Face2Face with David Peck

Ajay Parasram and I talked about redemption songs and protest music, solidarity as a verb, inspiration, cosmopolitanism, Bob Marley and why some of the best activists are in the hard sciences.

Biography

Ajay Parasram is a transnational, multi-generational by-product of British empire living and working in K’jipuktuk, unceded Mi’kma’qi.

He is Assistant Professor in the departments of International Development Studies and History at Dalhousie University, where he researches and teaches on the broad significance of the colonial encounter and the colonial present, as well as a third year course in International Development Activism.

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Image Copyright: Ajay Parasram. Used with permission.

For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit my site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cameron Mullenneaux and David Peck talk about her brave and brilliant new film Exit Music, regrets and imagination, living and dying well, short-term goals and being guided by love.

Synopsis

Exit Music is a documentary film that travels the intimate and complex path of terminal illness. Ethan Rice was born with cystic fibrosis, an incurable genetic illness that eventually leads to respiratory failure. At their home in a small upstate New York community, Ethan and his family live in constant uncertainty as the disease takes more and more away from them. While medical interventions continue to keep him alive well beyond his prognosis, 28-year-old Ethan questions day-by-day how long he is willing to fight and what his absence will mean to those he leaves behind.

With stunning access, the film closely follows Ethan’s final months, weeks, days and hours and is witness to death’s transformative influence on a family. Home video footage traces the bond between Ethan and his father Ed, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD who withdrew from the world to become a stay-at-home dad. Ed immersed Ethan in a world of art, creativity, and imagination and documented it all on camera, a hobby that provided relief from the fear of his son's prognosis and his own painful past. These archives show the progression of Ethan’s illness over time and reveal Ed’s obsession with preserving his son’s memory. Even during his final days with Ethan, Ed had a camera in hand.

Interweaving home movies with Ethan’s original music and animation, his story is an unflinching meditation on mortality and invites the viewer to experience Ethan’s transition from reality to memory. In a culture that often looks away from death, Exit Music demystifies the dying process, a universal cornerstone of the human experience.

Biography

Cameron Mullenneaux is an independent filmmaker based in San Francisco. Her directorial debut, Exit Music (formerly How Do You Feel About Dying) is a co-production with ITVS and received additional support from LEF Foundation, The Visual Storytelling Consortium, Independent Filmmakers Project, and the San Francisco Film Society.

She directed and produced the short film Angelique for Conde Nast’s digital Glamour brand. She has an MFA in documentary film production from Wake Forest University and a self-designed major in death and dying from Warren Wilson College.

For more info about the film head here.

Image Copyright: Cameron Mullenneaux. Used with permission.

For more information about his podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Margarita Cadenas and David Peck talk about her new film Women of the Venezuelan Chaos, truth and justice, human rights abuses, food shortages and why we must speak truth to power.

Synopsis

Five Venezuelan women, from different backgrounds and generations, draw a portrait of their collapsing country that faces a significant social, economic, power, and political crisis in its 200-year history. 

Their lives and testimonies speak of the urgency in which the locals are plunged into. Each of them lets us inside of their lives as they face critical food and medicine shortages, rampant injustice, and widespread criminality.

Their stories are a part of what’s currently going on inside Venezuela.

Watch the trailer here.

Biography

Margarita Cadenas is a screenwriter, director and producer of French-Venezuelan nationality based in Paris, France. 

Before becoming a director, Margarita Cadenas produced numerous French commercials around the world and worked as a co-writer and producer for French television.

Learn more about the film here.

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Image Copyright: Margarita Cadenas. Used with permission.

For more information about my podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Velcrow Ripper, Nova Ami and David Peck talk about the myth of Proteus, cynicism, grieving loss, submersive art, futurelessness and what wise and radical hope really looks like.

Synopsis

A poem for the planet, Nova Ami and Velcow Ripper’s film Metamorphosis takes the pulse of our Earth and bears witness to a moment of profound change: the loss of one world, and the birth of another.

Metamorphosis captures the true scale of the global environmental crisis. Forest fires consume communities, species vanish, and entire ecosystems collapse. Economic growth, tied to increased speed of resource extraction, has created a machine with the capacity to destroy all life.

But this crisis is also an opportunity for transformation.

Through a tidal flow of stunning images, Metamorphosis carves a path from the present to the future, and offers a bold new vision for humanity and the world.

