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Coextinction teaches viewers to “put the eco in economy”

Graphic: James Fay/The Concordian

The political-environmental documentary was presented on Nov. 7, for the first time at Concordia’s weekly Cinema Politica event

Coextinction, a 2021 film by environmental activists Gloria Pancrazi and Elena Jean is a beautifully shot film that primarily follows one of the few remaining pods of Southern Resident orcas on the coast of British Columbia and Washington. A group of scientists get down to the bottom as to why the orcas are sickly, famished and inevitably dying one by one. 

As the story goes on, the causes for the desperation of the orcas are unveiled. Pipelines, fish farms, cargo ships and dams alike are direct causes for the extinction of these whales. Along the way, the audience is introduced to many Indigenous activists who are equally affected by these government installations that are unjustly trespassing on their territories. 

Kwekwecnewtxw guardian Will George, a resistance leader and member of the Coast Salish Watch, was introduced in the documentary during his protest against the Trans Mountain Pipeline Project. The pipeline was installed on the coast of the Burrard Inlet, which was property of his nation. 

(K’wak’wabalas) ‘Namgis Chief Ernest Alfred played a large role in the film by protesting against fish farms on Swanson Island, Discovery Island, and the Broughton Archipelago. His village, whose lifestyle centred around eating the fish that they catch naturally, was affected by the fish farms plaguing their local wild salmon population.

After Chief Alfred’s protests on Swanson Island, the archipelago has shut down 35 fish farms and counting.

“I wouldn’t feed it to my worst enemy,”  said Alfred in the documentary. 

“I was taught as a child that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada was the enemy. They stopped counting fish when I was about six years old. So there’s no problem,” said Chief Alfred. “Consistently, for the better part of the decade, we’ve seen 200-250 salmon in the territory. Since the removal of the Broughton Archipelago fish farms this year, the first generation of fish that have been able to migrate: 11,000.”

The ‘Namgis Chief explained that the world wants to hear what they have to say because their cause makes sense, and more importantly, that the economy does not drive this planet. “As soon as we put the eco back in the economy, we’re going to figure some things out,” concluded Alfred. “Go and sit with an Indigenous person and listen to them because we’re not trying to hoard and make money, we just think several generations ahead.” 

In a similar vein, resistance leader Will George was ignored by a large corporation known for their activism. George claims that Greenpeace put a heavy task on the backs of Indigenous militants like himself. According to George, Greenpeace took pictures of the blockades and banners he made and installed at his own risk, added a watermark and used it for their own benefits, and he hasn’t heard from them for years. 

“Far too often do our spiritual ones get arrested, and our holy ones get arrested,” added George. “They’ve criminalized me for witnessing the destruction of my land.” The Kwekwecnewtxw guardian had been sentenced to 28 days in prison for his acts of protest in defence of his nation’s land. 

“We have a simple philosophy here,” said Chief Alfred. “You can’t take without just saying thanks. Say thanks and have gratitude.”
For further information, you can visit Coextinction’s website.

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Arts

PHI Centre’s Horizons VR brings a whole new form to film

Adil Boukind/Centre Phi

The multipurpose venue displays award-winning virtual reality works

The PHI Centre reopened its Horizons VR exhibition on Nov. 9. The installation consists of four different rooms, each designated for a virtual reality exhibit, some including user-interactive elements. These award-winning pieces were all breathtaking in their own unique ways. Each one had me pulling off my headset either in complete awe or in intense reflection on the content I had just experienced.

Goliath: Playing with Reality is about a man who is diagnosed with schizophrenia after losing his parents, after which he spends several years in isolation taking strong medication. The protagonist, who goes by Goliath, finds solace in connecting with the outside world through video games after his return home. 

This piece is a true sensory overload. Bombardments of colours, shapes, and creatures create an intense feeling of hallucination and detachment from reality, all while keeping a video game theme as the virtual world demonstrates pixelated elements over many occasions. A few interactive moments involving first-person shooting and old arcade games allowed an extra level of immersion, and Tilda Swinton’s partial-narration was a soothing contrast to the chaos displayed throughout. 

