to reduce domestic violence and pushing to create space for them in decision-making bodies. She also works to educate youth on how to formally demand respect for their human rights and report violations. Despite threats and intimidation, Cunningham remains unwavering in her commitment to empower and protect indigenous communities from external forces engaged in the exploitation of their lands.
Yaroslava Avila Montenegro is a Mapuche Indigenous doctoral researcher in the Department of Political Science at York University and a member of the Toronto-based Women’s Coordinating Committee for a Free Wallmapu. Her research focuses on state securitization and criminalization of social and Indigenous liberation movements in Turtle Island and Abya Yala, currently exploring the involvement of hemispheric security organizations under the U.S.-led Operation Condor. She has also explored the development of the Chilean Anti-terrorist law against Mapuche Land Defenders throughout democratic transition. Other areas of research include exploring Indigenous thought in connection with radical social and political thought (Marxism, post-colonialism, etc.), and exploration into the intersection between state securitization and far right politics. She is the daughter of refugees, a lifelong activist for political prisoner and Indigenous rights in Wallmapu, Chile, as well as across Abya Yala and Turtle Island.
Tameka Samuels-Jones is an assistant professor at York University and a CERLAC Fellow with research interests in legal pluralism and environmental regulatory law in the Caribbean. Her current work focuses on the socio-legal implications of land dispossession among Jamaica’s Maroons. Samuels-Jones has received numerous awards for her work in this area including the American Society of Criminology’s Ruth D. Peterson Fellowship for Equity and Diversity. She currently teaches Justice, Governance and Accountability in the Global South and Corporate Social Responsibility.
Miguel Gonzalez is an adjunct faculty in the International Development Studies program at York University. In recent years Gonzalez has taught both in the undergraduate and graduate programs in international development at York. His current research relates to two broad themes and projects: FIndigenous self-governance and territorial autonomous regimes in Latin America; and, the governance of small-scale fisheries (SSF) in the global south, with a particular geographical concentration in the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast.
Sebastian Oreamuno (land acknowledgement) is a Chilean-born, Toronto-based artist and academic and a PhD candidate in the Dance Studies program at York University. Oreamuno’s doctoral research explores the relationship between memory, place-making and cueca (the Chilean national dance). Other interests include the participatory body, popular culture, men and pointe and multi-media artistic practices.
Kimberly Palmer was born and raised in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the West Indies. She recently graduated with a PhD in environmental studies from York University. Her doctoral research was built upon her involvement with Garifuna grassroots in her home country. Her dissertation was a critical ethnography of two contemporary Garifuna organizations struggling against dispossession and displacement in Honduras. Palmer has published articles on Garifuna social movements and struggles across the circum-Caribbean in Caribbean InTransit, Caribbean Quarterly, and Nómadas. She received the Michael Baptista Essay Prize in December 2019 from the Center for Research on Latin American and the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York for a chapter of her dissertation centered on Garifuna land recuperations in the Bay of Trujillo Honduras.
Produced by William Thomas, associate professor in the Department of Music at the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD), this global sonic tour presents a sampling of several international cultures represented in York’s world music program.
“Exposing our students to the diversity of music found around the world has always been an important component of the study of music at York and has distinguished our program from others in the province,” says Thomas. “Very early in the development of the program, founding Department Chair Sterling Beckwith felt that the study of global music was important in developing the musicians of the future and course offerings in South Indian Carnatic music were offered to York students.”
This year’s festival will feature more than 100 students in six performances of music from around the world including, Balkan, Brazilian, Caribbean, Cuban, Celtic Canadian and West African ensembles.
“These students and their instructors have done an amazing job preparing for these performances in what has been a very short time since we have returned to live instruction,” adds Thomas.
On March 10 at 11 a.m., the festival will kick off with Cuban Ensembles led by Rick Lazar, ensemble director, and faculty member with AMPD. The course focuses on Cuban folkloric music, where students will learn the various conga drum and bell parts, songs and dances that form the various rhythms.
Lazar will also host Escola de Samba at 1:30 p.m. In Brazil, escola de sambas are samba schools which embrace and celebrate culture by teaching the samba rhythms in the various neighbourhoods of Rio de Janeiro and all other major cities in Brazil. Students will play samba from Rio and two rhythms from the state of Bahia: Samba Reggae and Timbalada. The students will also perform a samba-reggae dance routine.