In Milan, architects design vertical forests, urban towers covered with trees and bushes that reduce CO2, produce oxygen, and give new life to the city. In Phoenix, Arizona, swimming pools are repurposed into self-sustaining gardens, lush with plants and fish that generate food for people. In LA, installing solar panels in underserved neighbourhoods provides cleaner energy to families who normally would not be able to access it.

Woven through these and other stories of creativity and reinvention from artists, scientists, thinkers, and young children are creative, systemic solutions for our planet, and for our communities as well.

From the deep ecologic connection that humans share with each other, a radical form of hope emerges, vibrant and alive, like a chrysalis splitting open to reveal some new thing ready to take flight. Metamorphosis cinematically delves into how humanity is being transformed in new ways by the environmental crises we have created.

Watch the trailer here.

Biography

Nova Ami creates socially relevant, thought-provoking films that inspire, educate, and empower. Her work has screened at international festivals including Hot Docs and IDFA, and has been broadcast on BBC, CBC, CTV, Super Channel, Vision TV, and SBS Australia. She directed the documentaries Say I Do (CTV, Vision TV), Secrets (CBC’s The Passionate Eye), and Peacing it Together (Red Storm Productions), and was a producer on Occupy Love (Super Channel, Free Speech TV) and Army of One (BBC, CBC, SBS Australia). She was host, director, and writer on the technology and innovation television series The Leading Edge (Knowledge Network), and was host and segment producer of GVTV, a series about urban issues in Vancouver. She has a master’s degree in Media Studies from the New School.

Velcrow Ripper creates powerful, cinematic feature documentaries that deal with the central issues of our times. His epic “Fierce Light Trilogy” began with Scared Sacred, winner of the 2005 Genie Award for best feature documentary, continued with 2008’s award-winning Fierce Light and concluded with Occupy Love (2013). His first feature-length documentary, Bones of the Forest (1995, co-directed with Heather Frise) won nine awards, including Best of the Festival at Hot Docs and the 1996 Genie for best feature doc. He is well known for his award-winning sound design of such films as The Corporation (Best Sound, Leo Awards) and A Place Called Chiapas (Best Sound, Hot Docs, Leo Awards). 

Metamorphosis is his sixth feature film.  

For more info visit his site here.

Image Copyright: NFB, Velcrow Ripper and Nova Ami. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mor Loushy, Daniel Sivan and David Peck talk about The Oslo Diaries, secret meetings, common languages, enemies as friends, land disputes and what we’re leaving behind for our children.

Synopsis

In 1992, with Israeli-Palestinian relations at an all-time low and any communication punishable with jail time, a small group of Israelis and Palestinians gathered in Oslo – secretly and against the law. Although the meetings that came to be known as The Oslo Accords changed the Middle East forever, they were never officially sanctioned and were chronicled only by the negotiators' diaries.

In The Oslo Diaries, directors Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan (Censored Voices, Sundance 2015) bring us a riveting account of 1100 days of secret talks as told by the people who were there at the table.  The participants’ detailed and often emotional entries recount the political intrigue, fiery rhetoric, unlikely friendships, and overwhelming desire for peace that were the heart of the negotiations.

Featuring never-before-seen footage and exclusive interviews with key players - including the last on-camera conversation with former Israeli president Shimon Peres - the film recounts a geopolitical story, with a narrative voice that is personal and philosophical. Although politics ultimately doomed The Oslo Accords, the story’s end for the people of Israel and Palestine remains unwritten.

Watch the trailer here.

Biography

Mor Loushy is an award-winning Israeli director. Her debut film, Israel Ltd (2009), premiered at IDFA and was broadcast worldwide. Her latest documentary, Censored Voices (2015), won an Ophir Award for best documentary. Censored Voices premiered at Sundance Film Festival and screened at BFI London and IDFA and released theatrically worldwide.

Daniel Sivan is an award-winning Israeli director/producer known for his critical social-political documentaries. His works include Censored Voices (Sundance, Berlinale, BFI), Offside (Tribeca, IDFA), and The Patriot. He recently edited Death in the Terminal (executive produced by Mark Boal and Megan Ellison)—winner of an Ophir Award and a Hot Docs best mid-length documentary award.

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Image Copyright: Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck's podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matthew Shoycet, Ricki Gurwitz and David Peck talk about their new film The Accountant of Auschwitz, guilt, complicity, brainwashing and where one draws moral versus legal lines.

Synopsis

In the sleepy town of Luneberg, Germany, most days are quiet and uneventful. But one morning in September 2014, a 93 year-old man was charged with accessory to murder...of 300,000 people.

