Part two of a Four Part Series on Happiness, Buddhism and Living Well

Master Hun Khemra, Noem Chunny and Face2Face host David Peck had four conversations about meditative mindsets, Buddhism, the East meeting the West, kindness, peace, happiness and contentment and its impact on all cultures and about how to live well. This is part one.

Part 2 of a 4 Part Series

The Venerable Kassapa Hun Khamra, was drawn to the profound teachings of Buddhism at a young age when he embarked on a quest for spiritual understanding and enlightenment. His early years laid the groundwork for a life committed to the pursuit of inner peace and compassion.

The Venerable Kassapa Hun Khamra is not only a practitioner but also a compassionate teacher, sharing the transformative power of Vipassana meditation with sincerity and humility. Through workshops, retreats, and personal guidance, he extends the reach of Buddhist teachings, inspiring others to embark on their own paths of self discovery and inner awakening. He believes in the importance of extending a helping hand to those in need, embodying the spirit of Buddhist teachings in actions that alleviate suffering and promote well-being in the community.

Follow him on Facebook here.

Noem Chhunny has over ten years of experience in leadership, group dynamics, public speaking, training. He prides himself on providing relevant and interactive learning forums where participants feel both comfortable to share yet challenged to question their existing assumptions. He adds-value to participants’ learning by weaving personal wellness and balance into every training program he offers. He has led Vipassana retreats/mindfulness at International Meditation Center, Chiang Mai for years, and has travelled around South Asia to share the Buddha’s teaching on human development. He was the co-founder of Small World Cambodia, and a former Co-Director of Possibilities World a training company delivering Leadership Development and Management solutions.

Currently, he is a lead trainer at Impact Hub Phnom Penh. Founder and lead trainer at VIPASSA and co-author of a national bestselling book on meditation.

Learn more about his work here: www.vipassa.com

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Master Hun Khemra, Noem Chunny and Face2Face host David Peck had four conversations about meditative mindsets, Buddhism, the East meeting the West, kindness, peace, happiness and contentment and its impact on all cultures and about how to live well. This is part one.

Part 1 of a 4 Part Series

The Venerable Kassapa Hun Khamra, was drawn to the profound teachings of Buddhism at a young age when he embarked on a quest for spiritual understanding and enlightenment. His early years laid the groundwork for a life committed to the pursuit of inner peace and compassion.

The Venerable Kassapa Hun Khamra is not only a practitioner but also a compassionate teacher, sharing the transformative power of Vipassana meditation with sincerity and humility. Through workshops, retreats, and personal guidance, he extends the reach of Buddhist teachings, inspiring others to embark on their own paths of self discovery and inner awakening. He believes in the importance of extending a helping hand to those in need, embodying the spirit of Buddhist teachings in actions that alleviate suffering and promote well-being in the community.

Follow him on Facebook here.

Noem Chhunny has over ten years of experience in leadership, group dynamics, public speaking, training. He prides himself on providing relevant and interactive learning forums where participants feel both comfortable to share yet challenged to question their existing assumptions. He adds-value to participants’ learning by weaving personal wellness and balance into every training program he offers. He has led Vipassana retreats/mindfulness at International Meditation Center, Chiang Mai for years, and has travelled around South Asia to share the Buddha’s teaching on human development. He was the co-founder of Small World Cambodia, and a former Co-Director of Possibilities World a training company delivering Leadership Development and Management solutions.

Currently, he is a lead trainer at Impact Hub Phnom Penh. Founder and lead trainer at VIPASSA and co-author of a national bestselling book on meditation.

Learn more about his work here: www.vipassa.com

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Jo Brunini and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new book Never A Cloud,  empathy, listening, loss in a marriage, storytelling and self-correction, mystical

encounters, authenticity, and why fighting for your free space is so important.

For more info head here.

Blurb:

Never a Cloud charts the course of three women—Violet, Ava, and Margot— who find their way to a new understanding of home and family at Otyrburn, an estate in

rural Scotland. Violet Grey, a child of the sixties, writes from an island in Maine as the novel travels between Scotland, New York City, and Venice, Italy. Otyrburn

belongs to George Lowell and Margot Reid, who is the half-sister of Violet’s daughter, Ava. This is something Margot discovers only when Ava unexpectedly arrives.

George, a director at the Metropolitan Museum, finds himself under suspicion for illicit activity as Margot reconnects with her childhood sweetheart, who is helping

restore the worn-at-the-edges Regency manor, where secrets long forgotten, and those newly discovered, converge.

“The novel often feels like the film Gosford Park populated by readers of the London Review of Books... Brunini’s prose is often evocative...”

Kirkus Reviews

About Jo:

Jo Brunini’s paintings and poetry can be found at giovannabrunini.com.

Among her regrets are losing the handwritten letter from William Steig and not taking Tasha Tudor up on an invitation to tea.

Jo lives in Vermont with her family.

Image Copyright and Credit: Jo Brunini

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Mazarine Treyz and Face2Face host David Peck talk about the non-profit sector, relationship building, “staff and donor love”, cultures of mistakes, leadership and values, cognitive bias, authenticity and transparency, why it’s a great time to experiment.

Find out more about Wild Woman Fundraising.

About Mazarine:

Mazarine Treyz is the CEO of Wild Woman Fundraising, a national fundraising training company. Her organization trains people with online conferences, webinars, workshops, and 10+ e-courses.

Ms. Treyz has co-founded a non-profit and worked in increasingly responsible fundraising roles for 10 years. She’s trained over 16,000 people from 2011-2019 and helped nonprofits raise millions more.

She specializes in non-profit leadership, fundraising careers, writing fundraising plans, direct mail, e-newsletters, and copy for online fundraising.

Image Copyright and Credit: Joey Klein and William Woods Entertainment.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Joey Klein and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new film Castle In The Ground, the opioid crisis, addiction and empathy, vulnerability and bearing witness and about why we need to share the planet.

Trailer

Watch the film here in iTunes.

Synopsis:

Henry (Alex Wolff) is a devout caretaker of his chronically ill single mother (Neve Campbell). His girlfriend, and lone support system, is about to leave for college. His relatives and their obligatory condolences frustrate more than comfort. His only focus in life is to nurse his mother back to health; it is his only point of meaning; his obsession.

When his mother suddenly dies and with him feeling largely complicit, he is left grief stricken and without purpose. Overcome now with new grief and guilt, he falls into a world of addiction, abusing his mother’s left over stash of Oxycontin 80s.

The only person in his life that isn’t placating to his loss is his subversive new neighbour ANA (Imogen Poots), who’s across the hall and trying to kick her own habit just as Henry is developing his. As they form an unlikely friendship based in equal parts on drug dependency and commiseration, they become ensnared in a deadly situation involving a missing bag of drugs.

About Joey:

Joey Klein is a method-trained actor/filmmaker originally from Montreal. His first film The Other Half played the festival circuit in 2016 (SXSW/Los Cabos In Competition) before being theatrically released in Canada and the US. Castle In The Ground is his second film and the second instalment in a planned trilogy exploring grief, mental illness and addiction.

As an actor, recent/notable credits include: Through Black Spruce, We’re Still Together (ACTRA Award 2017, Prix Iris Nomination 2018), Girl In The White Coat (Prix Iris Nomination 2013), American Gangster, and What Keeps You Alive.

Image Copyright and Credit: Joey Klein and William Woods Entertainment.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

David O’Leary and Face2Face host David Peck talk about opportunity and impact investing, burn rates, cultural taboos, entrepreneurship, and why you need to hope for the best and plan for the worst.

More info here about Kind Wealth here.  

About David:

David O’Leary is Founder & Principal at Kind Wealth, a social enterprise dedicated to democratizing access to high-quality and unbiased financial advice for underserved Canadians.

Previously David was Managing Director of Origin Capital; the impact investing division of World Vision Canada. His team’s mission was to raise and deploy capital in ways that measurably improve the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people in the hardest to reach places. Prior to that, David was co-Founder of a financial advisory practice called Eden Valley Partners managing discretionary portfolios for High Net Worth Canadians. David spent the first 13 years of his career as Director of Manager Research with Morningstar; a global investment data & research provider.

David has a variety of experiences working with vulnerable groups. He has lived, worked, and volunteered in various countries and contexts throughout Africa. One of his proudest accomplishments is founding and running Grassroots Youth Development (providing education, nutrition, and physical exercise to vulnerable youth in Khayelitsha) while living in South Africa. David also took part in the Vision 2020 program run by Toronto Foundation; an effort to teach the next generation of philanthropists about the most pressing needs facing vulnerable communities in Toronto and how to do philanthropy well.

David is a frequent speaker at conferences and in the media (The Globe & Mail, The Toronto Star, BNN Bloomberg, CNBC Africa, etc). He holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Toronto, an MBA from the Rotman School of Business and the Chartered Financial Analyst and Qualified Associate Financial Planner® designations. David is currently working toward Certified Professional Impact Analyst designation and has completed the first two of three levels required.

Image Copyright and Credit: David O’Leary and Kind Wealth.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Richard, Dianne and Face2Face host David Peck talk about Influence, fake news, lies and untruth, oppression and power, information overload, moral arcs and the politics of spectacle.

Trailer

Get tickets at Hot Docs online.

And learn more about the film here.

Synopsis:

Influence is a profile of the morally slippery British reputation manager, Lord Timothy Bell. Born into a modest working class family, Bell climbed his way to the heights of global power, first spinning Margaret Thatcher into the “Iron Lady”, then working for the successors of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet; later branching out into France, Africa, Russia, the Middle East and elsewhere.