At 2:30 p.m., AMPD’s faculty members Kwasi Dunyo and Larry Graves will host West African Drum Ensemble: Ghanaian. The final event of the day will take place at 7 p.m. and will be led by faculty member Gareth Burgess to host Caribbean Music Ensemble.
On March 11, Celtic Canadian Folk Ensemble will begin at 1 p.m. with Associate Professor Sherry Johnson.
The festival will conclude with a Balkan Music Ensemble led by faculty member Irene Markoff at 7:30 p.m. Audiences can look forward to being captivated by irregular rhythms that defy Western notions of symmetry, the clashing, yet exuberant sounds of rural singing styles, and innovative arrangements of traditional music enhanced by virtuosic instrumental improvisations.
For more information, click here.
And while there was no shortage of talented female jazz vocalists throughout time such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Sarah “Sassy” Vaughan, jazz has long been recognized as a male-dominated field.
Raising awareness about the challenges faced by professional female musicians in the field of jazz, the Department of Music will present Celebrating Canadian Women in Jazz: A Virtual Roundtable featuring Allison Au, Tara Davidson and Amanda Tosoff.
On Thursday, March 10 from 9 to 11 a.m., event facilitator and School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design Assistant Professor Noam Lemish will moderate the panel discussion recognizing gender inequalities in jazz, embedded biases and gendered expectations, as well as the culture of the jazz music industry. The event is also an opportunity to celebrate the successes of these female musicians.
“Traditionally, jazz has been male-dominated, going back to its earliest days. Then, and for many decades since, women were often marginalized or sidelined, and their contributions not recognized in the historical accounts told by men,” says Lemish. “Amazing women have played and excelled at the music, but their story, presence and excellence have not been part of the history of the genre. Though for the last few decades some scholars and activists have been working to address this historic discrimination there continue to be biases in the jazz community that make it difficult at times for women to get ahead or to enjoy the same equal opportunities for their careers afforded men.”
The award-winning Canadian jazz artists participating in the roundtable discussion will talk about their journey in the industry, play music from their latest recordings and give attendees a glimpse into their careers while also addressing gender justice within the music genre. The presentations will be followed by a question-and-answer period.
“For me, as an educator, I am concerned with creating an inclusive learning environment, a community at the university level where women and non-binary students feel welcome, included and equal participants in everything we do. Every one of us needs to be proactive in ensuring that the environment we create for our students is one that highlights this issue so that students are aware of the biases that exist. In doing so, we want to support and empower them to be agents of change.”
Lemish adds there are many talented female musicians to celebrate, and society has a responsibility to go beyond what is presented to music listeners by the “traditional male gatekeepers of the industry.” He mentions society has a responsibility to invest in making things right for the future, be critical thinkers and raise awareness about the communities and the people underrepresented in their industry.
“It is important for all our students to see role models for success in the field… Most jazz students in our program are young men and we do have some women as well, but it is important regardless of gender to not constantly see men as the role models. These three Canadian artists offer the potential to see what lies ahead for each student if they apply themselves to their craft, are supported and provided opportunities.”
The topic of the roundtable is a conversation Lemish and his students have been exploring in their class discussions for the past few weeks. The timing of the event also aligns with International Women’s Day (March 8) its #BreakTheBias campaign theme. While the movement calls for a shared responsibility to break the bias across communities, workplaces and educational institutions, Lemish notes the creation of the event follows the announcement and celebration of this year’s Oscar Peterson Jazz Artist-in-Residence.
Exploring female artists and their role in shaping jazz culture at home and abroad, York University’s Department of Music in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design named award-winning jazz trumpeter Ingrid Jensen one of two musicians featured as part of 2021-22 Oscar Peterson Jazz Artist-in-Residence.
Jensen has been hailed as one of the most gifted trumpeters of her generation. After graduating from Berklee College of Music in 1989, she went on to record three highly acclaimed CDs for the ENJA record label, soon becoming one of the most in-demand trumpet players on the global jazz scene. During her residency at York from March 7 to 9, Jensen will deliver masterclasses, workshops and seminars for vocalists and instrumentalists. Two of the sessions taking place are open to the public. Registration is required.
To register for the Celebrating Canadian Women in Jazz event, click here. To join an online session with Jensen, click here.