Adil Boukind/Centre PHI

A following room is designated for the viewing of Reeducated, the animated true story of three strangers who were placed in a Xinjiang “reeducation” camp. The three men were caught in the middle of quite possibly the “largest internment of ethnic and religious minorities since the second world war,” according to The New Yorker. 

Displayed as a 360° VR short film, the memoir strikes emotion visually and through storytelling. The animation, created with a nod to Chinese ink wash painting, exposes the bleak horrors that average citizens must endure if they come from circumstances that aren’t to the government’s liking. As for the narrators, their friendship formed through hardship is poignant and tear-jerking, and it can be felt through the story they recount.

The third VR work, Kusunda, brings the viewer to rural Nepal, where they are placed in an interview conducted as a POW with shaman Lil Bahadur, who has forgotten his dying native dialect of Kusunda. Meanwhile, his granddaughter Hima takes initiative to revive the language of her family and ancestors. 

The heartwarming film tells their story through colourful CGI animation as well as live-action, splitting between informative and artful entertainment. The learning experience is topped off interactively, as the viewer is asked to pronounce words of the Kusunda language in order to resume the experience, which in turn spreads the subtle revival of the dialect. 

Finally, Marco & Polo Go Round tells the story of a couple facing problems in their relationship, which takes a severe anti-gravitational twist. As we follow the couple around their messy apartment, many objects around the kitchen fly up in the air, sticking to the ceiling. This is a reflection of the gradual dissolution of the protagonists’ love. 

Marco & Polo Go Round is about half the length of all of the other pieces, so it only has enough time to strike hard with its surrealism. The message, while not up-front, is especially thought provoking given the minimal context provided. It’s a beautiful animated metaphor.

It’s clear why the PHI Centre selected these four works to display. Each one deserved to win their multiple respected awards. Virtual reality, if done correctly, can definitely be an art form.

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Arts

Another film stemmed from white guilt disguised under the title of Love

 Review of Cinemania Festival’s opening film Chien Blanc

Acclaimed author and filmmaker Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette brought forth her new film Chien Blanc as the opening film of the 28th edition of the Cinemania Festival. 

Her 2015 novel La Femme qui fuit received a lot attention owing to its  second-person narration of Lavalette’s grandmother’s life. 

Because of the acclaim she received from her novel and the various films she has made in the past such as Nelly, from the novel Putain by author Nelly Arcan, it was fair to have high expectations for this release. 

Cinemania hopes to bring francophone cinema to an international spotlight and help these films achieve recognition. For this year’s edition of the festival, organizers hoped to engage audiences with relevant socio-political issues. The festival’s country of honour this year is Luxembourg, which will bring the country’s French cinema and culture to the foreground. 

Beyond film screenings, the festival also organizes roundtables, conferences, concerts and an exhibit at the PHI Centre. 

Chien Blanc was a result of Barbeau-Lavalette questioning her identity as a white person. For many, the murder of George Floyd in 2020 was a reality check. It brought more awareness to the struggles of people of colour — and for Barbeau-Lavalette, this awareness translated into a historical film. 

“This is not a documentary,” states Lavalette in the Q&A session. The film, however, is composed in parallel to the narrative of archival footage of Black struggles from the Civil Rights movement of 1954-68 to the Black Lives Matter protests from last year. 

It is controversial that, though a Canadian artist herself, Barbeau-Lavalette chose to depict racism in the U.S.but ignored similar racist trends in her own province of Quebec, whose prime minister openly stated that “systemic racism does not exist.” 

Even though the film only has a runtime of ninety minutes, it seems to drag on much longer. This was in part due to the awkward editing. The audience barely had the opportunity to draw breath after dramatic scenes before the narration would quickly resume. 

It is noticeable that Barbeau-Lavalette does not come from a filmmaking background. The metaphors used in the film were too on-the-nose, and provided little credibility. 