In 1998, Bell co-founded the legendary PR firm Bell Pottinger, which quickly earned a reputation for representing even the most unsavory characters, regardless of the circumstances. In tracking the particulars of Bell’s extraordinary life, the film examines the politicization of modern communication over the last 40 years—the winding journey from advertising to algorithms; television to Twitter.

Influence examines how Bell and his associates shaped and co-opted the very institutions on which our governance systems are premised, quietly entrenching one of the most sophisticated—and successful—business ventures of recent times: the weaponization of democracy.

About the Directors:

Richard Poplak is an award-winning author, journalist, and filmmaker. He has become one of the most widely read and controversial political journalists in South  Africa, editing at large for Daily Maverick.

Poplak has reported from over 30 developing countries for news outlets across the world, and he was part of a team that won the   prestigious Global Shining Light Award for investigative journalism.

Diana Neille is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker from Johannesburg, South Africa. A 2011 alumna of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Neille has subsequently co-founded two media startups with the intention of fostering long-form investigative storytelling and documentary filmmaking at a time when journalism is facing unprecedented challenges globally.

Image Copyright and Credit: StoryScope Productions and Richard Poplak and Dianne Neille. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Rodrigo Reyes and Face2Face host David Peck talk about 499, time travel, Colonialism, the importance of listening, trauma and systemic violence, the destruction of knowledge and the beauty of cinema.

Trailer

Get tickets here at Hot Docs online.

And learn more about the film here.

Synopsis:

The year 2021 marks the 500-year anniversary of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. To commemorate the historical occasion, director Rodrigo Reyes offers a bold, hybrid cinema experience, mixing non-fictional and narrative elements with components of a road movie.

Through the eyes of a ghostly conquistador, Reyes recreates Hernán Cortez’s epic journey from the coasts of Veracruz to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, the site of contemporary Mexico City.

As the anachronistic fictional character interacts with real victims and subjects of Mexico’s failed drug wars, the filmmaker portrays the country’s current humanitarian crisis as part of a brutal and unfinished colonial project, still in motion, 499 years later.

About Rodrigo:

Mexican-born American director Rodrigo Reyes has screened his award-winning work worldwide, at festivals such as Morelia International Film Festival, BFI London and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, garnering highly positive reviews in Variety and the New York Times.

Rodrigo has received significant support for his work from the Mexican Film Institute (IMCINE), Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute and more; his work has been featured on America ReFramed and Netflix.

He is a recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and the Creative Capital Award.

Image Copyright and Credit: LaMaroma Productions and Rodrigo Reyes. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Liz Marshall and Face2Face host David Peck talk about Meat the Future, big, urgent questions, the good food institute, our moral compass, solution focused stories and clean meat.

Trailer

More info here about Meat The Future here.

Stream it now on CBC Gem.

Synopsis:

With animal agriculture occupying roughly 45% of the world’s ice-free surface area, producing more greenhouse gases than cars, the prospect of meat consumption doubling by 2050 is a wake-up call for solutions. The future may lie with “clean meat,” also referred to as “cell-based,” and “cultivated” meat – a food science that grows real meat from animal cells, without slaughtering animals.

Meat the Future chronicles the birth of a revolutionary industry, and the mission to make it delicious, affordable and sustainable. Documented exclusively from 2016-2019, by award-winning filmmaker Liz Marshall (The Ghosts in Our Machine), the film follows pioneering food scientists who are risking everything to bring their product to supermarkets and restaurants in the near future.

This timely character-driven documentary focuses largely on former Mayo Clinic Cardiologist Dr. Uma Valeti, co-founder and CEO of American start-up company Memphis Meats. In 2016, Valeti and his team unveiled an $18K/lb meatball. At the forefront of the industry, Memphis Meats has attracted tens of millions of dollars in investment from billionaire influencers and corporate food giants. Their confidence is buoyed by the plummeting price of the product-in-progress.

There are salivating moments as well, as top-ranked chefs perform their magic on the meat-of-the-future.

Says director Marshall “The future of cell-based meat is unknown, but its revolutionary promise and journey into the world is a powerful story that I believe will stand the test of time.”

About Liz:

Liz Marshall is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker. Since the 1990s she has written, produced, directed, and filmed diverse international and socially conscious documentaries. Her work has been released theatrically, been broadcast globally, made available digitally, and has screened for hundreds of grassroots communities around the globe.

Marshall’s visionary feature-length films explore social justice and environmental themes driven by strong characters. The impact of Liz’s critically acclaimed documentary The Ghosts In Our Machine is reflected in an extensive global evaluation report funded by the Doc Society.

Marshall’s current feature documentary Meat The Future, chronicles the birth of the “clean” “cultured” “cell-based” meat industry in America through the eyes of pioneer Dr. Uma Valeti.

Previous titles include Midian Farm, Water On The Table, the HIV/AIDS trilogy for the Stephen Lewis Foundation, the War Child Canada/MuchMusic special Musicians in the Warzone, and the music documentary archive of folk-icon Ani DiFranco.

Image Copyright and Credit: Liz Marshall and Meat The Future Inc.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Tamara Dawit and Face2Face host David Peck talk about Finding Sally, Ethiopia, collective memory, history, imperialism, the red terror, cultures of silence and intergenerational conversations. 

Trailer

More info here about Finding Sally here.

Stream it now on CBC Gem.

Synopsis:

Finding Sally tells the incredible story of a 23-year-old woman from an upper-class family who became a communist rebel with the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party. Idealistic and in love, Sally got caught up in her country’s revolutionary fervour and landed on the military government’s most wanted list. She went underground and her family never saw her again.

Four decades after Sally’s disappearance, Tamara Dawit pieces together the mysterious life of her aunt Sally. She revisits the Ethiopian Revolution and the terrible massacre that followed, which resulted in nearly every Ethiopian family losing a loved one. Her quest leads her to question notions of belonging, personal convictions and political ideals at a time when Ethiopia is going through important political changes once again.

About Tamara:

Tamara Dawit is an Ethiopian-Canadian filmmaker based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where she runs a production company, Gobez Media. Tamara also manages the Creative Producers Training Program, which supports the development, training, and export of Ethiopian film and music content. She directed the short film, Grandma Knows Best and the feature documentary Finding Sally that will be released in 2020. She is currently producing the feature documentary Qeerroo and the feature drama the Last Tears of the Deceased. Tamara has experience producing documentary and digital content for CBC News, MTV, Radio-Canada, Discovery, NHK, and Al Jazeera among other networks.

She was in residency with Docs in Progress in Washington, D.C. in 2018 and the Talents Durban documentary lab in 2015. She is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and the Film Fatales.

Image Copyright and Credit: Catbird Films and Tamara Dawit.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Miranda Bailey and Face2Face host David Peck talk about changing the way we see content, CherryPicks, Gender imbalance, a new kind of film community, diversity, perspective and the female voice.

More info here about CherryPicks here.

CherryPicks is the place to find out what women are thinking about movies.

“At CherryPicks we believe the people who review films need to be as diverse as the people who watch them. We are the place to find out what women are thinking about movies. That’s why we highlight reviews and write original stories exclusively from female-identifying and non-binary writers, when most film critics are overwhelmingly male.

As women, we consume more than half the media in the world. And newsflash: we’ve also got opinions. That’s why we made CherryPicks. We create a unique score based on reviews from female-identifying and non-binary voices, so whether you’re looking for a night out, or a night on the couch, you know the opinions you trust come from women like you.”

About Miranda:

Miranda is a prolific producer, actor and director, known for producing high quality independent films. Her passion for bringing compelling, well-crafted stories to the screen has been the driving force in her distinguished 15-year career. 

Bailey has produced over 20 films, such as the Oscar-nominated The Squid and the Whale, and the Spirit Award-winning The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Swiss Army Man, released by A24 and the critically acclaimed Norman, released by Sony Pictures Classics.  

Bailey’s directorial narrative feature debut You Can Choose Your Family, premiered at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival. Bailey previously directed two documentaries: Greenlit and The Pathological Optimist.

Image Copyright and Credit: Amanda Edwards.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Brett Gaylor and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new film The Internet of Everything, advertising and activism, the digital arms race, the third industrial revolution and learning how to respond to a crisis.

Watch the film on CBC Gem now.

Synopsis:

The Internet is invading all aspects of our lives. No longer confined to computers or phones, the Internet is now in refrigerators, and toilets, and is the infrastructure of our cities. The future will either be a surveillance nightmare or an eco-utopia, the outcome determined by start-ups in Silicon Valley and Shenzhen.

The Internet of Everything directed by award-winning filmmaker Brett Gaylor is a documentary that examines the hype and hubris hurtling towards the next frontier in the Internet’s evolution. Using the never-ending list of devices we are told we want, the film provides a landscape for a broader discussion about whether the Internet has indeed been a democratizing force or, instead, a fertile ground for the formation of new empires.

Kristina is developing a device that transmits fertility data to the cloud from inside a woman’s private parts; Nellie Bowles, a journalist for the New York Times, introduces a survivor of domestic abuse who was terrorized by her partner’s “smart home.” China’s smart city vision reward citizens for behaviour conforming to social norms, as well as Alphabet’s vision for a corporate neighbourhood built “from the Internet up.” In Barcelona, we grasp a new potential for the Internet to allow for the copying of physical goods, turning the material world of atoms into digital bits that can be transmitted at zero cost anywhere on earth.

Best-selling author and economist Jeremy Rifkin proposes that these digital disruptions are the signifier of an industrial revolution, and that the Internet is as significant a development as railroads and the internal combustion engine.

