Film School: Belonging as Resistance
Panel Discussion with Laurie Townshend and Janine Windolph

LIVESTREAM Panel will occur on Thursday, February 4 2021 from 7PM-8PM CST
The video link below will connect you to this livestream video once it is available.

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This film series features stories about how our collective desire for authenticity requires us to first show up (as we are) to ourselves and in so doing, assert our personhood in a world that too often tries to erase it. Curated by filmmaker and teacher Laurie Townshend and joined by fellow filmmaker Janine Windolph for the discussion.

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Panel Discussion Recording 

Once available, you can watch the recorded panel discussion with Laurie Townshend and Janine Windolph below.

ABOUT THE FILMS

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1. Citizens of Nowhere
Director: Nicolas-Alexandre Tremblay & Régis Coussot
| 2015 I 00h 52m 15s I SPIRA | Canada

 September 2013. The court ruling is reached. Almost a quarter million Dominicans of Haitian descent have just become stateless because of the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal’s decision. Identified as scapegoats for all the problems affecting the country, they have lost everything: their rights, their liberty, their identity. Presented as a tale and narrated by Haitian poet and playwright Jean-Claude Martineau, this film takes us to the very heart of the human drama lived by these migrants who have sacrificed everything to follow their dream of freedom.

 

2. Mia'
Director: Amanda Strong & Bracken Hanuse Corlett
| 2015 | 00h 08m 00s | Winnipeg Film Group | Canada

A young Indigenous female street artist named Mia’ walks through the city streets painting scenes rooted in the supernatural history of her people. Lacking cultural resources and familial connection within the city, she paints these images from intuition and blood memory. She has not heard the stories from her Elders lips, but has found her own methods to rediscover them. The alleyways become her sanctuary and secret gallery, and her art comes to life. Mia’ is pulled into her own transformation via the vessel of a salmon. In the struggle to return home, she traverses through polluted waters and skies, witnessing various forms of industrial violence and imprint that have occurred upon the land.

ABOUT THE  CURATOR: LAURIE TOWNSHEND

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Writer-director, educator and photographer Laurie Townshend credits her mantra, “You have as many hours in a day as Beyoncé” for her ability to make groundbreaking films while successfully lobbying her 8th graders for “coolest teacher” nods. 

With a thematic lens aimed squarely on acts of courage made visible through crisis, The Railpath Hero (2013) features a spellbinding performance by Stephan James (Selma, Race, Beale Street), in a story about the threads of resilience that hold a young athlete's life together in the wake of childhood sexual abuse. Laurie’s take on human connectedness is explored in Human Frequency Streetdocs (2014). Award-winning Charley (2016) connects the work of late civil rights activist Charles Roach to today’s BLM movement. Currently, Laurie is in pre-production on Mothering in the Movement (2022), a coming-of-middle-age saga that follows Staceyann Chin, Brooklyn’s most outspoken poet-activist and poster-mom for radical Black parenting as she raises her daughter Zuri, while investigating the past of her own mother who abandoned her as an infant. 

ABOUT THE  PANELIST: JANINE WINDOLPH

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With Janine Windolph (Atikamekw/Woodland Cree) is a Saskatchewan-based filmmaker and Interdisciplinary artist and storyteller. She is the Associate Director of Indigenous Arts at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and was previously the Curator of Community Engagement at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan.
 

This program is presented by the Regina Public Libray Film Theatre

RPL Film Theatre thanks the following organizations for their support in this programming: