REEL CANADA Blog

Are you interesting in experiencing animated, documentary and fictional short films by up-and-coming talent? Here’s your chance! We have 3 pairs of tickets to the Toronto Youth Shorts Film Festival (this weekend, June 2 to 3) to give away. To enter, send us your name and email address to: reelcanadahq (at) gmail (dot) com

The Toronto Youth Shorts Film Festival is a local film festival that showcases the diverse talent of young and emerging filmmakers while offering an educational forum for participants to strengthen their skills through advice from industry veterans. 

REEL CANADA ESL Event at Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute

by Richard Park (REEL CANADA OISE intern)

As a teacher candidate from OISE, I chose to complete my internship at REEL CANADA, partially because I’d always harboured a personal interest in cinema. In a professional vein, I’d hoped that I would be able to glean new means of infusing relevance and interest into science curriculum (my teachable subjects being general science and biology) through the medium of Canadian films. I feel that one of the greatest obstacles any teacher faces in a classroom is trying to get students to connect with the material being taught, as opposed to merely digesting and later regurgitating the content.

My first experience attending a REEL CANADA film festival was a decidedly positive one, as I was able to see firsthand how movies, riddled with educational extensions and teachable moments, can serve to ignite students’ interest. Early Tuesday morning, I set off with the REEL CANADA crew to Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute, located in Scarborough. The front foyer alluded to the diverse demographic that the school houses, as suspended from the ceiling were a wide array of national flags. In line with the equitable mandate of the REEL CANADA organization, the day’s feature showing was DOUBLE HAPPINESS, a film that carries themes and messages that cater to that morning’s ESL student audience. The feature film was followed by a conversation with Mina Shum, the director, with question, reactions, and comments from the students facilitated by Judith Cockman.

As an educator, I believe that films are an excellent medium for bridging the growing divide between the mandated curriculum and the personal interests of students. Many students feel disconnected from the classroom experience because they don’t find any applicability in what they are learning to their lives outside of school. However, films like DOUBLE HAPPINESS, saturated with values, symbols, and ideas that resonate with Chinese students living and studying in Canada, can serve as means for sparking thoughtful discourse amongst the students and teachers alike. The teacher liaison that coordinated this event with REEL CANADA said that she plans to incorporate the messages of the film into lessons with her ESL students. Reflective writing, classroom discussions, and vocabulary identification are all practical ways in which a fiction film, traditionally produced as entertainment, can be transformed into an educational vehicle for students learning English. Essentially, educators must continually strive for innovation and progressive teaching strategies in the classroom. Harnessing films for this purpose is just one way a teacher can make students feel like they are the star of the show.

Students at Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute

On Tuesday May 8^th, REEL CANADA arrived at Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute to find a super cool DJ playing hot tunes in the cafeteria as a group of kids busily tested a Skype connection.

Soon enough, nearly 250 ESL students descended upon the cafeteria and sat attentively as REEL CANADA’s facilitator, Judith Cockman, explained to them what they were about to see. Judith talked about the films, about the program, and about what she wanted them to look out for so that they could have a discussion afterwards.

Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute student DJ 

We’d been warned by our lead teacher that the ESL students were a pretty shy, quiet bunch, so Judith was trying extra hard to prepare them for sharing their thoughts after the screening.

The short CHILI & CHEESE got quite a few knowing laughs from the audience. The film is about a humorous altercation between a convenience store owner (who used to be a doctor in his home country) and a particularly cheeky customer.

Afterwards, the students watched DOUBLE HAPPINESS, Mina Shum’s film about a young woman trying to juggle her Canadian identity with her family’s traditional Chinese heritage. Albert Campbell has a very large population of ESL students of Chinese origin, most of whom found the film very funny and probably pretty familiar. They definitely caught all the Cantonese jokes that the rest of us may have missed!

Canadian filmmaker Mina Shum answers questions via Skype about her film Double Happiness

After the film, we connected to director Mina Shum in Vancouver via Skype, and gave the students a chance to talk with her and ask questions. In spite of the teacher’s warnings that nobody was likely to say a word during the Q&A, at least seven or eight brave souls spoke into the microphone (much to the shock and delight of the staff who were in the room with us).

REEL CANADA exposes young people to Canadian culture, and brings shy kids out of their shells! Go team.

Filmmaker Don McKellar discussing The Red Violin via Skype 

On the morning of April 23, 2012, over 450 students arrived at Bloor Collegiate Institute to find a front foyer dressed up to the nines with glossy student-designed film festival posters, salty popcorn popping, and a poem being read aloud by author and Bloor CI student, Amane Abdurhman. 

Event flyer by students at Bloor Collegiate Institute 

The students had arrived to see HOW SHE MOVE and were in for a real treat; a live Q&A with actors Kevin Duhaney, Daniel Morrison, and Dwain Murphy! After the Feature Film, the Q&A, and a plethora of student paparazzi pictures with Kevin, Daniel, and Dwain, the students were ushered out of the auditorium for lunch and stopped in the foyer once more to watch Bloor CI's very own dance troupe perform! This was followed by an impromptu dance-off between Daniel Morrison and a Bloor CI student.  The match ended in a draw and everyone dispersed for lunch. 

Cineplex Ticket Giveaway contest

When Grade 11 and 12 students returned to take their seats for The RED VIOLIN in the afternoon, they were met with a live, Violin Concerto performed by their peers! The RED VIOLIN sparked a lively Skype discussion with writer, actor, and filmmaker Don McKellar. The day ended on a very high note with Cineplex Ticket Giveaways to three lucky students. Special thanks to Ms. Evans, Sandy Macintyre, and the dedicated student volunteers from Bloor CI for all of their great work!

Toronto audiences are world renowned for being supportive movie goers, and from April 26 to May 5, documentary makers descended upon the city to feel the love. Hot Docs, North America’s biggest documentary film festival, had its most successful year yet, and REEL CANADA staff were among the 165,000 who attended over the 10 days of the festival.

Documentaries make up a significant chunk of REEL CANADA’s catalogue, and with good reason: NANOOK OF THE NORTH (made in 1922 by Canadian Robert Flaherty) is considered to be the first documentary, and the term itself was coined by John Grierson, the first commissioner of the National Film Board of Canada. With that kind of history, it’s no surprise that Canadians have a strong reputation for producing great docs, and when programming a REEL CANADA festival, students often choose to watch them alongside more “mainstream” fiction films.

But don’t be fooled – the docs in our catalogue are not of the preachy, somber, “good for you” variety. They range from the funny, enlightening and stereotype-smashing REEL INJUN to the harrowing and heart-wrenching SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL. At Hot Docs, there were nearly 40 shorts and features by Canadian doc-makers (including some classics by veterans Michel Brault, recipient of an Outstanding Achievement Award, and John Kastner, this year’s subject of Focus On a retrospective) -- the staff managed to see most of what was on offer, and we hope to be able to include some of them in our catalogue one day.