“I’m a reformed techno-utopian who works in the tech industry and has spent a decade critiquing it,” says director Gaylor. “My previous documentaries, Rip! A Remix Manifesto and Do Not Track have mapped the public’s relationship with the Internet, first with fascination and then obsession, then growing discomfort around the abuse of our private information, and now a sense of confusion and dread.

“If the pace of change and lack of agency is confusing for a techie like me,” continues Gaylor, “everyone else is probably feeling bewildered, too. But now, with the connecting of the physical world into the “Internet of Things”, the stakes have been raised - it’s no longer just the abstractions of cyberspace that are spinning out of control, but instead our homes, our bodies and our cities that are being transformed.”

The Internet of Everything is a fast, funny and enlightening take on the bewildering change the Internet has wrought. It embraces the “techlash” while reflecting on the big picture of a world where we are all connected.

About Brett:

Brett’s brain is split between making technology and documentaries. For 10 years, he was part of the Mozilla Foundation’s senior management team. During this time he also produced media work documenting the Internet’s slide from democratic wonderland to dystopic surveillance market.

Do Not Track, his 6-part interactive documentary about privacy and the web economy, was the recipient of the International Documentary Association award for best nonfiction series, the Prix Gemaux for Best Interactive Series, the International Association of Broadcasters Online Factual Prize, the Deutscher Prize for online communications, the 2015 Sheffield Documentary Festival jury commendation, and the 2016 Peabody award.

OK, Google animated a year of his son Rowan’s accidental voice searches and received the 2019 Webby Award.

His 2008 feature Rip! A Remix Manifesto was the recipient of audience choice prizes at festivals from Amsterdam to South Africa, broadcast in 20 countries, and seen by millions of people worldwide on Netflix, Hulu and The Pirate Bay.

Image Copyright: Brett Gaylor and Eye Steel Films. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Anastasia Phillips and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new film Tammy’s Always Dying, mental health issues, perspective, vanity, therianthropy and winemaking and why she never judges a character.

Trailer

Synopsis:

On the 29th of every month, right when the welfare money runs out, Catherine talks her alcoholic mother Tammy off the ledge of the same bridge. This routine has gone on for so long that it’s the only thing Cathy feels she’s good at. And its Tammy’s selfish way of keeping hold of her daughter. But when Tammy is diagnosed with terminal cancer, suddenly she's not so sure she wants to die anymore.

Catherine has embraced failure. She works at the neighborhood dive bar and has terrible relationship with Reggie Seamus, the same idiot she's been with since high school. Except now he’s unhappily married with kids. The only positive force in Catherine's life is Doug, a semi-closeted friend of the family who has the unfortunate habit of always taking Tammy's side. With Tammy’s diagnosis, Catherine's responsibilities become completely overwhelming.

Then a chance meeting with Ilana, a glamorous, reality TV agent gives Catherine an alternative. She can sell her life story and experience 15 minutes of fame. She just has to wait for Tammy to die. But Tammy is responding well to treatment. The 29th comes and goes and…nothing.

Catherine is furious after an altercation with her still ferocious mother. She throws a suitcase into the back of her shit-box car and leaves for the city. To Ilana. To success. Finally, she'll get an audience for her tragedy. But Ilana isn't the hero Catherine anticipated; in fact, Ilana is a selfish drunk, which is exhaustingly familiar to Catherine.

When Doug suddenly dies of a heart attack, Catherine is completely devastated. She decides to go back home and do the only thing she's ever been good at: taking care of Tammy. But Tammy has come to terms with her mortality and wants to do right by her daughter.

And then it’s the 29th.

About Anastasia:

Anastasia Phillips was born and raised in Toronto. She received a B.F.A in Acting from the University of British Columbia, where she also studied Philosophy. 

Her professional acting career began with the title role in the Vancouver Art’s Club production The Diary of Anne Frank, for which she received a Dora nomination for Best Actress. From there, Phillips worked across the country in regional theatres, including the Citadel’s production of Equus, and the Vancouver premier of Morwyn Brebner’s The Optimists. She also toured with the Electric Theatre Company’s award winning production of Studies in Motion.

Phillips moved back to Toronto when she landed a lead role on the CBC series, M.V.P,. A number of television and film projects followed, including the notable feature Nonsense Revolution, which premiered at the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax. Recently, on the big screen, Phillips also starred in the dramatic thriller Incident In A Ghostland as a traumatized sister and daughter, for director Pascal Laugier; and as an over-protective young mother in Don’t Talk To Irene, for director Pat Mills.

Phillips has studied and performed improv at the Groundlings in LA, and has also trained in a circus, as well as with a Brazilian theater troupe. She was the voice of ‘Lo’ on the Fresh TV animated series Stoked.

Phillips gained further notoriety when she starred in an episode of Murdoch Mysteries, which garnered her a Gemini nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Guest Role. She later reprised that role on the series, at the request of the show’s creator. Additionally, one Phillips’s favorite roles was that of ‘Vera Burr’, the empowered lead on Bomb Girls, both the TV movie and the series, opposite Meg Tilly.

Image Copyright: JA Productions. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Nadine Pequeneza & Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new film Last of The Right Whales, conservation and general ocean health, hope, despair, joy and plankton, plant intelligence, cohabitation, community and grass roots movements.

Watch it on CBC and find out more information here about the film.

Blurb:

These gentle giants no longer die of natural causes. Instead, they are run over by ships or suffer lethal injuries from fishing gear. Over the past decade they’ve been dying at a rate of 24 per year. This staggering death toll is fueling a movement to save the first great whale to face extinction. Last of the Right Whales is the story of a disparate group of people - a wildlife photographer, a marine biologist, a whale rescuer, and a crab fisher - united in their cause to save the North Atlantic right whale. By joining forces these formidable allies are determined to stop the world’s first great whale extinction. The film combines the 4K cinematography of a blue-chip nature film with the character-driven, vérité storytelling of a high-stakes drama. With unprecedented access to film the migration of the North Atlantic right whale from their calving ground off the coast of Florida to their new feeding area in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, this feature documentary brings a message of hope about the most at-risk, great whale on the planet.

About Nadine:

Nadine Pequeneza is an award-winning Producer/Director specializing in character-driven films that offer unique access to stories about a wide range of topics from criminal justice to global finance, to wildlife conservation. With more than 15 years international experience her work has garnered worldwide recognition, including a Canadian Screen Award for Best Writing in a Documentary Program, nine CSA and Gemini nominations, Gold and Silver Hugos from the Chicago International Film Festival and a Silver Gavel Award honourable mention from the American Bar Association. Through her company HitPlay Productions Nadine produces, directs and writes feature documentaries: The Invisible Heart, Next of Kin, Road to Mercy, 15 to Life: Kenneth’s Story and Inside Disaster: Haiti. HitPlay’s broadcast and funding partners include CBC, SRC/RDI, PBS, ARTE, SWR, TVO, Knowledge Network, Canal D, Telefilm, Ontario Creates, NFB, Rogers Documentary Fund and the Bell Fund. Nadine is immediate past Chair of the Documentary Organization of Canada and a graduate of the Fledgling Foundation’s inaugural engagement lab. Her most recent work Last of the Right Whales is a story with far reaching implications about the endangered North Atlantic right whales.

Image Copyright and Credit: Hit Play Productions.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Ellen Toland and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new film Inside the Rain, living legends, mental illness, big goofy hearts, the resilience of artists and why sometimes people appear in our lives for only a season.

Trailer

Watch it on Apple TV, Prime, Google Play, Tubi and others…

And learn more about the film here.

Synopsis:

College film student Benjamin Glass (Aaron Fisher) has it all: ADHD, OCD, borderline personality. And he’s also bipolar. But Glass is more than his diagnoses – he prefers the term ‘recklessly extravagant’ -- and he’s determined to prove his genius. When a misunderstanding threatens to expel him from college, Glass pushes back; he plans on recreating the incident on video, with the help of a moonlighting sex worker (Ellen Toland), to clear his name. But how will he raise the money for the film, when his parents dismiss the scheme as another manic episode?

Inside the Rain is a wincingly funny rom-com-drama, anchored by off- kilter performances by co-stars Fisher and Toland. The colorful ensemble cast includes Rosie Perez as a tough love shrink, Eric Roberts as an unhinged film producer, and Catherine Curtin and Paul Schulze as the long-suffering parents. The ultimate underdog film and proof that if you believe in yourself, anything is possible.

About Ellen:

Inside the Rain marks Ellen Toland's debut as a female lead. A native Texan turned New Yorker, Ellen received her BFA in Acting from Pace University. She went on to train at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and has since continued to study with some of the top acting coaches/studios in the business. Ellen's passion for the craft, coupled by her beauty and ethereal essence, has presented her the opportunity to work on projects that live in worlds ranging from period pieces to new age millennial.

Ellen can currently be seen in supporting roles in Michael Engler's The Chaperone (in select theaters and now on PBS) and in Rachel Carey's Ask For Jane.

On the television side, Ellen can be seen as a series regular on Amazon's millennial cult limited series Doomsday. She also recently appeared as a guest star on CBS' Bull.

Image Copyright: Act 13 and Killer Films. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Daniel Stern and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new film James vs. His Future Self, sculpting, good conversation, staying focused, regret and living in the moment, and why there’s no ketchup in the future.

Trailer

Watch it on: Bell On Demand, Shaw and iTunes.

