CADA and Canadian Heritage are sponsoring an anti-racism film festival at the Matchbox Theatre on Sunday, March 29th

Film Screening Times followed by discussion:

2:00 pm-2:50 pm The Essential Blue-Eyed

3:40 pm Racial Harmony psa’s/Aboriginal Voices

4:00 pm—4:45 pm : Between: Living in the Hyphen

5:30 pm- 6:15pm: 24 Hours in Brooks

7:00 pm to 9:00 pm: Crash

Matchbox Theatre - 110-5301 43 Street

FREE ADMISSION 

2:00pm—2:50 pm: The Essential Blue-Eyed

Many trainers first heard of Jane Elliott’s path-breaking “blue-eyed/brown-eyed” exercise from her two previous films, Eye of the Storm and A Class Divided, or from her appearances on the Today, Tonight, Donahue and Oprah shows. One of America’s earliest and most celebrated diversity trainers, Jane Elliott describes The Essential Blue-Eyed as “the most dramatic and complete summary of my 30 years experience helping organizations grapple with the difficulties and opportunities offered by a diverse workforce.”

Jane Elliott’s method is based on her belief that people can best be motivated to fight discrimination by experiencing it themselves -- if only for a few hours in a controlled environment. In The Essential Blue-Eyed, Elliott divides a multiracial group of Midwesterners on the basis of eye color and then subjects the blue-eyed members to a withering regime of humiliation and contempt. In just a few hours, we watch grown professionals become distracted and despondent, stumbling over the simplest commands. People of color in the group express surprise that whites react so quickly to the kind of discrimination they face every day of their lives

3:40 pm—4:00 pm: Racial Harmony PSA’s/Aboriginal Voices

Every year for the past 8 years except for 2009, community members have been asked to submit scripts for positive anti-racist messages for CADA’s Racial Harmony Contest. 

Each year, five winning scripts have been produced by CHCA News and broadcast throughout the year on CHCA News and SHAW Cable. At the festival, CADA will be showing some of the winning scripts from years past.

Click here to see the commercials.

Aboriginal Voices is a film funded by Canadian Heritage and the Human Rights, Citizenship, and Multiculturalism Education Fund and produced by Harley Hay Studios. 

It was produced to share the voices of some of the Aboriginal people living in Central Alberta. 

The film shows Aboriginal individuals sharing personal stories of the pain and exclusion they feel as a result of racism and discrimination. 

CADA’s intention in showing the film is to share both the negative effects of racism and what community members can do to make Central Alberta warm and inclusive. 

4:00pm —4:45 pm: Between: Living in the Hyphen

National Film Board of Canada

In Canada, diversity often means "one ethnicity + hyphen + Canadian," but what if you don't fit into an easy category? What if your background is a hybrid of ancestries and you live somewhere between, where cultural identities overlap?

Between interweaves the experiences of a group of Canadians with one parent from a European background and one from a visible minority. They're all struggling to find a satisfying frame of reference. Cultural identity, it seems, is more complex than what our multicultural utopia implies.

Seven individuals share stories of being multi-ethnic in a world that wants to put each person into a single category. Among them are award-winning poet Fred Wah, who recalls being told by his elementary teacher that he was Chinese, even though his background also includes Irish, Scottish and Swedish ancestry. When visiting China, however, he finds that he is not accepted as Chinese because he is mixed.

Shannon Waters, who is half-Coast Salish, is questioned for participating in the First Nations Family Practice program. Although she chooses to identify with her Aboriginal ancestry, her connection with that background is challenged because of her appearance.

The thought-provoking experiences of these Canadians come to life against an innovative visual landscape and soundscape. Filmmaker Anne Marie Nakagawa, drawing on her work as a multimedia artist, creates a stylistic documentary that plays with form.

As globalization increasingly blurs borders, Between offers a provocative glimpse of what the future holds: a movement away from hyphens and "pure" bloodlines, towards a celebration of fluidity, hybridity and being mixed.

2005, 43 min 43 s

5:30 pm—6:15 pm: 24 Days in Brooks

In a decade, tiny Brooks, Alberta has been transformed from a socially conservative, primarily Caucasian town to one of the most diverse places in Canada. Hijabs have become commonplace, downtown bars feature calypso and residents speak 90 different languages. Immigrants and refugees have flocked here to work at Lakeside Packers—one of the world’s largest slaughterhouses.

Centering on the 24 days of the first-ever strike at Lakeside, this film is a nuanced portrait of people working together and adapting to change. They are people like Peter Jany Khwai, who escaped war in the Sudan, wars an African shirt and a cowboy hat, and affirms his Canadian Identity as well as his determination to fight for his rights. Or Edil Hassan, a devout Muslim born in Somalia, who counts her hours of organizing and picketing among her proudest moments. 

As 24 Days in Brooks shows, people from widely different backgrounds can work together for respect, dignity, and change---even though getting there is not easy. 

7:00 pm—9:00 pm: Crash

People are born with good hearts, but they grow up and learn prejudices. "Crash" is a movie that brings out bigotry and racial stereotypes.

The movie is set in Los Angeles, a city with a cultural mix of every nationality. The story begins when several people are involved in a multi-car accident.

From that point, we are taken back to the day before the crash, seeing the lives of several characters, and the problems each encounters during that day. An LAPD cop (Matt Dillon) is trying to get medical help for his father, but he is having problems with a black HMO clerk who won't give his father permission to see another doctor. He in turn takes out his frustration on a black couple during a traffic stop. A socialite (Sandra Bullock) and District Attorney (Brandon Fraser) are carjacked at gunpoint by two black teenagers. Sandra takes out her anger on a Mexican locksmith who is changing the door locks to their home. Later that night, the locksmith is again robbed of his dignity by a Persian store-owner.

Many of the characters switch from being bad-person-to-hero in ways that may surprise you. Douglas Young (the-movie-guy) It's a wonderful movie!

HOPE TO SEE YOU AT THE FESTIVAL!!