For instance, the first scene shows a boy playing with a toy dog, foreshadowing the upcoming story with a dog as the central character. In another instance, Romain Gary (author of the original novel Chien Blanc) writes the last words of his book, which seems to symbolize the universal finality of racism. He writes with pen on paper in the film as a metaphor of the final words of his novel. 

Barbeau-Lavalette touches upon the themes of white tears, but does not give them much depth. In a scene at the beginning of the film, a taxi driver is bringing Romain Gary to his home when we hear the news of Martin Luther King’s murder on the radio. Romain Gary overpays the driver — a direct symbol of white tears that  Barbeau-Lavalette herself noted in the Q&A  as “overcompensating his guilt by paying.” 

Strong metaphors can enhance a storyline, but in this case they felt forced — as if they were trying to entirely manipulate the audience’s experience rather than giving them a chance to think for themselves. 

The film does not flow very well as there are abrupt switches between images that make it, at times, an uncomfortable experience to watch. 

Though her initial claim of making the film about what it means to be a white ally is interesting, the angle she has taken in Chien Blanc only serves to further divide. A better angle to take would’ve been centring more Black voices, for instance. Characters like Ballard who Gary gets out of prison, seemed central to the story during the initial scenes were only shown briefly. 

Overall, the film was an interesting visual experience. The Cinema Imperial seating 800 people was entirely full. The audience was a diverse group that included school-going children and teenagers who would applaud at the end of every scene and laugh whenever an intimate scene would pop up on the screen. 

Though Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette is known for her prose, and the film is an accurate adaptation of Romain Gary’s novel Chien Blanc, I’m not sure that filmmaking is the best avenue for her talents. 

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Arts

À bout de bras: A Greek myth told at the Agora

Courtesy of Agora de la Danse

The dance-movement performance piece by Emily Gualtieri and David Albert-Toth was presented at Montreal’s Agora de la danse from Nov. 2 to 5


À bout de bras involved acrobatics and contortion, magic, humorous poems and storytelling, performed uniquely by Albert-Toth, all based on the theme of Tantalus.

The Greek mythical figure was famously punished after death in the deep abyss of Tartarus, where he was forced to stand in a pool of water under a fruit tree with low hanging branches. The water would sink every time he went to drink it, and the tree branches hanging over him would elude his grasp every time he was hungry.

Albert-Toth’s original inspiration for this piece came from the concept of solitude. “We looked to use an example of a fallen hero. The Joker, Muhammad Ali, who’d experienced their own solitude amounting to their self destruction. When we discovered the story of Tantalus, we knew we found the one,” said the performer. 

The mythological figure was known to have been a ruler of the Anatolian city of Tantalís. He was sentenced to his infamous punishment after having offered his son as food to the gods when invited to Mount Olympus to prepare a feast for them. 

The idea had been in the works since 2019. After the arrival of COVID-19, during which the world had to confine and experience solitude, Gualtieri and Albert-Toth knew it was essential to present it as soon as possible, after the ebbs and flows of the global crisis. 

Courtesy of Agora de la Danse

The dancer started the piece almost nude, wrapped in a sparkly cloth. He argued to the crowd that instead of attending his act, we as citizens should be taking action to prevent the ongoing domination of capitalism. If we believed it was important, we wouldn’t choose to merely sit in our venue seats looking for entertainment. Only after Albert-Toth clothed himself and provided a powerful dance representing Tantalus’ struggle and torment, did he reveal the reason for his monologue on the economic system.

The following segment was an allegory involving a Coca-Cola vending machine and how desperate he was for a soda, but didn’t have any change. The soda represented relief and reward for hard work. The dancer humorously hyperbolised his desperation for it by contorting and writhing on the floor, rhythmically rapping about how he would do anything for that “kssss” in his life. 

Albert-Toth alternated between expressive dances on Tantalus’ desperation and the real matters of companies capitalizing on our selfish needs. The performance ended in a heartwarming magic act, with many colours which contrasted the darkness submerging the dancer for nearly the entirety of the piece.

All in all, the show was brilliant and thought-provoking. As someone who found it difficult to understand interpretive dance and movement performance, the story, humour, and sheer athleticism opened a new world for me. 

