Themes of resistance, freedom, and justice run through KDocsFF
Witnessing the power of documentaries to spur people to action, Janice Morris founded the KPU film festival on social justice
Janice Morris founded KDocsFF in 2014.
KDocsFF 2021 runs March 12 to 21 online.
WHEN JANICE MORRIS founded KDocsFF in 2014, the goal of the Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) film festival was to ignite student engagement through the power of documentaries. The fest centred on social justice is now about much more than screening thought-provoking films, raising awareness of global concerns, and creating dialogue, Morris says; among its goals is to help build solutions to some of the world’s most pressing human rights issues.
It all started with KPU’s 2012 screening of Miss Representation. The documentary about gender stereotypes looked at how the media pushes the agenda of girls’ and women’s value lying in their youth, beauty, and sexuality and not in leadership capacity, with boys learning that success is tied to dominance, power, and aggression. A town hall event accompanied the film, with students, faculty, staff, and the public taking part. Morris witnessed the power of documentary in the classroom setting and beyond.
“There’s a whole area of study around the power of the moving image,” Morris tells Stir. “When you take in something visually, especially when it is an issue of social justice or injustice, you can’t unsee it. There’s something about moving image in particular—the dynamism, maybe—that is not only provocative to us to our brains, our minds, our thought process, but it can touch your heart in a way that makes you feel something and moves you to action, especially in a classroom where a student, a learner, might be coming to a topic for the first time. That first impression of any issue, especially when you’re talking about our fellow humans and other living beings, can reach you through documentary in a way that is not like other media.
“Documentary activism, whereby filmmakers who are activists and use their artistry and creative output as their activism, is a modern and timely way to bring learners to topics that engage them,” says Morris, KPU English instructor in the faculty of academic and career advancement. “In this information-heavy, very fragmented, and very dense world of stimulation and overstimulation, documentary film is a catalyst, the spark, the jumping-off point that allows for a broader discussion….In this day of fake news and alternative facts, digital literacy and media literacy are as important as they’ve ever been.”
KDocsFF officially launched during the 2014 Vancouver International Film Festival. (The Vancouver International Film Centre/VIFF is its festival partner.) KDocsFF prides itself on bringing in compelling keynote speakers, hosting an hour-long discussion after every screening, and providing access to more information on any given topic covered in the films. (During non-pandemic times, there’s an exhibitor’s hall for audiences to peruse.) The festival also hosts year-round programs, typically free, on and off campus, and has a community outreach program headed by KPU film-studies specialist Greg Chan. (Going forward, Morris says, the two have dreams of forming the KDocs Institute for Documentary Activism.)
The 2021 festival is longer and larger than in years past, running for 10 days (rather than its usual four or five) with 15 films focusing on resistance, freedom, and justice.
It opens with a special presentation of And Then They Came for Us. Featuring George Takei, the film explores the forced incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans 78 years ago and follows Japanese American activists today speaking out against the Muslim registry and travel ban. Takei is a special guest at the screening, for a live Q&A with viewers; the keynote speaker is Diana Morita Cole. The author of Sideways: Memoir of a Misfit, Cole was born in Minidoka, an Idaho concentration camp, during World War II.
Also on the program is journalist Maria Ressa’s A Thousand Cuts, about the authoritarian regime of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte; Capital in the Twenty-first Century, based on the international bestseller by economist Thomas Piketty; Chão (Landless), which was filmed over a four-year period to accompany the Landless Workers Movement’s activism for land reform in Central Brazil; and Hong Kong Moments, which tells the stories of seven people who live in the centre of the protests.
iHuman follows pioneers at the frontline of the invisible AI revolution to see how this tech is developed and used; the feature-length Influence explores weaponized communication by investigating the rise and fall of Bell Pottinger, the world’s most notorious public relations and reputation management firm; Overseas, about modern servitude, travels to the Philippines, where women are deployed abroad to work as domestic workers or nannies, many leaving their own children behind. Sea of Shadows follows undercover investigators, environmentalists, journalists, and the Mexican Navy on a last-minute effort to rescue the vaquita—the Earth’s smallest whale—from extinction.
In The Great Green Wall, Malian singer Inna Modja tells a music-driven story about an African-led movement to grow an 8,000 km natural wonder of the world across the entire width of Africa. The Guardian of Memory is director Marcela Arteaga’s look at the experiences of Mexican migrants and the work of El Paso immigration lawyer Carlos Spector, who fights to obtain asylum for those fleeing the violence.
The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel is Joel Bakan and Jennifer Abbott’s follow-up to The Corporation, a look at so many companies’ sly rebranding as supposedly socially conscious entities. We Are the Radical Monarchs is about group of young girls of colour in Oakland on the frontlines of social justice.
Welcome to Chechnya by Academy award-nominated director David France follows a group of activists risking their lives to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ persecution in the Russian republic of Chechnya and exposes underreported atrocities. Wood, featuring Alexander von Bismarck (the Iron Chancellor's great-great-great-nephew), head of the Environmental Investigation Agency in Washington, exposes the devastating consequences of forest depletion.
Morris says the films were selected from a total of 500 that were up for consideration. The team looks for films that have an important story to tell, that represent voices from all over the world, that intersect, and that are big and small in terms of the resources behind them.
“People can expect community building and action when they come to a KDocs event,” Morris says. “It’s not uncommon for an audience member who’s involved in a certain issue to meet and get involved with a speaker on the stage. Projects and initiatives are born. It’s about creating the opportunities, creating the space, then letting the magic happen. Everything we do is the vehicle—the vehicle for creating community, dialogue, and activism.”
For more information, visit KDocsFF.
Related Articles
