ABOUT
Katerina Cizek is a documentary-maker and the National Film Board of Canada’s Filmmaker-in-Residence at an inner-city hospital. She is teaming up with partners at the frontlines - doctors, nurses and patients - to create collaborative media. In this blog, she is writing about the day-to-day process, the ideas behind and the future of “interventionist media.” This blog is a companion to a media-rich online documentary: www.nfb.ca/filmmakerinresidence
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Our website is the only Canadian win at the 2008 Webby Awards, (the Webbys have been dubbed the “Oscars of the Internet” by The New York Times); it was also a Webby Honoree in the Health category. We are also currently nominated for a 2008 Banff Rockie Award. Our URL won the 2007 Canadian New Media Award for excellence in news and information, a 2007 Flash Forward Big Orange Rubber Arrow and a 2007 Montreal Prix Boomerang. Nominated for an inaugural Grierson: Sheffield Innovation Award, UN World Summit Award, and a Canadian New Media Award for excellence in use of social media.
The Huffington Post says our Filmmaker-in-Residence: The Complete Collection DVD Box Set is “The new media equivalent of a book you can’t put down”.
The Globe and Mail calls our website “engrossing…” and Art Threat’s Ezra Winton says it’s “One of the most refreshing, engaging and political pieces I have seen on the internet.”The US-based Pulp-Portal says that the FIR website “Almost made us want to move to Canada.”
The National Post calls our Photoblogging project “Remarkable.”
Jim Creeggan of the Bare Naked Ladies says “The Bicycle puts a human face on a crisis that affects us all,” while The Toronto Sun calls the film “Emotional… dramatic…” Globe and Mail film critic, Liam Lacey says it’s “A sophisticated piece of short documentary film-making.”
The National Post says “Don’t Miss” The Interventionists and Evan Solomon of CBC News: Sunday calls it “An extraordinary documentary”. Film nominated for Best Director at the 2007 Gemini Awards.
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BIOGs
Katerina Cizek, Filmmaker-in-Residence
Kat Cizek’s films have helped instigate criminal investigations, changed UN policies, and have screened as evidence at an International Criminal Tribunal. Her films have documented the Handicam Revolution, and have themselves become part of the movement.
Currently, she is developing an experimental program with the National Film Board of Canada called Filmmaker-in-Residence – a program that partners media with medicine in order to fuel social and political action. The project’s website is the winner of a Webby Award (dubbed “the Oscars of the internet” by th New York Times), a Canadian New Media Award, the US-based Flashforward award and a Montreal Prix Boomerang.
Cizek’s recent film about new technologies and human rights, Seeing Is Believing (co-directed with Peter Wintonick) won the prestigious Abraham Prize at the Hamptons International Film Festival, among other prizes and nominations. It showed on television in over 15 countries, and played at more than 70 international film festivals. The film also screened at MoMA in New York City as part of the Sundance Institute’s Illuminated Voices Series.
She wrote, edited and narrated the 1996 Dead Are Alive: Eyewitness in Rwanda, which was translated into 12 languages, and garnered prizes in New York , San Francisco Golden Gate, Biarritz, the European Echo Humanitarian Award and played at INPUT Mexico. She is a three-time Gemini nominee, and the co-recipient of a 2000 Montreal New Talent Award. Cizek also has made films on the Czech velvet revolution; worked in Aboriginal Gang Territory; investigated a global people-smuggling ring; and directed a series of reports about the battle over water in Central Asia.
While traveling to make films, she’s had a few odd experiences, including singing “Yesterday” in a Korean karaoke café in the Uzbek desert; conducting an interview in Czech with the Chief of Police in the African nation of Guinea-Conakry; and being screened for foot-and-mouth disease on a remote highway on Mindanao Island in the Philippines.
Cizek received a degree in anthropology from McGill University. Her work has appeared in print, TV, radio as well as New Media. She has produced and directed for CBC-radio and CBC-television, and her writing has been published in Walrus Magazine, THIS Magazine, Video For Change (a book published by Pluto Press in the U.K.), a textbook on film by McGraw-Hill in the USA , and a book on film in Germany. She also lectures widely. Cizek is both Czech and Canadian, and currently lives in Toronto.