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Arts

The Arab World Festival of Montreal: experiencing intercultural exchanges through art

Don’t miss out on this festival of encounters and fusions between Eastern and Western worlds

The 23rd edition of The Arab World Festival of Montreal (FMA) is currently underway in the city until Nov. 13.

All are welcome to join this eclectic festival, which offers both free and ticketed events — from performing arts spectacles to cultural forums/conferences and cinematic experiences.

The Concordian had the pleasure of discussing the importance of this unique Montreal festival with the FMA’s communications and programming assistant Céline Camus.

Camus explained that the FMA “aims to be a meeting place, where many artists point out the similarities between Arab cultures but also the cultures of the rest of the world, whether in the East or in the West.”

This dynamic festival, where such dialogues are artistically facilitated and celebrated, is important in “a city like Montreal where diversity is the very essence of life,” added Camus.

The theme of this year’s edition is Corporeal: When the Flesh Dictates the Story! It is all about acknowledging the physical abilities and limitations of the body, while honouring the self in connection with the world.

During the FMA, visitors can expect to see local and international artists/intellectuals explore the corporeal theme through artworks, dances, and films in relation to their distinct and varied Arab cultures.

The Art of Skin: Body Painting Workshop and Live Painting were two events that took place on Nov. 1 at the Kawalees Cultural Cabaret as part of the festival. This low-key bar located in the Mile End neighbourhood had a quaint café-like vibe, which offered a vibrant yet relaxed setting for artist Zoya Tavangar’s intimate painting show.

During the Body Painting Workshop, Tavangar painted on a model’s face. Rather than using the model as a visual muse, Tavangar used the model’s face as a canvas itself. Drawing inspiration from the artistic and symbolic expression of tattoos, Tavangar colourfully re-painted a face on the model’s face, which — as she explained to the audience — “is in the art style of Cubism.”

Tavangar then proceeded onto the Live Painting event, where she painted a blue, realism-style portrait of a young woman. While Tavangar was focused on her painting, festival-goers were able to view her work up-close, or observe from their tables while having drinks or even ordering hummus and pita to snack on.

One such festival-goer that The Concordian was able to chat with was Redouane Ali who was experiencing the FMA for the first time.

“When I heard about this festival, it definitely interested me,” he said. Ali added that he specifically chose to visit The Art of Skin events because “after a busy day at work, watching an artist paint live while being able to have dinner seemed cool and therapeutic.”  

The FMA is a Montreal gem and should not be overlooked. For those still interested in partaking in the festival, here is a list of shows and events that are still available!

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Arts

Is Bill 96 relevant in Montreal: What do polyglots at Mundo Lingo think?

Third and fourth-language speakers talk about learning French at the famous Mundo Lingo meetup

Mundo Lingo is an international project that promotes language exchange operating on four continents and thrives to make language learning accessible to all. The project was founded in 2011 by Benji Moreira, and the first event happened in Buenos Aires. Moreira wanted to organize a space where locals could practice foreign languages, and foreigners could practice Spanish; this eventually became a global event where people are welcome to practice any language. 

People that attend Mundo Lingo meetups come from all walks of life, old and young, international and local; they all come for one purpose: to discuss the languages they are learning and help people that are learning their own. 

Each participant is given sticker flags for the respective languages they speak and want to practice, to signal to other people which languages can be spoken in their interactions.

Several Mundo Lingo enthusiasts spoke about their opinions on Bill 96 which imposes the speaking of French in the workplace among other things. 

Courtesy of MUNDO LINGO

David Tousseau, an ambassador at Mundo Lingo who speaks French, English, Kinyarwanda, Spanish and Gaelic, says that as a university researcher, “linguistically I am not very involved politically,” and admitted to not really caring about Bill 96. He speaks these languages for patrimonial value, family relations and general interest. 

Others like Argentinian Joaquim Marubio, who speaks Spanish, English, and a bit of French, spoke against Bill 96. 