Seventy years earlier, Oskar Gröning was an accountant at Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp where more than 1 million people were murdered by the Nazis. As men, women and children spilled out from overcrowded trains, Gröning’s job was to catalogue their valuables – belongings, he said, “they no longer needed”.

After the war, Germany had little interest in prosecuting its own and the vast majority of perpetrators went unpunished. With a shift in legal thinking, Germany is now using a wider net to go after SS guards, complicit cogs in Hitler’s killing machine. But by now, most have either died or are too sick to face prosecution. Oskar Gröning, however, is alive and healthy and deemed fit to stand trial.

The Accountant of Auschwitz is a compelling look at the race against time to prosecute the last living Nazi war criminals. The film features interviews with key players from the post-war trials and with Auschwitz survivors, sent to the camp as children, who testified at Gröning’s trial. As we witness this final chapter of the Nazi war trials, The Accountant of Auschwitz asks if it’s too little, too late or if it sends a powerful message to future generations. Is Oskar Gröning an accomplice to the biggest mass murder in history, or is Germany going after him to make up for the mistakes of its past?

Biography

Matthew Shoychet is a Toronto-based filmmaker.  He has worked in the narrative and documentary world of short films for many years.  As a co-founder of the production company Shoy Pictures, he has been able to explore various genres and projects in storytelling, advertising, charity work, and most recently Holocaust education. He is a graduate of York University's Film Production BFA, as well as Sheridan College's post-graduate in Advanced Television and Film.  

In 2013, he worked with acclaimed Canadian director Bruce McDonald on the video instalments for the musical concert Tumbling Into Light,  by The Flying Bulgars.  Shorts directed by Matthew include, Red Ether, (2011), Faker Chaser, (2012), Patrick: Evil Awakens, (2014) and Anne Frank: 70 Years Later, (2015). His newest project, The Accountant of Auschwitz, is his feature film debut. 

Ricki Gurwitz is a former producer at CTV News Channel. She started her career in New York, where she was a producer at WABC News Talk Radio. She moved back to Toronto in 2009 where she took over the production of the The Bill Carroll Show and The Jerry Agar Show on Newstalk 1010.

In 2011, Ricki made the switch to television, joining CTV News Channel as a segment and associate producer, working with reporters in the field to package news stories, and in the newsroom to cover the headlines of the day.

In 2015 Ricki left CTV to produce The Accountant of Auschwitz, her first feature documentary.

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Image Copyright: Matthew Shoycet and Ricki Gurwitz. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck's podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julie Eng, Daniel Zuckerbot and David Peck talk about their new film The Science of Magic, change blindness, assumptions, subverting reality, free will, doubt and the problems of perception.

Synopsis

Magic has become the latest investigative tool for scientists exploring human cognition, neurobiology, and behaviour. Across Canada, the US and Europe, our film follows researchers who are bringing magicians’ tricks into the laboratory.  With impossible magic, amazing facts, and opportunities for viewers to participate in the magic, this extraordinary exploration peeks behind the curtain into a fascinating world where ancient magic meets modern science. 

Canadian magician and executive director of the arts organization Magicana, Julie Eng not only mystifies us with magic, she also takes us to Montreal’s McGill University to meet Jay Olson. He is one of the scientists spearheading this novel and powerful approach to experimental psychology.  On the streets of Montreal Julie and Jay use card tricks to help us understand how magic can be used to explore human consciousness. But these simple tricks have given way to more elaborate experiments.

We join Jay at the Montreal Neurological Institute for an extraordinary demonstration involving an MRI machine that can apparently not only read minds but can even use its electromagnetic fields to manipulate your most private thoughts. 

Watch the trailer here.

Biography

Julie Eng is best described as a charming and enchanting performer who is passionate about her craft.

Both her peers and her clients consider this award-winning magicienne one of the up-and-coming performers of her generation. Her interest in magic began early; raised in a family of magicians, she has been a stage performer since she was a child. As she earned her Commerce degree, Julie’s true love for the unique art of magic blossomed into a career. And now, for over three decades, Julie has brought her magical expertise to thousands of private functions, festivals, conventions and special events around the globe.

Julie is also the executive director of Magicana – an arts organization and registered charity dedicated to the study, exploration and advancement of magic as a performing art. Inside of her work with Magicana, Julie is one of the founding organizers for two unique community outreach programs, My Magic Hands and Senior Sorcery. Julie was also a part of another one of Magicana’s productions, a theatrical show, Piff Paff Poof which was designed specifically to introduce the experience of the theatre to young families.