Synopsis:

When an uptight time-travelling obsessed young scientist is visited by his nihilistic future self, he's told that he needs to give up his dream of becoming the world's first time traveler, or else. But when he won't go along with the plan, it becomes a wicked battle of man versus himself - literally.

In James vs His Future Self, Jonas Chernick is James, a brilliant and obsessed particle physicist on the brink of inventing time travel who, in the process, has relegated the only two people who care about him to the sidelines. Daniel Stern is Jimmy, the future, time-travelling version of James, now angry, cynical and driven by regret and loss. Jimmy’s obsessed with righting the wrongs of his life by convincing his younger self to give up his obsession with time travel and to finally stop and smell the roses. Or else.

Directed by Jeremy LaLonde (Cinequest Best Comedy award-winner The Go-Getters, Slamdance hit and Canadian Film Fest award-winner How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town) and co-written by LaLonde and Chernick, James vs His Future Self is an existential twist on the time-traveller-arrives-to-save-the-future trope. An homage to the classic sci-fi rom-coms of the 80’s and 90’s, a la Back to the Future, James vs His Future Self is a rare Canadian indie film filled with raunchy humour, heartfelt romance, surprising twists and packed with noteworthy performances.

At the center are Chernick (currently co-starring on the Netflix/CBC hit comedy series Workin’ Moms, and star of the 2012 TIFF award-winner My Awkward Sexual Adventure) and Daniel Stern as his future self, giving the comeback performance of his career. Winner of the Jury Award for Best Supporting Actor at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, and nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, Stern (who also currently stars in the hit Hulu series Shrill) is hilarious, dangerous and surprisingly emotional as Jimmy, James’s determined future self.

Alongside Chernick and Stern are head-turning performances by three extraordinary actresses. James is affected by the gravitational pull of three fierce women in his life. His sister Meredith (Bitten’s Tommie-Amber Pirie) wants both of them to get over the death of their parents 15 years earlier and finally forge their own paths in the world. His best friend/soul mate Courtney (Cleopatra Coleman, from Netflix’s In The Shadow of the Moon and the Fox series Last Man On Earth) is a genius scientist in her own right, and is being courted by CERN to relocate to Switzerland and work on the Large Hadron Collider. This would remove her from James’s life, presumably forever. And Dr. Rowley (Joker & Six Feet Under’s Frances Conroy) is the metaphoric Devil on his shoulder, a lonely giant in the science world whose approval and acceptance could make James’s time-travel dreams a reality.

Is the future inevitable? Or can Jimmy change James’s course?

About Daniel:

Daniel Stern recently completed a major arc playing Aidy Bryant’s (SNL) father in the Hulu comedy series Shrill, produced by Lorne Michaels. Stern can also now be seen starring in Game Over Man! opposite Adam Devine, Anders Holm and Blake Anderson in the Kyle Newacheck-directed Netflix feature.

Stern appears on Judd Apatow’s Netflix series Love and previously co-starred in WGN’s Manhattan and feature films including Diner, It’s My Turn, Breaking Away, and the City Slickers and Home Alone franchises.

He’ll next be seen starring in the feature film Everything’s Peachy, which he adapted from of his own stage play, and which he’ll be directing in 2019.

Image Copyright: Northern Banner Releasing. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Dr. Mazen Kamen and Face2Face host David Peck talk about the complexity of the Brain, emotions, faith and grief, making good choices, chronic illness, the tip of the research iceberg and diseases that are no longer death sentences.

About the Foundation:

The Kamen Brain Tumor Foundation is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to improving the treatment and survival of children with glioma brain tumors through the funding of pediatric glioma brain tumor research. Our Scientific Advisory Board consists of leading experts in the field of pediatric glioma brain tumors who provide insight and guidance into the most promising research opportunities that examine causes as well as safer, more effective treatment options. Our objective is to cure children with glioma brain tumors.

The Kamen Brain Tumor Foundation was created with one mission, to cure brain tumors in children. Dr. Mazen Kamen began the foundation shortly after losing his 19 month old son to brain cancer. The Foundation provides funding for cutting edge research programs aimed at finding promising treatment for children with glioma brain tumors. One funded program utilizes brain cells from current glioma patients which are used to grow miniature three dimensional human brain like structures know as cerebral organoids. When mature, tumors are introduced to the organoids, allowing doctors to use experimental treatments on DNA identical replicas.

Among children ages 0-14, brain and central nervous system tumors are the leading cause of cancer-related deaths. There are about 28,000 children and teenagers living in the United States with primary brain or central nervous system tumors and an estimated 4,600 more children will be diagnosed each year. The high death toll reveals a need to quickly find more effective treatment options and a cure.

Learn more about the foundation here.

About Dr. Kamen:

Dr. Kamen, MD is a practicing Cardiologist (Heart Specialist) in New York, NY. Dr. Kamen graduated from New York University School of Medicine in 1983 and has been in practice for 36 years. He completed a residency at New York University. Dr. Kamen also specializes in Internal Medicine. Dr. Kamen accepts multiple insurance plans including Medicare. Dr. Kamen is board certified in Cardiovascular Disease.

Image Copyright: The Kamen Brain Tumor Foundation. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Jonathan Jakubowicz and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new film Resistance that stars Ed Harris, Jesse Eisenberg and Clémence Poésy. They talk about inspiration and why artists create, responsibility and pushing back, connecting with an audience, Marcel Marceau, the art of silence and making the invisible visible.

Trailer

Watch it on iTunes and Amazon Prime

Synopsis:

All Marcel Marceau (Jesse Eisenberg) wants is a life for the arts. Working at his father’s butcher shop during the day, the talented mime tries to make his dream come true on the city’s small stages and to win the affections of politically active Emma (Clémence Poésy).

To please her, Marcel agrees to join a dangerous mission that will change the course of his life forever: they want to save 123 Jewish orphans from the grasp of the German Nazis and the ruthless Obersturmführer of the SS Klaus Barbie (Matthias Schweighöfer) and take them across the border to Switzerland.

Together with Emma, Marcel joins the French resistance to stand firmly against the atrocities of World War II.

His art will prove the greatest weapon against the horrors of war.

About the Director:

Venezuela's most celebrated filmmaker and writer, whose film Secuestro Express was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the British Independent Film Awards and was a New York Times Critics Pick in 2005.

In 2005 Secuestro Express became Venezuela’s highest-grossing film, eclipsing such movies as Titanic and The Passion of the Christ. It became the first Venezuelan movie to be acquired by a major US distributor - Miramax.

Jonathan’s first film passion was Distance is a poignant short film about a woman's mysterious past unfolding during an unexpected trip to Holland in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. Distance screened at the World Film Festival of Montreal, New York Independent Film Festival and Palm Springs Short Film Festival, amongst others.

In addition, Jakubowicz wrote and directed, SHIPS OF HOPE, a documentary recounting the journey of refugee Jews on a ship fleeing the European Nazi Regime to Venezuela. It screened at the Director's Guild of America's Angelus Awards, and the Havana Film Festival. The documentary went on to win; Best Documentary at the Premios a la Calidad de Cenac (Venezulelan Oscars).

His second film, Hands of Stone about the relationship between Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán (played by Edgar Ramírez) and his trainer Ray Arcel (played by Robert De Niro) premiered in the Cannes Film Festival 2016 and was warmly received with a 15 minute standing ovation. It's the first Latin movie to have a simultaneous wide release in all of Latin America.

His latest film, Resistance, stars Academy Award nominated actors Jesse Eisenberg, Ed Harris, Clémence Poésy and Edgar Ramírez. The film was shot at the end of 2018 and it tells the story of how a group of Boys and Girls Scouts created a network that ended up saving ten thousand orphans during World War II. One of them went on to become the greatest mime of all time, Marcel Marceau.

Jakubowicz is Polish Jewish Descendant. Has a BA in Communications from the Universidad Central de Venezuela.

Image Copyright: Pantaleon films. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Teyama Alkamli and Andrew Moir and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film Hockey Mom, Syria, motherhood and refugees, new Canadians, survival jobs, and something called the newcomer kitchen .

Trailer

Watch it here.

Synopsis:

Hockey Mom is an intimate, character-driven film that follows a single Syrian mother and her young son rebuilding their life in Toronto with the support of Canada’s private refugee sponsorship program.

When the Syrian war tore her life apart, Fatma bravely seized the opportunity to build a new life for herself on her own terms. Twenty days after she arrived in Toronto from a refugee camp, Fatma fulfilled a years-long wish: she left her husband.

For the past two years, Fatma and her son, Majed, have been living with their sponsors on Vermont Avenue, a friendly street in Toronto. On the surface, their new life in Canada seems fine, but Majed hasn’t made friends and is routinely suspended from school for unruly behaviour. She decides that a change of address might be the solution to his problems. Determined to provide Majed with everything he needs, Fatma finds an apartment in a nearby suburb. But the move makes matters worse and Fatma encounters obstacles every step of the way.

Majed’s school suspensions continue, leaving Fatma with no time to look for a job. When the sponsors tell her that their financial support will soon run out, and with no job prospects in sight, she feels like a failure. Nowhere left to turn, Fatma digs deep to take ownership of her choices and finds the courage to face them.

HOCKEY MOM is more than just a story about a Syrian mother trying to make a new life with her son; it’s a story about a brave woman learning to trust herself.

About the Directors:

Teyama Alkamli was born in Aleppo and raised in Dubai, Teyama Alkamli is currently a proud Torontonian. Her visually tender and deeply human films deal predominantly with issues of identity, sexuality, displacement and migration. Alkamli’s short films have screened at festivals worldwide, including Doclisboa and FECIBogotá.