Running March 12 and 13, the event is a collaborative effort that features new choreographic works by four of the Department of Dance’s MFA students performed by the department’s resident student company, the York Dance Ensemble.
“In this time of sweeping transitions, understanding how we as a community of artists intersect and how the intersectionalities of race, gender, ethnicity, power, place and time affect the present is more critical than ever,” said Susan Lee, artistic director. Lee was excited to invite MFA choreographers Rachel da Silveira Gorman, Jessica Stuart, Ashvini Sundaram and Yui Ugai to create choreographic works inspired by the theme of intersections.
In “Golem,” choreographer da Silveira Gorman explores the transformation of humans from homo economicus – humans who create worlds based on economic power and rationale thought – to homo environmentalus – destroyers of the natural world. During the creation process, da Silveira Gorman, who is also a faculty member in the School of Health Policy & Management, asked YDE members to describe their hopes and fears for future environmental crises and social uprisings. A third-year student in dance performance, Rayn Cook-Thomas, said: “If there is an environmental apocalypse, I worry about where the stories will go. Do they go into the plants and earth? Will we be walking on our ancestors’ stories?” In researching and framing these ideas, da Silveira Gorman turned to the 16th-century Jewish myth that tells of a rabbi who creates a being out of mud, asking it to protect the community. The piece performs the shared responsibility of environmental collapse and response and the increasing urgency of the call to action.
“The Art of Time” is the culmination of choreographer Sundaram’s research into the attitudes presented by South Asian classical musicians and dancers in relation to the concept of time. “I wanted to nuance the dominant, Eurocentric beliefs about mathematical science and the flow of time,” said Sundaram. “The choreography was developed through my access and knowledge of ‘taala,’ a specialized and embodied method for dividing time in Carnatic music. Taala encapsulates the time dimension of music; it is cyclical and repeats its form consistently through the composition.” Through the movements of the work’s eight dancers, Sundaram seeks to convey the idea of time as the flow of water in a stream. In invoking taala, she seeks to re-empower the body and regain sources of embodied knowledge found in Indigenous cultural practices.
“In Medias Res,” choreographer Stuart explores the relationship between virtual and live bodies. Stuart was inspired by the “authenticity of the virtual self to one’s true self. If we are what we are perceived to be, then what are we when that perception is altered?” Transcending restrictions of continuity and matter, “In Medias Res” explores the limitations of the physical body, the capabilities of the virtual image, and how these may exist in both planes. Stuart’s three dancers, Sydney Cobham, Bethany McMorine and Zuri Skeete, collaborated with Stuart to respond to their deepest creative impulses to explore the ways that existence functions in a fabricated environment.
Rounding out the program is Ugai’s “New Nostalgia.” Ugai was inspired by the movement vocabularies and aesthetics of the Japanese dance Fuji Musume (Wisteria Maiden). The piece explores how to incorporate elements of classical Japanese dance into contemporary dance works and the synergies that emerge. Ugai devised the work as “a conversation about seeking home and how embodied memories are part of my own corporeal being as a Japanese Canadian.”
Lee, along with “outside eyes” Susan Cash and Don Sinclair, have worked to encourage and support the choreographers in the creation of a suite of uniquely beautiful, kinaesthetically charged dance works. Filmed at the Faire Fecan Theatre for live stream, these works showcase the York Dance Ensemble’s exceptional dancers as they challenge limits and expectations.
“Intersections” runs March 12 and 13 at 7 p.m. Admission is on a sliding scale of $5 to $25. For more, call the box office at 416-736-5888 or visit ampd.yorku.ca/boxoffice.
The artistic director and course director for the York Dance Ensemble is Susan Lee. Outside eyes are Susan Cash and Don Sinclair. The show’s director of design and production manager is Jennifer Jimenez.
Patrick Alcedo, Chair of the Department of Dance in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, was featured in The Manila Times for receiving the 2021 Pamana ng Pilipino Award
Word Sound Power: An Annual Celebration of Black Artistic Expression is hosted by the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora, in the Faculty of Education.
“This annual event during Black History Month is to highlight the contribution of Jean Augustine to ensuring national recognition of African people’s presence in Canada. It is a great opportunity to showcase York’s Black artists and their creativity in music and poetry, while offering a taste of their talents to various audiences,” says Professor Carl James, the Jean Augustine Chair and special advisor on equity and representation.
