Release of POV Magazine’s Special Issue honouring DOC’s 40th Anniversary
DOC and POV Magazine have come together to commemorate DOC’s 40th anniversary!
To celebrate this milestone, POV has created a special edition of the magazine dedicated to highlighting DOC’s rich history with features about DOC’s Chapters, our advocacy over the years, conversations with members of our community, and other features that highlight together forty years of Canada’s documentary filmmakers across the country.
The evening will showcase two film screenings by DOC members:
Witness directed by Yasmin Mathurin and produced by Amar Wala
Shooting Indians: A Journey with Jeffrey Thomas by Ali Kazimi
Following the screening, POV editor Marc Glassman will moderate a discussion about DOC’s past, its present and its future with Ali Kazimi, Yasmin Mathurin, and Amar Wala.
This event is free for DOC members. Login and visit the DOC Member Benefits page for the discount code.
About the films:
Shooting Indians: A Journey with Jeffery Thomas (1997, 56 minutes)
Spanning over a decade, from 1984 to 1996, Shooting Indians: A Journey with Jeffery Thomas is an ironic documentary journey full of quiet insights and surprising twists. Starting the film as a foreign student in 1984, Kazimi begins to unravel the hidden history of the land that he has chosen as his home. At one level, Shooting Indians is a portrait of Jeffrey Thomas, an Iroquois photographer. The film explores the influences on his life which led him to his career. It was the work of an American photographer from the turn of the century, Edward Curtis, which forced Thomas to closely examine how Native people had been photographed in the past. Thomas views Curtis’ monumental work as a “mountain which must be crossed”.
Witness (2023, documentary series)
Witness revisits some of the most impactful viral videos in our history through the eyes of the people who captured them. It’s a show about everyday people who chose to document something and share it with the world, and the personal and social outcomes that stem from that decision.
Speakers
Ali Kazimi
Director, Shooting Indians: A Journey with Jeffrey Thomas
Ali Kazimi is a filmmaker, author and media artist whose work deals with race, social justice migration, history and memory. He is the recipient of the 2019 Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts. and the same year he received a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa from the University of British Columbia. His award winning and critically acclaimed documentaries include Narmada: A Valley Rises (’94), Shooting Indians: A Journey with Jeffrey Thomas (’97), Documenting Dissent (’01), Continuous Journey (’04), Runaway Grooms (’06), Rex versus Singh (’09), Random Acts of Legacy (’16), and Beyond Extinction: Sinixt Resurgence (’22)
Yasmine Mathurin
Director, Witness
Yasmine Mathurin is a Haitian-Canadian award-winning writer & director (+ occasional producer). Her first feature documentary film ONE OF OURS won the Hot Docs Special Jury Prize in 2021 and was nominated for 3 Canadian Screen Awards in 2022 for best writing, best directing and best feature documentary. It is now available on CBC Gem and in the US through AMC+ and Sundance TV. She previously worked as an associate producer with CBC Original Podcast. Her previous podcasting work has been awarded with a Webby people’s choice and a Canadian Digital Publishing Award. She recently participated in the 2022 TIFF Writers Studio and the 2022 TIFF Chanel Women Writers Summit. She most recently directed 3 out of 6 episodes of a short documentary series entitled WITNESS with Scarborough Pictures. It premiered at 2023 Hot Docs film festival and is now available on CBC and CBC Gem.She is an alumni of the TIFF Netflix Talent Accelerator Fellowship, TIFF Writers Studio, Hot Docs Documentary Lab, the UnionDocs Feature documentary lab, the Berlinale Doc Toolbox program, DOC Breakthrough Program.She is the recipient of the 2023 TIFF CBC Screenwriter Award for her upcoming scripted narrative feature film project SORRY PARDON MADAME.She holds a BA in Political Science and Non-Profit Management from York University and a Journalism Masters from TMU (formerly known as Ryerson) University. She speaks English, French & Haitian Créole.
Amar Wala
Producer, Witness
Amar's work traverses a range of style and form. He is known for his arresting visuals and empowering brand of storytelling, often using his cinema to deconstruct notions of race, class, and identity. His debut feature, The Secret Trial 5 (‘14), established him as a daring new voice in Canadian cinema. It premiered at Hot Docs, where Amar received the jury recognition for Emerging Filmmaker. The film would later be named one of the Top Ten Docs of the Decade by Realscreen. He is also the recipient of the Vanguard Award from the DOC Organization of Canada. Amar has also directed and produced award-winning television series including the acclaimed CBC Arts program In The Making, and award-winning comedy series Next Stop which (CBC Gem). He is currently developing his latest project Shook, which is his scripted feature debut in partnership with Toronto based Film Forge. Amar also runs Scarborough Pictures, a Toronto based production company created to support racialized artists in telling their stories.
Marc Glassman
Editor, POV Magazine
Marc Glassman is the editor of POV Magazine and contributes film reviews to Classical FM. He is an adjunct professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and is the treasurer of the Toronto Film Critics Association.