AHA Media

April Smith of AHA MEDIA  had the great exclusive opportunity to work  as a sound recordist with mentor Mo Simpson on her documentary on Design Nerds http://designnerds.ca  at W2 Community Media Art Gallery Space at 175 West Hastings in Vancouver Downtown Eastside

Below is a photo of Mo Simpson holding a Sennheiser Microphone unit

Recently, Sennheiser Sound Team toured W2 Community Media Arts Centre. Below is a closeup of Mo Simpson’s Sennheiser Microphone Unit

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Moira Simpson’s work as an award-winning freelance director, cinematographer and editor spans 30 years and encompasses many National Film Board, independent and television documentaries. Simpson has often combined filmmaking with teaching, giving workshops throughout BC as well as the Western Arctic, Newfoundland and Alberta. She has also taught at the University of British Columbia and the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. In 1995 Simpson was honoured for receiving one of the best student evaluations that year at the Institute. She currently gives workshops regularly and has mentored a number of developing filmmakers.

The subjects of Simpson’s documentaries range from Canada’s Political Economy, youth and drug addiction, the creation of a national women’s monument remembering the 14 women murdered in the Montreal Massacre, an international peacebuilding mission on the frontlines of war-ravaged Kosovo, to the complexities of offering aid to Africa.

Last fall Simpson returned from giving a joint NFB-UN Habitat workshop in Nairobi, Kenya with young media activists from Slum TV, Hot Sun and The Ghetto Club, three grassroots video groups in Nairobi’s vast slums that have become models of self-empowerment in a society besieged by political disillusionment. Called the “free media”, their work is being shown online and informally throughout communities, involving the Kenyan people in a debate over the future of their country and giving them nonviolent avenues of expression

Mo was recently DOP and location sound recordist on the National Film Board’s Finding Dawn on the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women across Canada. As filmmaker in residence with Fearless City Mobile and W2, she has been exploring the use of mobile phone video technology, including livestreaming, with residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

This spring Simpson was honoured with the Kodak Image Award of Excellence from Women in Film and Television. Over the next year she will be directing, shooting and editing stories for the National Film Board’s GDP, an interactive webdocumentary that will measure the human side of the Canadian economic crisis. Filmmakers and photo essayists across the country will give a voice to the men and women who through resilience and ingenuity have become “change makers” in their communities.

mosimpson@uniserve.com