She is an alumna of DocNomads, the European Mobile Film School, Hot Docs Emerging Filmmaker Lab, and the Canadian Film Centre's Director Lab. Hockey Mom is her first mid-length documentary.

She is currently developing her narrative feature debut, My Name is Jala.

Andrew Moir’s documentaries leave you thinking long after watching them. The intricate maneuvers he manages while integrating himself into each subject's life, often spanning years, is remarkable.

Working with small crews or often alone, audiences have been truly touched by Andrew’s films. He has seen great success at film festivals where four of his short films premiered at Hot Docs Canadian Documentary Film Festival.

Other festivals who have featured his films include Sheffield Doc/Fest, AFI Fest, and DOC NYC. His production company, Hands Up Films, produces his docs and he is currently working on his first feature-length film, Bedside Bride, which will be released in 2020. 

Image Copyright: CBC. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Karim Sayad and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new and intimate film My English Cousin, the myth of Sisyphus, international relations, feeling at home and finding beauty in simple stories.

Trailer

Synopsis:

This keenly observed documentary by Karim Sayad follows the director's cousin, Fahed, who left Algeria for England in 2001 and, now, contemplates returning to his place of birth. In 2001, Fahed left Algeria for England, settling in, of all places, Grimsby. Nearly two decades later, after marrying, working two jobs to pay the bills, and picking up a distinct Northern English accent, Fahed decides he wants to go back to his place of birth. But while his address in Algeria has remained fixed, the concept of home, he soon finds, is far more fluid. Trapped between two countries, Fahed is also between two cultures: one he's worked to assimilate into and one he nostalgically longs for but can't, in reality, face.

Shot with a keen eye that observes the smallest of details, director Karim Sayad's documentary unfolds in textures. From Fahed's Ramadan preparations for his flatmates (in whose hands cans of beer are basically a constant fixture), to family members in Algeria questioning Fahed about his marriage plans, Sayad captures the loneliness that trails his real-life cousin no matter where he goes.

(With thanks to TIFF and Kiva Reardon)

About the Director:

Karim Sayad was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and holds a master's degree in international relations from Geneva's Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. He has directed the short film Babor Casanova. His debut feature documentary was Of Sheep and Men. 

My English Cousin is his latest film.

Image Copyright: Karim Sayad and Close Up Films. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Alanis Obomsawin and Face2Face host David Peck talk about reconciliation, leaving a legacy, Jordan’s Principles, passion, commitment, advocacy, fighting back and why every child matters.

Trailer

More Info Here

Synopsis:

It took one little boy, Jordan River Anderson, to ensure that thousands of First Nations and Inuit children can today receive the same standard of social, health and education services as the rest of the Canadian population. In Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger, Alanis Obomsawin’s latest film (her 52nd), the renowned documentary filmmaker chronicles the long legal fight against a health care system that operated on two disconnected levels, causing injustices and suffering—a situation that has since been significantly improved. The Abenaki filmmaker traces the parallels between the lives of two First Nations children, Jordan River Anderson and Noah Buffalo-Jackson.

A member of the Norway House Cree Nation of Manitoba, Jordan River Anderson had very serious health problems, for which he was being treated at a Winnipeg hospital. He could have ended his life in adapted housing close to his family, but because of his Indian status a dispute arose between the governments of Canada and Manitoba over who should pay the costs of his relocation to home-based care. Jordan died in hospital in 2005. Jordan’s Principle, which states that the first government agency to be contacted is the one responsible for this phase of a child’s care, was unanimously adopted by the House of Commons in 2007, and a ruling by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal resolved the issue of jurisdiction.

Many people and organizations worked hard for this outcome, but despite the judgment and the funding that was allocated for Jordan’s Principle, many First Nations and Inuit parents are still faced with a refusal of social, health and educational services. For example, when Carolyn Buffalo and Richard Jackson needed specialized transportation for their teenage son, Noah Buffalo-Jackson, who suffers from cerebral palsy, they had to pay for it themselves. Similarly, the First Nation of Wapakeka in Ontario appealed for assistance in combating a wave of suicides in their community, but received no help. “We hear a lot about universal health care in Canada,” says Aimée Craft, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who is interviewed in the film, “but why is it universal for everyone except First Nations children?”

Numerous binding government orders and the goodwill of several Canadian government officials, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, were required before First Nations and Inuit parents and children were finally able to enjoy appropriate support. “The law is a shield that protects this generation of children,” observes Cindy Blackstock, director general of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, and one of the protagonists of the documentary. “It restores their dignity, and allows them to grow up within their own families. Justice is possible.”

Filmed in centres of political power, in First Nations communities, and at public demonstrations, Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger provides a forum in which the voices of parents, caregivers, and their legal representatives can all be heard. Alanis Obomsawin’s latest documentary completes, on a note of optimism, the cycle of films devoted to the rights of children and Indigenous peoples that she began with The People of the Kattawapiskak River.

About the Director:

Alanis Obomsawin, a member of the Abenaki Nation, is one of Canada’s most distinguished documentary filmmakers. As a prolific director with the National Film Board, she has created an extensive body or work focusing on the lives and concerns of Canada’s First Nations.

She began her professional career in 1960 as a singer in New York City. In 1967, producers Joe Koenig and Bob Verrall invited her to join the NFB as an adviser on a film about Indigenous peoples. She has not put down her camera since.

An activist as well as a filmmaker, Obomsawin is driven to provide a forum for the country’s First Peoples. Her entire filmography is a testament to that desire. Her documentaries have always sought to show the importance of roots and strong intergenerational bonds for the preservation of Indigenous cultures—from Christmas at Moose Factory (1971), in which she used children’s drawings to tell the story of a Cree village on the shore of James Bay, Ontario, to Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger (2019), her most recent film (her 52nd), which documents the long struggle to establish the right of Indigenous children to receive, in their own communities, the same high standard of health care as the rest of the Canadian population.

Obomsawin is a director who knows how to film conflict, as demonstrated by her four films about the Oka Crisis of 1990: Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993), winner of 18 international awards; My Name Is Kahentiiosta (1995); Spudwrench: Kahnawake Man (1997); and Rocks at Whiskey Trench (2000).

Alanis Obomsawin has received numerous awards and honours throughout her career. She was inducted into the Canadian Film and Television Hall of Fame in 2010, and in 2014 she received the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television Humanitarian Award, an honour given in recognition of exceptional contributions to the community and the public sector. In 2015, the Valdivia International Film Festival (Chile) recognized her body of work with its Lifetime Achievement Award, and she received an Honorary Life Member Award from the Directors’ Guild of Canada in 2018.

Obomsawin has received honorary doctorates from many universities, including Dalhousie University in 2016 and McGill University in 2017. In 2016, she also received two of the highest civilian honours conferred by the Province of Quebec when she was named a Grand Officer of the National Order of Quebec and awarded the Prix Albert-Tessier. In 2019, she became a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Image Copyright: Alanis Obomsawin and NFB. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Barbara Kopple and Face2Face host David Peck talk about curiosity, politics and historical unknowns, rich and complex stories, the magic of people, being better informed and why she’s always been a good listener.

Synopsis:

It has been called “the most audacious, difficult, complicated, rescue mission ever attempted.” Desert One uniquely blends emotion and bravado to tell the incredible tale of America’s secret mission to free the hostages of the 1979 Iranian revolution. Two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple discovers a wealth of unearthed archival sources and receives unprecedented access, engaging in intimate conversations with many of the soldiers closest to the story, some for the first time, as well as President Jimmy Carter, Vice President Walter Mondale and TV newsman Ted Koppel.

Evocative new animation brings audiences closer than anyone has ever gotten to being on the inside for this history-making operation. This is the thrilling story of a group of Americans working together to overcome the most difficult problem of their lives. Among those Americans is President Jimmy Carter, readying to face a re-election challenge when self-described student revolutionaries suddenly take power in Iran. Anti-American students take the U.S. embassy in Tehran by force and hold hostage fifty-two American diplomats and citizens.

Using new archival sources and unprecedented access to key players on both sides, master documentarian Barbara Kopple reveals the true story behind one of the most daring rescues in modern US history: a secret mission to free hostages captured during the 1979 Iranian revolution.

At a moment when tensions once again rise between the governments of Iran and the U.S., old wounds remain painfully current for many on each side who detail their recollections in Desert One -- but talk of hope also emerges, that the lessons of the past might finally guide us to a better future.

About the Director:

Barbara Kopple is a two-time Academy Award® winning filmmaker. A director of documentaries, as well as narrative TV and film, one of her more recent projects was the documentary Running From Crazy, which explores the life of actress Mariel Hemingway.

Barbara produced and directed Harlan County USA and American Dream, both winners of the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature. In 1991, Harlan County USA was named to the National Film Registry by the Librarian of Congress and designated an American Film Classic. Harlan County USA was restored and preserved by the Women's Preservation Fund and the Academy Film Archive, and was featured as part of the Sundance Collection at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005. The Criterion Collection released a DVD of Harlan County USA in 2006.

Barbara has been awarded the Human Rights Watch Film Festival Irene Diamond Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Award, National Society of Film Critics Award, the SilverDocs/Charles Guggenheim Award, New York Women in Film & Television Muse Award, the Maya Deren Independent Film and Video Award, the Woodstock Film Festival Maverick Award, Women in Film & Video of Washington, DC Women of Vision Award, the White House Project's EPIC Award, the International Documentary Association Career Achievement Award, the San Francisco Film Society's Persistence of Vision Award and the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, Filmmakers Trophy & Audience Award. The Paley Center for Media has named Barbara a 2007 She Made It Honoree.