“Let me tell you something, Canada is part of a British Commonwealth, it belongs to Our Majesty, so we better speak English. Quebec is part of Canada, people need to speak English, it belongs to Our Majesty!” 

Marubio continued to praise the King and said that imposing French was ironic with regards to Quebec’s ties with the Commonwealth. 

Anthony Gagné, originally from Quebec, had opposite views to his friend Marubio.  He comes to Mundo Lingo to socialize and practice his languages. He speaks French, English, Italian and Portuguese, and is learning Chinese. 

“I think it’s a good law, we need to protect the language.” He says Montreal is a perfect example of a place where this law needs to exist. “There are two cultures, Bill 96 creates controversy, it’s taboo to talk about it, but we need to address it.” 

He added that “the province of Quebec runs Montreal and that makes for a rather interesting phenomenon,” referring to the recent elections, of a majority government not representing Montreal voters. 

He continued, “here it is sure that you will meet people that their French is a third, fourth language, but in everyday life there are not so many, but I really understand linguistically that French is complex, more complex than the other Romance languages” 

Two women speaking in Spanish stated that they really appreciated being there, because everyone was so friendly, and it allowed them to practice French without shame. They said that in their workplaces they did not feel comfortable practicing their French because they only speak a bit of it. 

Whether it be in language circles or the streets of Montreal, there is a lot of divide on questions of language protection and Bill 96 more specifically. What is certain is Mundo Lingo provides a space where people can share in any language they desire without fear of being shamed for having an accent. 

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Arts Culture

Seeing Loud: A look at the love story between Jean-Michel Basquiat and music

Man looking at painting - VALENTINE ALIBERT

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts collaborates with the Musée de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris to create the first large-scale multidisciplinary exhibition on the role of music in Basquiat’s art

Upon entering the exhibit, visitors are embraced by the first room’s black painted walls as new-wave music plays. The smell of paint lingers in the air as people gather to admire the artwork while music from punk band The Offs plays loudly in the background. 

This is how curators decided to open Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music, an exhibition centered around the major role that music — be it opera, jazz or hip-hop — played in Basquiat’s life and work. 

Spectators are propelled into the musical universe of Basquiat’s era and the New York underground scene of the 1970s and 1980s that inspired him throughout his artistic career. 

The walls are covered with colourful posters and flyers of the bands that the artist listened to and formerly collaborated with. Between his emblematic crowns and anatomical drawings, musical references start to emerge in visitors’ minds.

Musicologist and guest curator from the Philharmonie de Paris Vincent Bessières explained that the first part of the exhibit was made to give a contextual and biographical background on the importance of music in Basquiat’s life, while the second part centers on how music oriented his pictorial universe. 

From his band Gray to his appearances as a DJ, nothing is forgotten in the extensive discography that has found its way into the artist’s work. 

The scenography uses a multidisciplinary approach that reflects Basquiat’s own methods. 

Woman looking at painting – VALENTINE ALIBERT

Visitors are projected into an atmosphere by the music playing in each room while videos and archives play everywhere. 

Visitors Ismaila Diallo and Anastasi Eosforos said they particularly appreciated the exhibition’s scenography and the way the different parts were orchestrated.

“Seeing urban art in a museum was fun,” said Diallo. “You would think there’s kind of this clash between the two, but it was very well executed.”

Jazz specialist Bessières explained that, even though Basquiat was a painter of his time and was involved in a dynamic and creative environment, he brought past music to the canvas.

“Looking at Basquiat through the prism of music allows at the same time to talk about the social journey of his life but also an interpretive key that allows us to understand things about his work,” said Bessières. “Jazz is really the music that he most celebrated, quoted, and represented in his works.”

For Bassières, these visual references to African-American culture and music are part of Basquiat’s wider connection to his identity as a Black man. 

The exhibition shows how music in Basquiat’s mind connected him to the world as an artist but, more importantly, as a Black artist living in America.

Seeing Loud runs until Feb. 19, 2023. Tickets are $16 for 21 to 30 year olds while general entry is $24. For more information, visit the MMFA’s website.