Over the years, Julie has developed a refreshing and distinctive style – a mix of elegance, surprise and humour – that has made her a popular entertainment choice. Whether on stage or mingling with her audience, Julie’s magic is distinguished by her dexterous skill, confident presentation and professional manner. Julie has also received accolades from her fellow magicians, who have invited her to perform at magic conventions across North America. She has been featured in, MAGIC, Genii and The Linking Ring, internationally distributed trade magazine.

Julie’s energetic performances are well suited to a multitude of venues: corporate receptions, trade shows and product launches, hospitality suites, conventions and client appreciation and development events. Julie’s style, charm and repertoire have consistently garnered high praise from her clients, including some of the largest and most creative companies in Canada and the United States.

Daniel Zuckerbort’s first experience in the Canadian film industry was in 1974 when, while studying history of science, religion and philosophy at the University of Waterloo, he got a summer job as a researcher for a documentary. Though only 20 at the time this was far from his earliest foray into the Canadian art scene. At the age of 15 he began working as an assistant in the technical crew at Theatre Passe Muraille. This was in 1969 and Passe Muraille was the centre of avante garde theatre.

In recent years Daniel’s specifically theatre related work has been limited to directing actors in some of his productions as well as having made a number of documentaries about performers. A working magician himself for some years, he taught magic privately and for the Toronto Board of Education. He is also one of the founding board member of Magicana a registered charity dedicated to the exploration of magic as a performing art and to increasing the public’s understanding and appreciation of this art. For more information see www.magicana.com

From the early 80s, through much of the 90s he was also involved managing the organization and activities of large groups of volunteers. These activities included helping organize neighborhood newspapers in Canada and abroad (including England, Scotland, Iceland, and Jamaica). Daniel is fluent in Spanish. His interests in the history of technology have come to a happy meeting in his current experiments in textile production, dye chemistry and casting metal (copper, bronze, brass, and iron) using kilns and crucibles that he has built himself.

His creative endeavors are not limited to film or the forge. He is a writer in a range of genres and one of his short writings was published in the Spring 2011 edition of the literary journal Descant.

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Image Copyright: Julie Eng and Daniel Zuckerbot and Reel Time Images. Used with permission.

For more information about his podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brian McLaren and David Peck talk about his new book The Great Spiritual Migration, framing stories, confirmation bias, difference as assets, patriarchy as a weapon, a system of beliefs versus a way of life and the way of love.

Biography

Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. A former college English teacher and pastor, he is a passionate advocate for a new kind of Christianity – just, generous, and working with people of all faiths for the common good. He is an Auburn Senior Fellow and a leader in the Convergence Network, through which he is developing an innovative training/mentoring program for pastors, church planters, and lay leaders called Convergence Leadership Project. 

From 1978 to 1986, McLaren taught college English in the DC area, and in 1982, he helped form Cedar Ridge Community Church, an innovative, nondenominational church.

He is primarily known as a thinker and writer. His first book, The Church on the Other Side: Doing Ministry in the Postmodern Matrix, (Zondervan, 1998, rev. ed. 2000) has been recognized as a primary portal into the current conversation about ministry in a postmodern context. His second book, Finding Faith (Zondervan, 1999), is a contemporary apologetic, written for thoughtful seekers and skeptics. (It was later re-released as two short books, “A Search for What Makes Sense” and “A Search for What is Real.”) “More Ready Than You Realize” (Zondervan, 2002) presents a refreshing approach to spiritual friendship. “Adventures in Missing the Point” (coauthored with Dr. Anthony Campolo, Zondervan, 2003) explores theological reform in a postmodern context. “A Generous Orthodoxy” (Zondervan, 2004), is a personal confession and has been called a “manifesto of the emerging church conversation.

His first work of teaching fiction, A New Kind of Christian, won Christianity Today’s Award of Merit in 2002, and has become one of the pivotal texts for what is increasingly called Emergence Christianity. His 2016 release, The Great Spiritual Migration, has been hailed as his most important work to date. A frequent guest on television, radio, and news media programs, he has appeared on All Things Considered, Larry King Live, Nightline, On Being, and Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. His work has also been covered in Time, New York Times, Christianity Today, Christian Century, the Washington Post, Huffington Post, CNN.com, and many other print and online media.

Brian is married to Grace, and they have four adult children and five grandchildren. His personal interests include wildlife and ecology, fly fishing and kayaking, music and song writing, and literature.

Image Copyright: Hannah Davis and Brian McLaren. Used with permission.