She recently served her tenth year on the board of trustees for the American Film Institute and continues as an advisory board member for the American University Center for Social Media and Independent Feature Project's Filmmaker Labs. In 2010, Barbara received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from American University. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Director's Guild of America, New York Women in Film and Television’s Honorary Board, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and actively participates in organizations that address social issues and support independent filmmaking.

Image Copyright: Barbara Kopple and Cabin Creek Films. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Peter Tabuns, Mark Johnston and Face2Face host David Peck talk about politics, the art of conversation, logic and passion, hydro rates, climate change and the environment and finding common ground.

For more info about the series head here.

Synopsis:

Many politicians, from all levels of government, will admit that they never have time to sit down and meet one-on-one. Wouldn’t it be great if they had the opportunity to explore each other’s personal perspectives, motivations, histories and hopes for the future, while at the same time immersing themselves in an issue they disagree on?

Political Blind Date is not just playing matchmaker for fun. In an age of polarizing partisan politics, public distrust, “fake news” and questionable behavior, it’s worth the effort to get politicians to connect on a human level, to see if they can make unexpected alliances over issues they disagree on - and who knows, maybe even work together for common good!

A typical date starts out with an opportunity to get to know each other before heading out to explore the issue of the day. Sharing a coffee together for the first time, they get to know something about why each of them got into politics, their family history, some of their personal interests and their connection to the issue. Just like any date, finding out about another person humanizes them, not just for the each other, but for the audience as well. They then go out to explore each other’s point of view – each having a full day to bring their perspective and viewpoints to life.

This works on the fairest terms. Each participant chooses where they will take the other and keeps it a secret. By spending a day discovering the places and people associated with important issues, politicians who stand on opposing sides of an issue get to know someone they wouldn’t otherwise choose to spend time with.

The series has a healthy dose of light-hearted fun in between the heated exchanges, as our participants get to know each other. As in “real” life, it is much harder to stick to an entrenched position when you get to know the person on the other “side”!

About the Guests:

Peter Tabuns has been the Toronto-Danforth MPP for over decade, winning re-elections four times Peter has been at the forefront of change and new ideas. He is currently the Ontario New Democrat’s critic for Climate Crisis and Energy. Informed by his former roles as Greenpeace Canada’s Executive Director, and later Jack Layton's climate change advisor. Peter continues to push for Ontario to lead in meeting international climate goals. Peter also served seven years as a City Councillor in Toronto where among other positions he chaired the Board of Health.

Mark Johnston is the founder of Nomad Films. More than thirty years in the documentary business, Mark has worked in a producer or director capacity on over sixty films. Mark has more recently begun producing dramatic films, beginning with Act of Dishonour. Upcoming dramas include In the Shadow of a Saint (with Djimon Hounsou playing the late activist Ken Saro-Wiwa).

He began his television career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s nightly newscast, The National. He was one of the first team members on Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World, a massive ten-hour PBS/BBC/Global Television documentary series filmed in fifteen countries around the world.

Most recently Mark Executive Produced TVO Original Much Too Young, a documentary for TVO and Knowledge Network about the teen and young adult children of parents with young onset Alzheimer’s. Mark has worked for partners as diverse as the BBC, ARTE France, Discovery, National Geographic, PBS, the CBC, as well as a plethora of other media outlets.

Image Copyright: Nomad Films and TVO. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Brad Jersak and Face2Face host David Peck talk about religiosity, alienation and separation, the truth of our beings, faith and doubt statements, following a ‘script’ versus leading a life of love, reality, truth and justice. 

For more info about Brad head here.

Check out his blog here.

About Brad:

By now, most of his social networks and some of his readership have heard of his move into the Eastern Orthodox Church. He was ‘chrismated’ at the end of June, 2013 and tonsured as a ‘reader’ for the All Saints Monastery in Dewdney in October. You might wonder why he - an evangelical/charismatic/Anabaptist - would don a cassock and take up incense and chanting. If you’re curious, here’s the short version.

Brad Jersak is an author and itinerant teacher based in Abbotsford, BC Canada. He is the Dean of Ministry Studies at St. Stephen's University where he teaches New Testament/Theology, Patristics and some philosophy. He also teaches on the core faculty with the Institute for Religion Peace and Justice. He also serves as an editor and graphic designer for CWR magazine.

Brad is a preacher and reader at All Saints of N.A. Orthodox Monastery in Dewdney, BC and is active in local 12-step addiction recovery.

Brad writes across genres, including Christian theology and practice, children's books and political philosophy. 

Image Copyright: Brad Jersak. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Karen Wookey, Andrea Constand and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film The Case Against Cosby, trauma, purpose, trust and aha moments,

authenticity, fear, risk, and faith, finding a safe community and how healing is possible.

Watch now on CBC Gem

Survivors.org

Hope Healing

Blurb:Of the sixty-three women who have come forward to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault, only one was able to gain a conviction. This is her story. With intimate access to Andrea Constand and her family, Cosby’s prosecutors, journalists in the courtroom, and experts on predation, pedophilia, and trauma, we are taken on a journey that will leave us shocked, informed, and deeply changed. Woven throughout the stunning legal story are the first-person accounts of five Cosby survivors as they confront the impact of sexual trauma with world-renowned physician and best-selling author Gabor Maté. We will bear witness to the power of healing as these women find strength in one other. A heroine’s journey, The Case Against Cosby is a feature length documentary in Canadian markets and a 2 x 1hr documentary in international markets that reveals how one woman’s unstoppable courage and search for justice helped raise the voice of an entire generation of women seeking lasting change.

About Karen:

Karen Wookey has produced numerous feature films and over five hundred hours of series television, both scripted and unscripted. As a Showrunner, Writer/Director Wookey has created and produced several shows for television including Crimes of Passion, a doc series exploring intimate partner homicide, Intervention Canada, Vegas Rat Rods for Discovery Channel, and In Their Own Words: 6 premium bio docs for PBS showcasing Elon Musk, Pope Francis, Jimmy Carter, Lady Diana and Chuck Berry.

Since 2011 Karen has been partnered with Prospero Pictures’ Martin Katz and together, they have produced many series and feature films, including Man on the Train (Tribeca) starring Donald Sutherland and

Larry Mullen Jr., as well as Our House (XYZ International), in partnership with Resolute Films & Entertainment’s Lee Kim, directed by Anthony Scott Burns and starring Thomas Mann and Nicola Peltz. They are

currently in production on Caitlyn Cronenberg’s first feature entitled Humane.

Image Copyright and Credit: Karen Wookey & Prospero Pictures.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Pat Collins and Henry Glassie and Face2Face host David Peck talk about Field Work, beauty, non-verbal cues, silence and listening, eliminating prejudice, and why art is always rooted in community.

Trailer

Synopsis:

Following the success of Song of Granite, Irish Director Pat Collins returns with his new documentary feature, Henry Glassie: Field Work, which will have its world premiere at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival.

Over the last 50 years the celebrated American Folklorist Henry Glassie has been writing in-depth studies of communities and their art. Inspired by the writings and ideas of Glassie – Field Work is an immersive and meditative documentary set among the rituals and rhythms of working artists across Brazil, Turkey, North Carolina and Ireland. Glassie’s subject is folklore but his deep abiding love for the people who create it resonates throughout the film: 'I don’t study people. I stand with people and I study the things they create.'

Collins’ achievement with Henry Glassie: Field Work is to bring these makers of art, in wood, fabric, yarn, paint, clay, metal, in song and story to our attention through their work, through the raw materials they shape into art objects and through the undeniable passion they carry in to their work.

In this way the work is accorded profound meaning for the societies out of which it is generated an aesthetic value which is transcendent. And under Collins’ ever mindful direction, the process of making something out of raw materials is luminously manifested in sequences which reflect their measured and focused approach. The actual real time process of making works, such as hands, of the physicality of that work, and the close attention the artist is bringing to the work. 

For more info about the film head here.

About Pat and Henry:

Since 1999, Pat Collins has made over 30 films. His latest release Song of Granite, funded by the Irish Film Board, BAI, SODEC and Telefilm Canada, received its world premiere at SXSW 2017 and was the Irish nomination for best Foreign Language Oscar 2018.

His other credits include Silence, which had its international premiere at London International Film Festival and the 3-part series 1916 (co-director), which aired on networks including the BBC and PBS. In 2012, the Irish Film Institute curated a mid-career retrospective of his work.

Henry Glassie is one of the most celebrated folklorists across the world. He has spent the last 50 years making in-depth studies of communities and their art. Henry, College Professor Emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington, has done fieldwork on five continents and written books on the full range of folkloristic interest, from drama, song, and story to craft, art, and architecture. Glassie began teaching in the Folklore Institute at Indiana University in 1970. In 1976, he became the chairman of the Department of Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1988, he returned as a College Professor to Indiana University, where he had appointments in Folklore and Ethnomusicology, American Studies, Central Eurasian Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and India Studies. He retired in 2008.

Glassie has served as president of the American Folklore Society, the Vernacular Architecture Forum, and his local historic preservation organization, Bloomington Restorations Incorporated. He is married to fellow folklorist Pravina Shukla, a professor at Indiana University, who is an award-winning teacher and the author of two major books on dress and adornment: The Grace of Four Moons and Costume. Glassie and Shukla co-authored Sacred Art, an ethnographic account of creativity in northeastern Brazil. Glassie has four children and four grandchildren.

He published his first scholarly paper, an article on the Appalachian log cabin, in 1963. Since then, he has published over 100 articles and a steady stream of books.

