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The Regent Park Film Festival kicks off their 20th anniversary celebrations with their curated program ‘Regent Park in Film’. These 5 documentaries will take you through a visual timeline of Regent Park’s history from 1953-2019.

In Conversation: Regent Park in Film

Panel Discussion

Regent Park Film Festival Manager of Programmer, Aashna Thakkar, chats with the filmmakers of the series about their films and Regent Park through time.

PANELISTS INCLUDE:

   •   Christene Browne (Director of Farewell Regent)
   •   Charles Officer (Director of Unarmed Verses)
   •   Moze Mossanen (Director of My Piece of the City)
   •   Adonis Huggins (Executive Director of Regent Park Focus Media Arts Centre - representing Myths of Regent Park)

VUCAVU and the Regent Park Film Festival presents:

Regent Park in Film

Curated by: Regent Park Film Festival

REGENT PARK IN FILM

Essay by Aashna Thakkar

As the Regent Park Film Festival turns 20 this year, we wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on the space, land and community we call our home. Located in the heart of fast-paced downtown Toronto, Regent Park is Canada’s first and largest community housing development and has been a landing spot for immigrants since the early 1900’s.

Though many might know of Regent Park as the neighbourhood undergoing massive physical changes for over a decade, it has always been a community in flux. As you’ll see in the films in this program, the physical makeup and subsequent gentrification of the neighbourhood is not all that gets called into question when examining the impacts - it’s the people, their livelihoods, their relationships, their sense of belonging, and how they see themselves as part of the larger city.

In curating this program, the aim was to create a visual timeline and archive of Regent Park. So, to get an idea of Regent Park of the past, Farewell Oak Street directed by Grant Mclean is the first film we recommend you watch in this series. Made in 1953, just years after the development of the first set of public housing units in Regent Park, this film is a fascinating archive of this piece of our history. Told through a docudrama style of storytelling, watching this film now appears to be what we’d consider today as a piece of propaganda for a post-World War II Canada, portraying a “rich, resourceful nation” on the rise that works to accommodate its citizens.

Located in the heart of fast-paced downtown Toronto, Regent Park is Canada’s first and largest community housing development and has been a landing spot for immigrants since the early 1900’s.

Black and white still. Three white individuals, one man, one child and one woman stand around a table looking at each other.

Still image from: "Farewell Oak Street". Grant McLean / 16:23 / 1953 / NFB

Fast-forwarding to 2005, Myths of Regent Park was a documentary created by a group of Regent Park youth with the guidance of Regent Park Focus Media Arts Centre, an organization created in 1990 to combat the spread of misinformation and stigmas surrounding low-income communities. This film was created right on the cusp of Phase 1 of the Regent Park redevelopment - the same re-development that continues today with phases 4 and 5. This film wonderfully captures the issues that the group set out to challenge, in an informative and fun way, laying bare the hypocrisy of the stereotypes that have been at the centre of the neighbourhood’s narrative for decades.

In Myths of Regent Park, you’ll notice drastic changes in of course the physical makeup of the neighbourhood, but also in the demographics of the residents. In the 1960s, the neighbourhood saw a shift in residents, from a large percentage of European immigrants to a variety of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) communities, who remain in the neighbourhood today.

...when examining the impacts - it’s the people, their livelihoods, their relationships, their sense of belonging, and how they see themselves as part of the larger city.

Colour still. A Black person looks through a glass door. To the right, there is a brick wall with a mosaic sign that says "Villawayz Art Studio".

Still from: "Unarmed Verses", Charles Officer / 1:25:00 / 2016. NFB

A little over a decade later come the next two documentaries set in Regent Park, My Piece of the CIty (2017) directed by Moze Mossanen and Farewell Regent (2019) directed by Christene Browne. Here you’ll see Regent Park as the “mixed-income” neighbourhood (community housing residents co-existing with residents in market-priced housing) it is today, scrubbed of much of the traces of the original Regent Park (except some of the old brown buildings on the North side).

These two films take a much deeper dive into the very personal effects of gentrification on the daily lives of residents. It felt important to include these perspectives in the program as we often hear Regent Park being talked about from the outside, being examined or reported on, but it’s the people living there who hold the most stories and experiences worth sharing.

... it’s the people living there who hold the most stories and experiences worth sharing.

Colour still. A black person with glasses and a yellow-green headband looks over a cityscape.

Still image from: "Farewell Regent", Christene A. Browne / 1:30:00 / 2019, 1 hr 30 mins

The fifth film in our program is Unarmed Verses (2016) directed by Charles Officer. Though this film isn’t set in Regent Park, the story is familiar and resonant with the experiences of Regent Park. The documentary follows the life of a 12-year old and her family in Toronto’s Villaways Community housing neighbourhood, which is undergoing redevelopment. This film offers the perspective of a young person who is forced by her circumstances to bear the responsibilities of her family and the outside forces which threaten to displace them from their home.