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Arts

Want to travel, but can’t afford to? Write and receive postcards from people abroad instead!

Postcrossing: a website that allows people to exchange postcards

Postcrossing is a community with over 800,000 active members sprawling across 205 countries, that allows people to exchange postcards with one another. 

“It’s an online platform that allows anyone to exchange postcards from all over the world, for free,” said computer systems engineer and creator of Postcrossing, Paulo Magalhães. 

He shared that the idea stemmed from wanting to connect people who love writing postcards. 

Inspired by the famous website BookCrossing, which serves as a platform to exchange books with random people, Postcrossing strives to do the same with postcards.  

While postcard exchanges might seem like a thing of the past, it is always nice to receive one in the mail. 

Soon after the project started, it gained immense popularity. The year 2008 marked a million postcards sent. 

It connected thousands of people across the world who aspire to travel but do not necessarily have the time, finances, or ability to do so. 

Every postcrosser has a profile, where they write about themselves and the kind of postcards they would like to receive. This gives the sender cues for what they can choose to write about. 

Beyond mailing postcards, the community has grown to organize meetups for postcard exchanges. There’s a forum where people connect their lived realities and blog to report the stories of postcrossers around the world. 

In the summer of 2020, I was working in a tourist shop in the Old Port of Quebec City. There barely were any tourists, because it was only the start of the pandemic. The few people that did visit were from the province, sometimes Ontario, and did not have much interest in buying souvenirs. 

One day scavenging through the stock, I found hundreds of different postcards, representing facets of the city. Surfing the web, looking for inspiration on what people did with postcards of their own city, I fell upon Postcrossing. At first, I did not understand the full extent of its brilliance. 

I have written letters to prisoners for over ten years. It started as an activity product of boredom as a young teenager and turned into opening my mind to carceral justice and abolition.

Traveling across the world, I met like-minded people, who did not believe in the concept of borders and shared my interest in writing. We soon decided to write letters to each other and forge contact living miles away. 

I wrote postcards when traveling to people I cared about but never had thought of sending them from my own city. Postcrossing made me see a world where people are eager to know about my own town. 

“Every member I meet is someone like me — just someone wanting to share some thoughts and experiences from their little corner of the globe,” says Emma Wayne, a postcrosser from Germany.  

I encountered only a few setbacks. Canada has some of the most expensive stamps in the world, one factor being that they are taxed. With $2.71 per international stamp, there are only so many postcards that can be sent a month, without it being a costly endeavor. 

I met a community of artists, people who make their own postcards, taken from their own photos, or some who paint on cardboard, collages, and drawings. 

All age ranges exist, from older retired folks to five-year-olds who are learning to write. Once, a young girl from California filled an envelope with sand and attached a note saying that it was so I could also feel like I was at the beach. 

“Postcrossers are people of all ages and backgrounds, connected by their love for postcards. Since postcards and stamps are available nearly everywhere around the world, Postcrossing can be enjoyed by anyone,” added Magalhães. 

Most people write in English, but you can write in any language the destinee reads. It can be a language practice exercise for some. I’ve had someone write to me in Georgian. 

Determined to understand its meaning, I spent over two hours deciphering it. I would have never turned to Georgian if it had not appeared to me so randomly. 

I have stayed in contact with several people from the platform, some of whom have even welcomed me to their home while traveling. 

Postcrossing is more than a simple platform, it’s a community of nomads, travellers, people passing their time exchanging souvenirs of their own towns to the world. 

It’s free, accessible, builds community, and sometimes gives you free housing when travelling! 

Graphic by: James Fay

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Arts

CFBA: The student source for all things fashion business

Courtesy Photo - Valérie Belanger

The CSU organization is the on-campus remedy for all your vogue cravings

The Concordia Fashion Business Association (CFBA) was founded in 2017 in order to connect student fashion enthusiasts to the industry by providing events, cocktails, talks, and mentorship involving experienced professionals in the field.  