Image Copyright: Harvest Films and Pat Collins. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Sami Khan and Face2Face host David Peck talk about the new film St. Louis Superman, reconciliation and battle rapping, solidarity and our shared history and being seduced by the outrage of the moment.

Trailer

Synopsis:

Bruce Franks Jr. is a 34-year-old battle rapper, Ferguson activist and state representative from St. Louis, Missouri. Known as Superman to his constituents, he is a political figure the likes of which you've never seen - full of contradictions and deep insights, who has overcome unspeakable loss to become one of the most exciting and unapologetic young leaders in the country.

This short verité documentary follows Bruce at a critical juncture in his life, when he is forced to deal with the mental trauma he's been carrying for the nearly 30 years since his 9-year-old brother was shot and killed in front of him, in order to find peace and truly fulfill his destiny as a leader for his community.

Canadian filmmaker Sami Khan is going to the Academy Awards along with his American co-director Smriti Mundhra, as their acclaimed short documentary St. Louis Superman has been nominated in the Short Documentary Category.

‘We share this honor with Bruce and our whole filmmaking team including our champions at MTV Documentary Films and AJE Witness,’ adds Mundhra. ‘At a critical moment for democracy worldwide, Bruce’s activism couldn’t be more urgent.’

About our Guest:

Sami Khan is a filmmaker based in New York City. His work has screened at leading festivals including the Toronto International Film Festival and the Mumbai Film Festival. He graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in film. 

Khoya, Sami's feature debut (as writer/director), was selected for the Tribeca Film Institute’s All Access fellowship and received financial backing from Spike Lee. The film tells the story of a man traveling to India to solve the decades-old mystery surrounding his adoption.

Sami is an adjunct filmmaking lecturer at Columbia University and Brooklyn College where his teaching focuses on empowering young filmmakers of color.

Image Copyright: Meralta Films and Sami Khan. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Liz Forkin Bohannon and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new book Beginner's Pluck, optimism, why you might just be average after all, story telling and how it can change a life, social consciousness, leaning in and listening to others and about the remarkable start up story of Sseko Designs and its beginning.

You can buy the book here.

Synopsis:

Social entrepreneur and motivational speaker, Liz Forkin Bohannon will release her first book, Beginner’s Pluck: Build Your Life of Purpose and Impact Now, on October 1, 2019.  Beginner’s Pluck is a collection of Forkin Bohannon’s personal anecdotes that illustrate her path to building her global socially conscious enterprise, Sseko Designs, and ultimately, a life of purpose.

Beginner’s Pluck shares Forkin Bohannon’s 14 accessible steps of how anyone can build their passion and reach personal fulfillment – while also challenging society to reconsider the meanings of passion and purpose altogether. Turning the exhausted message of hustle harder into a fresh message of passion and pluck, readers will be encouraged to live like they were made on purpose – for a purpose.

‘I used to subscribe to the belief that we were born with a fixed passion and our purpose was a ‘simple’ duty to use whatever that thing was,” said Liz Forkin Bohannon. “But I’ve learned through personal experience that passion isn’t a starting point, and purpose isn’t a one-stop destination to reach.’

While Forkin Bohannon studied journalism, she developed a passion for social justice – leading her to purchase a one-way ticket to Uganda where she met young women unable to finance their education to attend university. With no background in business, fashion, or manufacturing herself, Forkin Bohannon taught the young women to make sandals, promising that if they did, they would be able to attend university.

Returning to the United States, Forkin Bohannon began selling the sandals out of the back of her car, raising enough funds to send the women to university. Today, Sseko Designs is one of the largest manufacturing companies in Uganda and will send its 131st woman to university by the end of this year. 

About my guest:

Liz Forkin Bohannon is a speaker, entrepreneur, and the founder of Sseko Designs, a socially conscious fashion brand creating educational and economic opportunity for women across the globe.

Recognized by Forbes as a top public speaker and named by John Maxwell as one of the top three transformational leaders in the U.S., Forkin Bohannon has been featured on Shark Tank, Good Morning America, Bloomberg Businessweek, Vogue, and others. She lives with her husband and company cofounder, Ben, and their two young sons in Portland, Oregon.

Image Copyright: Liz Forkin Bohannon and . Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Synopsis:

Social entrepreneur and motivational speaker, Liz Forkin Bohannon will release her first book, Beginner’s Pluck: Build Your Life of Purpose and Impact Now, on October 1, 2019.  Beginner’s Pluck is a collection of Forkin Bohannon’s personal anecdotes that illustrate her path to building her global socially conscious enterprise, Sseko Designs, and ultimately, a life of purpose.

Beginner’s Pluck shares Forkin Bohannon’s 14 accessible steps of how anyone can build their passion and reach personal fulfillment – while also challenging society to reconsider the meanings of passion and purpose altogether. Turning the exhausted message of hustle harder into a fresh message of passion and pluck, readers will be encouraged to live like they were made on purpose – for a purpose.

‘I used to subscribe to the belief that we were born with a fixed passion and our purpose was a ‘simple’ duty to use whatever that thing was,” said Liz Forkin Bohannon. “But I’ve learned through personal experience that passion isn’t a starting point, and purpose isn’t a one-stop destination to reach.’

While Forkin Bohannon studied journalism, she developed a passion for social justice – leading her to purchase a one-way ticket to Uganda where she met young women unable to finance their education to attend university. With no background in business, fashion, or manufacturing herself, Forkin Bohannon taught the young women to make sandals, promising that if they did, they would be able to attend university.

Returning to the United States, Forkin Bohannon began selling the sandals out of the back of her car, raising enough funds to send the women to university. Today, Sseko Designs is one of the largest manufacturing companies in Uganda and will send its 131st woman to university by the end of this year.

About my guest:

Liz Forkin Bohannon is a speaker, entrepreneur, and the founder of Sseko Designs, a socially conscious fashion brand creating educational and economic opportunity for women across the globe.

Recognized by Forbes as a top public speaker and named by John Maxwell as one of the top three transformational leaders in the U.S., Forkin Bohannon has been featured on Shark Tank, Good Morning America, Bloomberg Businessweek, Vogue, and others. She lives with her husband and company cofounder, Ben, and their two young sons in Portland, Oregon.

Image Copyright: Liz Forkin Bohannon and . Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Cornelia Principe and Face2Face host David Peck talk her new film Prey, justice, survivors guilt, truth, oppression and the abuse of power and why external oversight will be required for meaningful reform within the structure of the church.

Trailer

The film is now streaming on TVO

Winner – Roger’s Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary – Hot Docs 2019

Winner – Special Jury Prize for Best Canadian Feature Documentary – Hot Docs 2019

Synopsis:

Prey follows London, Ontario lawyer Rob Talach – a.k.a. “The Priest Hunter” – and focuses on two survivors, Patrick McMahon and Rod MacLeod. The latter is determined to be the one plaintiff who does not settle in the case of William “Hod” Hodgson Marshall — a Basilian priest and teacher in Sudbury, Toronto and Windsor, who sexually abused at least 17 minors over the course of 38 years.

While not allowed into the actual court proceedings, Prey recreates the mood of the trial, while profiling the various people connected to it. McMahon - who was molested by Father Marshall in his own bed when the priest, a family friend, was invited to sleep over – mounts a one-man protest outside the churches and courtroom.

On the surface, this seems like an unsolvable case. But Talach has fought this fight many times, and takes nothing for granted, as the settlement money waved at MacLeod rises higher.

“Emotionally, this was a very difficult film to work through,” says the director Matt Gallagher, “The sheer scope of the abuse uncovered in these stories is chilling enough on its own. But the power of the secret held by these survivors, and the doubt and even blame they encountered when they began to talk, that’s an extra ordeal that’s hard to imagine.”

About the Producer:

Cornelia Principe is an Emmy©-nominated, award-winning producer with over 20 years of experience. She recently produced 14 & Muslim for CBC and is currently in post-production on the feature documentary with director Nisha Pahuja called Send Us Your Brother.

Other credits include producing the feature How To Prepare For Prison producing, directing and writing The Motherload, for CBC’s Doc Zone which has just been awarded prizes at both the Chicago International Film/TV Festival and at the Worldfest Houston Festival; taught courses in documentary production at Centennial College and completed the feature documentary The World Before Her with Storyline Entertainment and director Nisha Pahuja for ZDF/Arte.

The World Before Her has won 20 awards and distinctions including: best documentary at Tribeca, Hot Docs and Michael Moore's festival in Traverse City. It was voted a Canada top ten by the Toronto International Film Festival 2012, was nominated for Best Theatrical Documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards, and was part of the Sundance Film Forward Program. Recently it was nominated for an Emmy. 

Other select projects include: the feature documentary Grinders directed by Matt Gallagher, which was broadcast across Canada after a Hot Docs 2011 festival premiere and was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award in Best Direction in a Documentary and the 2008 Gemini award-winning (Best Documentary Series) Diamond Road, which she co-produced for TVOntario, History Television, Discovery Times and Arte/ZDF; Directed the one hour Poverty, Chastity, Obedience; and worked with Emmy award-winning Producer/ Director Shelley Saywell on several of her acclaimed documentaries including, A Child’s Century of War which was short-listed

for an Oscar.

More about Cornelia here.

Image Copyright: TVO and Border City Pictures. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Richard Bell and Face2Face host David Peck talk his new film Brotherhood, dignity and self sacrifice, putting others before ourselves, rites of passage, real boys and toxic masculinity.

Trailer

The film be will be available on the Super Channel in March 2020.

