AHA MEDIA is very proud to attend 5 Zeros – A screening of new video works by LifeSkills Collective at 7pm on Thurs March 11, 2010 in Pigeon Park, Vancouver Downtown Eastside (DTES)
AHA MEDIA congratulates the LifeSkills Collective for 5 Zeros – A screening of new video works!
TL Frederick
Ali Lohan
Quin Martins
April Smith
Juliet Van Vliet
and Christoph Runné & Allison Laing!
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AHA MEDIA is very proud to present at 5 Zeros – A screening of New Video Works in Pigeon Park on Thurs March 11, 2010
The 12 Days of Olympics (2010)
Digital Video, Colour, 8:39 minutes
The 12 Days of Olympics is a short video presented in two parts, both of which offer differing social reactions and unresolved political anxieties associated with poverty, community representation, and the 2010 Winter Olympic Games held in Vancouver, Canada.
Formulated around the familiar Christmas carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” this project anticipates and contextualizes urban-specific dilemmas that pose the greatest threat to some of the most vulnerable members in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Highlighting issues such as budget cuts, heightened security, seemingly never-ending road closures, corrupt Olympic games, and an “eternal” deficit, while also providing a balancing viewpoint of friendly sports competition and world – wide happy camaraderie that is both insightful and inspiring, this project – which was shot just a few months before the Winter Games – offers two competing and humorous perspectives associated with living in a city that is about to host the Winter Games.
To be sure, the Olympics are not designed for marginalized communities such as Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, but it is through their unrestrained opinions and curiously contagious enthusiasm that the viewer can acknowledge the inherent contradiction made obvious by the Olympic games themselves: despite attempts to unify the world, this large-scale event, by its very nature, has the reverse effect, because it excludes the majority of the population (most specifically, the poor) from its celebration.
April Smith is a Vancouver-based videographer and documentarian who lives and works in the Downtown Eastside. Through art, music, and community promotion, she is a self-taught advocate for social outreach and neighborhood unity. Using social media, new media, mobile technology, and video, she concentrates on sharing the stories and voices of an otherwise-silenced community with a global audience.
Co-founder of AHA MEDIA, her practice includes educational and political cartooning, facilitating social, new and mobile media literacy workshops, as well as recording subversive and situational observations of her own community. Most recently, her work was published in Megaphone Magazine.
Photo of April Smith by Simon Hayter
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Supercongrats! I have something booked then but I’ll see if I can make it.
Have you sent out facebook invites?