The CFBA isn’t “just about networking with professionals, but other students as well because there aren’t any means provided by the school to do that,” mentioned CFBA co-president Sydnee Grill. 

Last year featured the first appearance of the Cocktails & Connections event held at Apt. 200, where the turnout of business-professional guests and student attendees alike surpassed expectations. The guest speaker for the night was Zach Macklovitch, co-founder of Saintwoods. 

“This year we want to do it bigger and better because we won’t have to worry about the vaxicode,” said Grill, “and we have a much higher cap on the amount of people who can attend the venue.”

Before 2021, the CFBA only held one or two of these events per year. Fashion Conversations was the recurring activity, which won an award for Best Virtual Event 2020-21 from the CSU. The fashion conference includes different events involving several speakers, workshops and a session after a cocktail event for recruiters to talk to students.

The club will also participate in Fashion Spectrum, a Quebec-wide case competition for all universities. The deadline to enter is Nov. 14 for students who want to get involved and enhance their skills in fashion and business. The competition is from Jan. 13 through 16, and the team will meet weekly with fashion mentors in order to prepare. 

As for the weekly timings, the CFBA meets once a week on Sundays for a general meeting. Closer to an event, many more meetings and a lot more work and time is put in.  

“At that point the events team is planning, the business relations team is reaching out to sponsors and speakers inviting guests and the social media team is pumping out all the content for that event,” said Grill.

“In the past, websites have been the main source to find business information. Now, Instagram is the top platform to keep consumers up to date, whether it’s student-run or professionally run,” added the co-president.

This year, the club’s new content creator Lucie Sarrazin created and posted a video on “what Concordia students are wearing” that garnered almost 50,000 views on Instagram. From that video, the club gained around 300 new followers in a matter of two weeks — more than what they gained throughout all of last year. 

“If you don’t go out and seek us out, the only other place you’re going to find us apart from going straight to our website is finding us on the CSU clubs website page. Every time someone new finds us, they’re amazed at how they’ve never heard of us,” Grill said.

Stay tuned for late April activities involving Concordia-based businesses and possible thrifting. 

This Nov. 10 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., students who attend the event at Apt. 200 will be able to network with each other and business-professional guests over food and drinks. The event will also feature a main guest speaker who will speak for 30 to 45 minutes.

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Arts

Optimista kicks off

Optimista Conferance. DALIA NARDOLILLO/The Concordian

An exhibition about having courage against all odds

Saturday, Oct. 15. marked the launch of the Optimista Conferences organized by Yellow Pad sessions. Each conference has a specific theme: courage, compassion, love, and community.

The Concordian had the chance to speak with Grace Sebeh Byrne, one of the co-founders of the series of cine conferences, to get a better understanding of the idea behind the event.

“Optimista is a response to what happened during the pandemic. Before Optimista we used to put on more traditional film festivals. But then we have kids in our twenties, we mentor a lot of young people and it’s very clear that there is a sense of hopelessness and despair and mostly isolation. That’s a big horrible thing, to experience isolation,” Byrne explained.

During a time when we all felt isolated during the pandemic, Byrne wanted to come up with something that would bring back hope into the community. 

“We are very passionate about the arts. Art we know is a powerful tool for social change. We asked ourselves, what are we going to create, a nice and safe and welcoming immersive experience. People can come in and enjoy the arts and at the same time explore themes,” Byrne said.

Over the course of four cine conferences, art lovers can gather and experience various keynote speakers, performers, and photo galleries grouped together for every themed night.

On the opening night of Optimista, there was the visual artist Augustina Pedrocca exhibited her photographs entitled, Happy and Beautiful out of Spite.

 

Pedrocca presented an evocative series of portraits that clearly documented the loves, pleasures, hardships, and heartaches of Montreal’s Queer Community.

During the main portion of the night Diana León, a performing artist,  put on a beautiful choreographed performance. The main idea behind her performance was to put forth the idea of self-love despite the times that we live in. 

Two documentaries were shown during the inaugural night. The first was a short film entitled The Black Cop by Gamal “G” Tuwara.