Featured performances will include the York University R&B Ensemble and the Oscar Peterson Scholarship Ensemble, directed by Professor Mike Cadó, and the York University Gospel Choir directed by Professor Karen Burke – both from the Department of Music in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design.
Student spoken word performers from the humanities course “Griots to Emcees: Examining Culture, Performance & Spoken Word” will also take the stage to showcase African storytelling traditions, to contemporary global evolutions of lyricism and spoken word.
Poet, journalist and educator, El Jones, will be a special speaker – she is an associate professor of Canadian and Political Science at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, N.S.
Remarks will be offered by Robert Savage, dean, Faculty of Education; humanities Professor Andrea Davis, special advisor, Anti-Black Racism Strategy, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies; and the Jean Augustine, the first Black woman elected to the Parliament of Canada, and champion of the unanimous vote in 1995 that saw February designated as Black History Month.
The event will be streamed live on YouTube from 7 to 9 p.m.
The two-day event will take place Feb. 17 and 18 and will welcome keynote guest speaker, Phil Mullen, one of the world’s leading experts on musical inclusion and community music; Helen Carswell researchers, Pratik Gandhi and Patty Chan; and the Regent Park School of Music (RPSM).
All presentations and workshops will take place virtually. Topics will explore community music, cultural connections through music, inclusive music pedagogy and more. Participants are required to register in advance.
What is Community Music? (9 a.m.)
This presentation gives some clarity to community music theory and practice, in particular the so-called interventionist approach that originated in England and is now part of practice in England, Ireland, parts of Canada, Norway and other areas of the world. Mullen has been a part of shaping and growing this work since 1985 and brought it into universities for the first time in 1990. Register here.
Creative Ensemble Workshop (10 a.m.)
This workshop centers on a single, extended piece of music co-created live between Mullen and York music undergraduate students. The workshop will explore various ways of playing together. All the music will be improvised and devised rather than scored, but players are welcome to use a manuscript as a memory aid. Register here.
Role modelling, Representation and Community Bands (12:30 p.m.)
Gandhi is a 2021 Helen Carswell grant recipient and York University PhD candidate in music. Gandhi will join panelists Colin Clarke, Cait Nishimura and Bill Thomas will discuss the research objectives of his community music project “Improvisation and Creativity Workshop for Wind, Brass, and Percussion students featuring guest composers.” Register here.
Making Music with Children and Young People with Challenging Behaviour (1:30 p.m.)
Mullen will present his research surrounding working with young people who exhibit challenging behaviour. This work was the subject of Mullen’s 2017 PhD research. Read more about it in The Oxford Handbook of Community Music, as well as in his recently published book Challenging Voices. Register here.
Cultural Connections Through Music (4 p.m.)
Chan is a 2021 Helen Carswell grant recipient and York University master’s student in ethnomusicology. Chen will present her research project titled “Cultural Connections through Music.” Register here.
Strategic Approaches to Inclusion and Community Music (10:30 a.m.)
Hosted by York University’s Graduate Music Students Association (GMSA), this presentation will be part of the GMSA’s weekly Friday Forum series. This session will look at ways of working that can help remove barriers to music education for marginalized children and young people. Mullen will draw on his experience working with over a third of England’s 120 music education hubs, where he has developed inclusion strategies and action plans that strive to make England more musically inclusive. Register here.
Inclusive Music Pedagogy (1:30 p.m.)
Inclusive music pedagogy has grown apace in England over the last 10 years and is becoming part of music education in classrooms across the country. Mullen has been one of the leaders of this change and he regularly gives training for both contemporary and more traditional music educators on ways to evolve their practice to become more inclusive over time. This session will look at who is included/excluded, suggest tips for inclusion in large classes and highlight the need for an emotionally intelligent approach to music education. Register here.
Inclusive Music-Making and Creative Starting Points (2:30 p.m.)
Bring your instrument. This is a hands-on opportunity to make some music. This workshop includes rhythm work, improvising from stimuli, vocal and instrumental improv, and some ways to approach songwriting in workshops. Register here.
Virtual Performances by the Regent Park School of Music (4 p.m.)
Event speakers will include RPSM faculty and students. Register here.