For more information about his podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elizabeth Mirzaei and David Peck talk about her new film Laila At The Bridge, opium production in Afghanistan, freedom and oppression, bravery, corruption and persistence, corruption, systemic misogyny and the love of a Mother. 

Synopsis

In a country offering almost no treatment services despite a crisis of addiction, Laila Haidari took the highly unusual decision to found her own pioneering addiction treatment center and a restaurant where all of the waiters are recovering heroin addicts. Her brother Hakim, a solidly recovered addict, runs her free treatment center, which offers services for both men and women. As a former child bride she has known hardship in her 40 years. And she revisits that misery regularly as she mingles with drug-addicts, huddled under a Kabul bridge.

She encounters corpses. And she meets the near-dead, malnourished and sick who she tries to convince to accompany her to Mother Camp. “When I listen to their pain, I forget my own,” says Laila, who has struggled to provide sanctuary for heroin addicts in the world’s largest opium-producing country. Since she began her work, Laila has treated more than 2,000 people at her free center and has paid a high personal price for these successes. Her three children still live in Iran, where she grew up as a refugee during Afghanistan's Taliban rule. She has been separated from them for 10 years.

Due to the danger inherent in her work at the center, Laila cannot bring her children to join her in Afghanistan. As foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan and international aid dries up, Laila struggles to prevail over a crisis of addiction and a corrupt government in a country on the verge of collapse.

Laila at the Bridge is a deeply personal perspective on the global addiction epidemic in Afghanistan. The film follows the labor of love of one woman fighting to keep her center alive in the face of physical threats, governmental opposition and the departure of the international community from Afghanistan.

Watch the trailer here.

Biography

Elizabeth Mirzaei, Director and DP, was previously a teacher for blind students, the editor of a newspaper on a Russian island, and the manager of an expat bar in Kabul.

In 2011, she and her husband Gulistan Mirzaei began co-directing short documentaries for Al Jazeera’s award winning Witness strand. Elizabeth was a director and cinematographer on the BBC’s THE KILLING OF FARKHUNDA, which was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award, and a cinematographer on the Emmy-nominated WHAT TOMORROW BRINGS.

Her short films have also been shown before world leaders at the Oslo Conference on Women’s Rights and she worked with the Tiziano Project to teach filmmaking to students in a Kabul high school. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

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Image Copyright: Elizabeth Mirzaei and Intuitive Pictures. Used with permission.

For more information about his podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pablo Bryant, Fish and David Peck talk about their new film Cartooning from the Deep End, politics and power, personal responsibility, why life is precious and asking good questions and living in a sell out culture.

Synopsis

In this feature documentary we discover the dangerously funny cartoonist Mr. Fish, struggling to make a living in an industry that is dying out. In a world where consumerism is king, and opportunities are few, will this uncensored artist find a way to sell his art, or be forced to sell himself out?

Mr. Fish has been published in the LA weekly, Harpers, the Village Voice, The Nation and truthdig.com, as well as having his first book GO FISH published through Akashic press. F.X Feeney says, “He places you in the contradiction….He is a poet who’s operating with a cartoonists pen, and with a satirist’s goal of making you see further.”

This intimate documentary follows the artist as he struggles to stay true to his creativity in a world where biting satiric humour has an ever-diminishing commercial value.

Undeterred, Mr. Fish meets his plight head-on and with an abundance of creative energy. In the course of the film he curates a show and produces a book on the history of the art form, develops an animation series, and stages a gallery show of new original fine art. But the demands of raising a family overtake his freelance opportunities, and Mr. Fish is forced to make devastating choices. Ultimately CARTOONING FROM THE DEEP END is about the kinds of compromises a radical artist makes (or refuses to make) while trying to live in a traditional society.

Watch the trailer here.

Biography

Pablo Bryant has been the Director of Photography on four feature documentaries and has shot additional photography on many other projects, including HBO’s Cinema Verite’ , and the documentary The Vanishing of the Bees, narrated by Ellen Page. He filmed in India and Nepal for the National Film Board of Canada’s Tulku, which aired on CBC television, and finished shooting the documentary Crazy Wisdom in 2010.

In addition to his work as a cameraman he has produced, and directed a short documentary about the epidemic of homeless children in the US called Stand Up For Kids. He shot the DVD special features for MADMEN season 4 and 5, and finished shooting on When the Iron Bird Flies in 2012 and Began shooting on a feature documentary called Master Zhou in April 2013.

Learn more about Fish here.

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Image Copyright: Pablo Bryant. Used with permission.

For more information about his podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to producer Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.