Tuwara flew all the way from England just to be a part of the conference and give a talk about his documentary. 

The Black Cop follows Tuwara’s journey in the British police force. He explored his earliest memories of racial profiling and harassment in the force, as well as the homophobia he endured.

The second film of the night featured a longer documentary entitled Writing with Fire which followed the story of India’s only women-run newspaper. It was directed by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh.

The Concordian had the honour of getting to chat with Tuwara right after the screening of the film. Tuwara, or G as he prefers to be called, gave The Concordian truly inspiring advice for individuals that face adversity in their chosen career field. 

“First of all, I would say to build up your network around you and find people that you can talk to and trust. Talking and sharing the story is what makes it. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. I know it could be scary asking for help because in your head you think that you might be failing. It’s quite the contrary, asking for help makes you stronger,” G explained.

If you can take anything away from the inaugural event, it is the following; don’t be afraid to be yourself in dark times and pursue what you believe in.

Photographs by Dalia Nardolillo/The Concordian

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Arts

Canadian whiteness pervades the Montreal International Black Film Festival

INSIDE THE 2022 MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL BLACK FILM FESTIVAL, CATHERINE REYNOLDS/THE CONCORDIAN

Racism in the Great White North just isn’t worth denouncing for those who chose the opening movie of this year’s Festival

The opening of the Montreal International Black Film Festival with the screening of Lovely Jackson on Sept. 20 was nothing less than a pure expression of devious Canadian whiteness. 

Yes, there is such a thing.

A lot of Canadian identity is predicated on not being American. So when it comes to racism, the white Canadian rhetoric is that it’s simply “not as bad as it is in the States.” 

The result is a local form of whiteness that pushes Euro-Canadians to decry racial violence in the United States but harshly deny its existence in their own country, so as to preserve the myth of white innocence, of non-American superiority. I don’t know any Black person in Canada who hasn’t been humiliated by these seemingly contradictory reactions that actually go hand in hand. 

Yes, we are familiar with Canadian whiteness.

I expected more from the Montreal Black Film Festival because it established multiple events and opportunities around the theme of Being Black in Canada. I thus decided to give Lovely Jackson a chance despite the fact that it’s produced by a white male  — first red flag — , and was suspiciously acclaimed by a white Québécois executive of the Festival (who declared in his speech that it was “just so beautiful”) — second red flag.

The movie tells the story of Rickey Jones, an African American man who spent 39 years on death row in Cleveland, Ohio for the murder of a white man that he did not commit. Two white police officers wrongfully convicted him at age 18 by forcing a 12-year-old Black boy — the case’s sole eyewitness — to write a false statement “proving” his guilt.

He was released in 2014 at age 57, years after the Ohio Innocence Project started investigating his case.

As my heart juggled between rage, sadness and admiration for Jackson who boldly shared his incredible journey towards healing and happiness, I grew more and more disgusted at producer Matt Waldeck who carefully washed away the blood off the white criminals’ hands.

In fact, the Festival’s choice of this movie is far more than just disrespectful in the Canadian context as another strategic focus on U.S. racism that overshadows local tyranny. It’s also full of white saviourism. 

That is very clear: all white characters are angels. More blame is put on the poor child who bore the traumatic burden of the officers’ illegal manipulation and coercion for decades than on the policemen responsible for Jackson’s misery. 

The movie includes detailed follow-ups on the life and testimonies of the former, but the latter are completely erased from the story, despite Jackson implying the full extent of their guilt in one brief clip. 

This point-of-view remains unexplored. However, the white prosecutor who was the director of the Ohio Innocence Project gets heroic attention — never mind the fact that he admitted to believing all prisoners were evil until the project’s creator went on sabbatical leave, forcing him into the job.

The movie does not name “racism” or the prison-industrial complex, let alone the roots of the colonial capitalist system that rips families apart and instills planned suffering into Black people’s existence.

I went from being frustrated to holding back tears at the cruelty of this world, exhausted by Waldeck’s distortion of reality that was further empowered by the Canadian whiteness of the Festival.

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