The Helen Carswell Chair supports a long-term partnership between York University and the Regent Park School of Music. Their work includes rigorous academic research exploring the benefits of community music programs and the links between music and learning as well as engaging and helping to drive new knowledge and practice to community-based groups serving children in the Jane and Finch community.
All symposium events are open to the public and free of charge. More information is available on the Helen Carswell Chair website.
“When thinking of Canada’s national identity and what Canada looks like on film, Black Canadians are rarely at the centre. Yet, there is an undeniable abundance of Black-Canadian filmmakers creating extraordinary work that champions the complexity and diversity of Black Canada,” says James. “I chose to curate a list of short and feature-length films of various genres and themes to showcase the many ways Black-Canadian stories uniquely and inherently speak to the African diaspora. From outstanding veterans like Jennifer Hodge da Silva and Clement Virgo to emerging visionaries like Kelly Fyffe-Marshall and Kourtney Jackson, the vision, connectivity and artistry ingrained in Black-Canadian cinema are to be celebrated.”
James hopes viewers of these films catch a glimpse of Black Canada’s beauty, recognize the persistence of the following Black artists, and are encouraged to depart from this list into the large and ever-growing work of Black cinema not only during Black History Month but every month.
From award-winning short films to documentaries, check out the 10 must-watch film list:
Clement Virgo, Rude (1995)
This is the Easter weekend. In an inner-city project, three people struggle against their demons and try to find redemption. They are Maxine, a window dresser depressed since she had an abortion and lost her lover; Jordan, a boxer who has indulged in gay-bashing; and “The General,” a drug dealer turned artist.
Charles Officer, Unarmed Verses (2017)
This feature documentary presents a thoughtful and vivid portrait of a community facing imposed relocation. At the centre of the story is a remarkably astute and luminous 12-year-old Black girl whose poignant observations about life, the soul and the power of art give voice to those rarely heard in society. Unarmed Verses is a cinematic rendering of our universal need for self-expression and belonging.
Jennifer Hodge da Silva, Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community (1983)
The Jane-Finch corridor is an area of six square blocks in Toronto’s North York. To the residents of Metro Toronto, the corridor evokes images of vandalism, high-density subsidized housing, racial tension, despair and crime. By focusing intimately on the lives of several of the residents, many of them Black or members of other visible minorities, and their relationship with police, social service agencies and other major institutions that affect their lives, the film provides a powerful view of a community that, contrary to its popular image, is working towards a more positive future.
Sharon Lewis, Brown Girl Begins (2017)
It’s 2049 on a forsaken island off the coast of Toronto where the survival of the islanders depends on young Ti-Jeanne, who must risk death by a spirit so she can take her place as a Caribbean priestess and save her people.
Hubert Davis, Invisible City (2009)
Invisible City is a moving story of two boys from Regent Park crossing into adulthood – their mothers and mentors rooting for them to succeed; their environment and social pressures tempting them to make poor choices. Turning his camera on the often-ignored inner city, Davis, an Academy-award nominated director, sensitively depicts the disconnection of urban poverty and race from the mainstream.
Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, Black Bodies (2020)
Kelly Fyffe-Marshall’s sophomore film Black Bodies follows a Black man (Komi Olaf) lamenting as he comes face-to-face with the realities of being Black in the 21st century.
Christene Browne, Another Planet (1999)
A young woman unsure of her cultural heritage arrives in rural Quebec, Canada.
Kourtney Jackson, Wash Day (2020)
As they get ready for the day, three young Black women discuss the public perception of their Blackness in relation to their cultivation of a strong sense of self. Wash Day is an intimate exploration into how private, domestic acts such as washing your hair or putting on makeup become a significant re-acquaintance with the body, before and after navigating the politics of one’s outwardly appearance.
Ngardy Conteh George, Mr. Jane and Finch (2019)
A beloved 80-year-old Guyanese-Canadian activist Winston LaRose, who has documented the Black community throughout the African Diaspora for the past 60 years, throws his hat into local politics and is met with unflinching systemic racism in the Canadian political system. This film gives an insider perspective of Black community activism in Canada.
Carmine Pierre-Dufour, Emilie Mannering, Mahalia Melts in the Rain (2018)
Mahalia, a timid nine-year-old Black girl, feels different from the other girls in her ballet class. Hoping to boost her confidence, her mother brings her to the hair salon to get her hair straightened for the very first time.