- Essay written by Aashna Thakkar

...laying bare the hypocrisy of the stereotypes that have been at the centre of the neighbourhood’s narrative for decades.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

AASHNA THAKKAR

Aashna Thakkar (she/her) is an Indo-Canadian interdisciplinary artist, writer and film programmer based in Toronto. She is currently the Manager of Programming at the Regent Park Film Festival. This is her second time working with RPFF and has previously held positions at the Breakthrough’s Film Festival and Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

You can find her writing and multi-media works featured in Living Hyphen: Resistance Across Generations (Issue 2, Volume 1) and The Asian Canadian Living Archive’s (TACLA) online publication Taclanese.

Aashna is continuously exploring the intersections of her South Asian identity, gender, and body politics through her work, and aims to amplify stories of BIPOC and marginalized identities while challenging mainstream and colonial narratives.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

CHRISTENE BROWN

Christene Browne is an award-winning filmmaker and novelist and librettist with over 30 years experience in the film and television industry. Her work which most often deals with marginalized communities has been sold and screened all over the world. Browne is the first Black woman to direct and write a dramatic feature film in Canada. She recently completed a short, animated documentary on famed novelist Austin Clarke and her third novel, a science fiction allegory that deals with climate change and race. She is currently developing, an experimental animated film, her first opera, and teaching at Ryerson University. Browne lived in Regent from 1970 to 1985 and made her first documentaries there as part of the Regent Park Video Workshop in the 80’s.

ARTISTE WEBSITE

MOZE MOSSANEN

Moze Mossanen is a director, writer and producer who has created a body of popular and critically acclaimed work that have included a unique blend of drama, documentary, music and performance. These films include “Dance for Modern Times (winner of the Chris Award); “Year of the Lion” (winner of three Gemini Awards and the Jury Prize at the Yorkton Film Festival); “Roxana” (winner of two Golden Sheaf awards, the CSC Award for Cinematography and two Gemini Awards); and “Nureyev” (winner of the Golden Sheaf Award and two Gemini awards, including one for Best Direction for Moze). His 2013 doc, “Unsung”, a documentary about the world of show choirs, won the Canadian Screen Award in 2015. His most recent feature doc, “You Are Here”, about the actual people who inspired the current worldwide hit, “Come From Away”, was released on HBO Canada in September 2018. The film won the Audience Award at CineFest in October 2018 and two CSA Awards including Best Documentary in March 2019. The film was also released in over 800 theatres across the United States in September 2019.

WIKIPEDIA

GRANT MCLEAN

Grant McLean (April 7, 1921 – December 19, 2002) was a Canadian film director and producer. For most of his professional career he worked with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), serving as its acting Commissioner for a period during the 1960s.

WIKIPEDIA

CHARLES OFFICER

An alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre Directors’ Lab, Charles Officer began his filmmaking career with a series of award-winning short films that screened at festivals around the world. His debut fiction feature, Nurse.Fighter.Boy, premiered at TIFF 2008, was released theatrically by Mongrel Media and earned 10 Genie nominations. His feature documentary debut, Mighty Jerome, won four Leo Awards in 2011 and an Emmy Award in 2012 for Best Historical Documentary.

Officer directed Stone Thrower: The Chuck Ealey Story for the eight-episode documentary series Engraved on a Nation (2014 CSA for Best Documentary Series). In 2017, the CBC’s Firsthand commissioned The Skin We’re In, featuring acclaimed journalist and activist Desmond Cole. Officer’s latest feature documentary, Unarmed Verses, premiered to major acclaim in 2017 and won the Best Canadian Feature awards at Hot Docs 2017 and VIFF 2017.

He recently directed several episodes of the dramatic series 21 Thunder, which is having its international premiere on Netflix in 2018. Officer is currently in post-production on his next feature, Invisible Essence: Le Petit Prince, a cinematic meditation based on the classic novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Projects in development include the feature crime drama Akilla’s Escape and a mini-series adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s novel Son of a Smaller Hero.

CHARLES OFFICER IMDB

AGAZI AFEWERKI

Agazi Afewerki, whose family is from Eritrea, and Mohammed Shafique, from Bangladesh, are friends. Together they made a film called The Myths About Regent Park, which set out to dispel the notion that their neighbourhood is a hotbed of crime.

ABOUT

This program is co-presented by VUCAVU and the Regent Park Film Festival in a partnership that was funded in large part by the following projects: Open Door (Toronto Arts Council) and VUCAVU Expanded (Canada Council) .