Gerry Flahive, Producer
In his 25 years with the National Film Board of Canada, Gerry Flahive has distinguished himself in various capacities, most recently as producer of some of its most successful documentaries, including Just Watch Me: Trudeau and the ’70s Generation. This spirited account of Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s influence on a generation of Canadians was a critical and popular success, winning a Genie for Best Feature Documentary, and the Best First Feature Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, Onstage, Offstage: Inside the Stratford Festival (a look behind the scenes at one of the world’s greatest Shakespearean theatre companies), McLuhan’s Wake (a study of the great Canadian thinker), It’s A Girl’s World (a look at social bullying amongst girls), This Beggar’s Description, (about Montreal poet Phil Tetrault), The Bicycle (about an innovative approach to fighting AIDS in Africa) and House Calls (a Toronto doctor and portrait photographer and his relationship with three elderly, housebound patients.
Forthcoming films include a series based on the award-winning book Paris 1919, and The Dark Years, a three-part animated history of the Great Depression in Canada.
A humorist and writer on documentary filmmaking, Flahive has been published in Time, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, Montage, P.O.V., Playback, Take One, and The Toronto Star, and is a frequent contributor to The Globe and Mail.
Heather Frise, Associate Producer
Heather Frise has shot, directed, and edited more than 10 films and videos, including the Genie Award-winning Bones of the Forest (co-directed with Velcrow Ripper). Her subsequent documentary, Open Season won a Silver Spire at the Golden Gate Awards. In addition to her issue-based documentary practice, Frise makes experimental films and videos. She has worked extensively as a freelance editor, director and director of photography. She is one of the founding members of the Access to Media Education Society, where she has worked for more than 10 years with a broad range of marginalized communities as a video instructor, mentor and project director. Frise has taught at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and most recently at Toronto’s Ontario College of Art and Design OCAD).
Dawn Wilkinson, Associate Producer
Montreal born Dawn Wilkinson is a graduate of The University of Toronto Women’s Studies & African Studies Programmes and The Norman Jewsion Canadian Film Centre Director’s Lab and Short Dramatic Film Program. Wilkinson has directed music videos and four short films including Girls Who Say Yes (00), Instant Dread (98) and Dandelions (95). She was the apprentice to Norman Jewison on The Hurricane and to Ernest Dickerson on Showtime’s Our America. Wilkinson’s first feature film Devotion (05) won The Tony Stoltz Completion Award at the 2004 Reel World Film Festival;The Star! Audience Award at the 2005 Reel World Film Festival; and Best Feature at the San Francisco Urban Kids Film Festival. Devotion (05) recently had its US TV Premiere on Global Cinema TV, produced by Lead Dog Entertainment for the Black Family Channel and Colours TV. Wilkinson has taught film and video production workshops for the Toronto Film School, the NFB/United Way Action For Neighbourhood Change Summer Video Project, and the Toronto International Film Festival for Children’s Special Delivery Program. She recently wrote and produced a segment for BET’s HIV Testing Day Show.
Branden Bratuhin, Technical Co-ordinator
A former senior video editor of a national TV series and once an NFB student intern, Branden is now the Technical Coordinator for the NFB Ontario Centre. With his wide range of professional experience in editing, producing and directing short films, Branden enjoys the challenge presented by the various NFB Filmmaker-In-Residence projects: determining how to utilize new media for the purposes of outreach.
Silva Basmajian, Executive Producer.
Since 1976, Silva Basmajian’s more than 60 NFB films have garnered numerous awards, with many premiering at more than 200 international festivals including Berlin, Toronto and Sundance. As Executive Producer of the NFB Ontario Centre, Ms. Basmajian oversees English-language production in the province, fostering partnerships among broadcasters and other industry leaders. She works with established filmmakers and cultivates new and emerging talent while championing social issue documentaries. Since her appointment in 2004, she has explored innovative ways to tell Canadian and international stories. Her initiative to create short films downloadable onto cell phones has received international attention and she is currently in development with the Canadian Film Centre to create what may be Canada’s first interactive drama.