There’s an ambitious docu-series on YouTube titled ‘This Far’. The 30 episode project features successful Canadian immigrants and first-generation Canadians. Each episode runs about 10 minutes long and offers an in-depth- yet not overbearing- gaze into the subject’s trials, tribulations and triumphs of living and growing in Canada. It’s the exquisite, personal story told in 30 unique ways. The chilled background beat along with quick cuts and colloquial graphics perhaps offers a hint as to who’s behind the series.

Alexander Gallimore is a 17-year-old Jamaican Canadian actor and writer with an impressive trajectory. Represented by Fountainhead Talent he’s already made appearances in both theatre and film roles. He co-founded the first Black Students Union at his high school and he sits on the Toronto International Film Festival Next Wave Committee. Recently, he was accepted to New York University Tisch School of the Arts to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama beginning in fall 2021. But this actor and budding filmmaker can’t wait until next year to start making movies, he has a story he needs to get…

Toronto-based filmmaker, Adrian Wallace, an award-winning director, screenwriter, and actor, has produced a documentary titled “Black Sun” that tells the story of two women anguished by acts of gun violence, and how they used their experiences to take a personal stand to help their affected communities. In addition to this film, Adrian is also developing his second documentary. It’s the second season of his YouTube series “Courtside”, which was his debut feature, as well as an upcoming TV show. I caught up with the busy thespian in Black History Month.

“Utopia Falls, I call it my love letter to hip hop, to the hip hop culture. It takes a couple of my loves and smashes them together which is always a good thing. I’m kind of a sci-fi geek. I’m a comic book geek. I’m a genre geek. I love all that kind of stuff with mythology built in and then we obviously have our mythology with hip hop. I hadn’t really seen my culture portrayed in the future.”

Romaine Waite is an actor to watch; no pun intended. His supporting role on popular CBC television drama Frankie Drake Mysteries is just another in a long list of achievements on his way to inevitable stardom. As “Bill Peters” his character is often called upon by “Frankie Drake,” a fictional depiction of the first female private detective in 1920’s Toronto. Frankie Drake solves crimes with her partner “Trudy” (Chantel Riley); Trudy also being Bill Peter’s love interest. The show is a hit and is coming back this year for a third season. No small feat for a diverse, Canadian, female-led…

Budgetary constraints have claimed another one. After 46 years on radio and television, the Royal Canadian Air Farce signs off with a farewell special on December 30, 2019. The show, known for political satire and comedic sketches, has managed to steer clear of controversy in its multi-decade run. Uniquely Canadian, eh. We had a chance to chat with Darryl Hinds, a Second City alum and ensemble member of the Air Farce since 2014. Hinds’s resume is littered with Canadian staples, such as Degrassi, The Beaverton, Murdoch Mysteries, Little Mosque on the Prairie, and The Ninth, situating him in a unique…

What happens when you tell a little white lie and it snowballs into a cascade of unraveled secrets? That’s the leitmotif of the first film produced by Crossfield House Productions -- “A Little White Lie” – which will have its world premiere in Toronto on November 29 at the Regent Theatre.

Given that so many places in southern Ontario played such a key role in Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad network, you’d think it would be a no-brainer for the newly released Harriet film to screen in a place like Chatham-Kent. A city where some of the first early Black settlers landed, that was once home to several thriving Black settlements and that now boasts three Black History museums. 

Since 2001, the ReelWorld Film Festival has been showcasing and connecting BIPOC (Black Indigenous People Of Colour) filmmakers as an antidote to the lack of diversity and representation in the film industry.

Jillian Danford’s unexpected path to social media stardom is almost unheard of. Danford was living a regular suburban life where she worked as a court registrar with Oshawa’s Superior Court of Justice. A co-worker suggested that she audition for The Shopping Channel where she landed a steady gig and figured she’d done pretty well for herself in the entertainment industry.

The CaribbeanTales International Film Festival (CTFF) kicked off this past Wednesday, September 4th, 2019 at the Royal Cinema in Toronto. Before the CTFF opening night, I had a chance to catch up with festival Co-Director Diana Webley. Webley shared what she is looking forward to this year at CTFF, and the growth of the festival over the fourteen years since it’s conception.

Black representation in film (and television) is making inroads in new ways this year. I’m not talking about the usual one dimensional tropes of blackness we’ve gotten used to being fed as “diversity” every award season. There are no affable butlers, matronly maids, or black characters in need of white saviours on anybody’s awards list this year.