Synopsis:

Based on the harrowing true story that made newspaper headlines across North America in the 1920s, Brotherhood is a taut survival drama that feels timely and modern in this era of the very real Boy Crisis. A bristling piece of Canadian history, that is a clarion call for a return to Nature, as wonderful and lethal as it may be.

A band of teenaged boys arrive at Long Point Camp on sprawling Balsam Lake for the ultimate Canadian experience: two weeks of games, kite-making, lacrosse, sing-a-longs, marshmallow roasts, canoeing, swimming and adventure. Great War veterans, Arthur and Robert have their own approach to educating and nurturing these boys who are pugnacious with raw personalities.

Arthur and Robert set off across the lake in a thirty-foot Indian war canoe with the unofficial band of brother’s leader Waller and ten of his companions. When they encounter a freak summer storm and are capsized in the middle of the churning lake, the brotherhood's holiday descends into a soul-shuddering fight for survival. Only four will survive.

About the Director:

Richard wrote and directed Eighteen, shot in twenty days and made with only $800, 000, it co-starred acting titans Ian McKellen and Alan Cumming, and featured a score by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. It hopscotched the world at film festivals and was broadcast on City TV and Movie Central and the Movie Network.

Bell was nominated for a Genie Award for co-writing the song “In a Heartbeat”, with composer Bramwell Tovey. Bell adapted the teen novel Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet by Joanne Proulx and penned a television pilot for Brightlight Pictures, a ‘prairie noir’ based on the fleet of Russell Quant detective novels by Anthony Bidulka. Bell got his start in the industry by writing and directing the micro-budgeted indie Two Brothers. It was shot for $545.00 and went on to gross $150,000 on DVD. Richard is a graduate of Studio 58, the only conservatory-style theatre training program in Western Canada. He is an alumnus of the TIFF Talent Lab, the Praxis Centre for Screenwriters’ Screenwriting Lab, and the CFC’s Writers’ Workshop at the Whistler Film Festival.

Richard recently co-executive produced Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet for producer Kim Roberts. The film stars Cameron Monaghan, Peyton List, and Juliette Lewis.

Image Copyright: Richard Bell and Karma Film. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Peter Albrechtsen and Face2Face host David Peck talk about Feras Fayyad's new film The Cave, sonic landscapes, fragility and fear, Syrian women in leadership, strength, resilience and sound as a storyteller.

Trailer

For more info about the film head here.

Synopsis:

Oscar nominee Feras Fayyad (Last Men in Aleppo) delivers an unflinching story of the Syrian war with his powerful new documentary, The Cave. For besieged civilians, hope and safety lie underground inside the subterranean hospital known as the Cave, where pediatrician and managing physician Dr. Amani Ballour and her colleagues Samaher and Dr. Alaa have claimed their right to work as equals alongside their male counterparts, doing their jobs in a way that would be unthinkable in the oppressively patriarchal culture that exists above.

Following the women as they contend with daily bombardments, chronic supply shortages and the ever-present threat of chemical attacks, The Cave paints a stirring portrait of courage, resilience and female solidarity.

About the Director:

Nominated for the MPSE Golden Reel Award for sound design, Peter Albrechtsen is known for his work on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Dunkirk and Idealisten.

He’s a sound designer based in Copenhagen, Denmark and graduated from the Danish Film School in 2001, and since then has been working on features and documentaries, both Danish and international productions. He has worked in Israel, Bulgaria and on several US indie film productions, in addition to all of his Danish and Scandinavian work.

Peter lives in København, Denmark.

Image Copyright: National Geographic. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Heather Young and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new film Murmur, loneliness, solitude and quiet desperation, relationships and our desire for love, inclusion and connection with others.

Trailer

Synopsis:

Murmur follows Donna, a sixty-something year-old who is scheduled to perform community service in an animal rescue shelter following a DUI charge. Over time Donna begins to relate to the abandoned animals that surround her and she forms a particular bond with a senior dog that she brings home to prevent from being euthanized. Donna begins collecting other animals from the shelter and buying them online, until her small apartment is over-run and her unchecked compulsion for connection ultimately causes her home and life to fall into further disarray. 

‘It is important to me to tell the stories of older women and allow them to be complex, flawed and fully realized characters, the likes of which are rarely depicted in cinema,” says award-winning filmmaker Heather Young of Murmur. “Donna is a difficult character, but hopefully one that will resonate. Her loneliness and addictive nature cause her to act in ways that are at times counterintuitive and destructive but ultimately she is looking for connection -- and that is something that we can all relate to.’

About the Director:

Heather Young is a filmmaker originally from New Brunswick now living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After graduating from the University of New Brunswick and NSCAD University she made several short films. Fish played at festivals all over the world including Palm Springs Shortfest, the Vancouver International Film Festival, Vienna Independent Shorts and TIFF Canada’s Top Ten Festival. FISH was also a Vimeo Staff Pick and won Best Short Film in the NSI Online Short Film Festival.

Her latest short Milk had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (where she also participated in the TIFF Talent Lab), won Best Short Film (Canada) at Festival du nouveau cinema, and played TIFF Canada’s Top Ten, Aspen Shortsfest, the Maryland Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, the London Short Film Festival, and many others. Murmur is her first feature.

Image Copyright: Martha Cooley and Heather Young. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Dekel Berenson and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his beautiful new short film Anna, hard work and luck, politics and activism, child labour, allegory and truth and why movies should never just be entertaining. 

Trailer

Synopsis:



Anna, a middle-aged single mother, lives in a small industrial town in war-torn Eastern Ukraine. She works in a meat processing plant, lives in a rundown apartment and dreams for a better life for herself and her 16-year-old daughter.

Desperate for a change, she is lured by a radio advertisement to attend a party organized for foreign men who are touring the country, searching for love. Despite not having been out for years she decides to take part in the event.

At the party, Anna is confronted with the realities of old age, with the American men's real intentions, and by her underaged daughter who is also attending the event. Both mother and daughter realize the absurdity and indignity of the situation and abandon their dream for a better life.

About the Director:

Originally from Israel, completed a mandatory three-year service in the Israeli Defense Forces. In 2001 he went abroad to pursue his education, eventually acquiring a Masters in International Relations from the Central European University in Budapest in 2006, receiving the Best Thesis Award and graduating first in his class. Moving forward, the next ten years of his work in writing, activism, and graphic design took him all over the world, where he explored more than sixty countries.

Over the past three years, he has combined his two passions, making artistic films of high quality that bring to light real-world social and humanitarian issues.

His 2nd film Ashmina won several prizes, including the Best Short Film award at the 59th Krakow Film Festival, and Best Short Film at the 36th Jerusalem Film Festival, allowing the film to compete for a short Oscar. His 3rd film, Anna, premiered in competition at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival and TIFF 2019.

He is currently working on his first feature.

For more info on Dekel check out his website here.

Image Copyright: Dekel Berenson. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Sophie Deraspe and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new film Antigone, Greek tragedies, empathy, dignity, resistance and trusting and following your heart

Trailer

Synopsis:

Antigone is a moving, compassionate and beautiful story and it won the best film at TIFF 2019. Gripping, powerful, and of-the-moment, Antigone loosely adapts Sophocles' Greek tragedy and situates it in contemporary Montreal. The latest from critically acclaimed Québécois writer-director Sophie Deraspe (The Wolves, The Amina Profile) is a compassionate family drama that doesn't hold back on its indictment of the current refugee and immigrant experience in North America.

Following the murder of their parents, Antigone, her sister Ismène, her brothers Étéocle and Polynice, and their grandmother Ménécée find refuge in Montreal. They live a quiet modest life in a tiny apartment in a working-class neighbourhood. A straight-A student seemingly destined for greatness, Antigone (masterfully played by Nahéma Ricci in her first leading role) is the glue that holds the family together.

Tragedy strikes when Étéocle is wrongfully gunned down by police during the arrest of Polynice, a small-time drug dealer. Motivated by her sense of duty towards her family and fuelled by the memory she cherishes of her dead parents, Antigone decides to jeopardize her own future to preserve that of her family.

Antigone acutely explores familial sacrifice, the burden of responsibility, and the nature of justice with exceptional depth and nuance. Although inspired by a story 2,500 years old, Deraspe's film is a timely meditation, one that prompts serious reflection on immigrant life in ostensibly welcoming contemporary Canada.

With thanks to TIFF.

About the Director:

One of the leading figures of new Quebec cinema, Sophie Deraspe fell in love with cinema through her Visual Arts studies in Austria and Literature studies at the University of Ottawa and Montreal.

As both a filmmaker and cinematographer, she worked primarily within the realms of documentary before making her first feature, Rechercher Victor Pellerin/Missing Victor Pellerin in 2016.

Her second feature, Les signes vitaux/Vital Signs in 2009, was in IFFR's Tiger Competition and she won the FIPRESCI award at Torino Film Festival for Les loups in 2015. The documentary Le profil Amina/A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile was selected as a World Cinema Documentary at Sundance and won the Special Jury Prize at Hot Docs. 

Antigone was chosen as Best Canadian Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival and it will represent Canada at the Oscars in the category Best International Feature Film.

Image Copyright: Association Coopérative des Productions Audio-Visuelles and Sophie Deraspe. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Karl Markovics and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new film Nobadi, national socialism, guilt, fear and shame, fairytales for grown ups, Ulysses and why freedom scares us.

Trailer

Synopsis:

Heinrich Senft, a 93 year old, cranky pensioner, lives on a small allotment in Vienna. His dog died during the night and he wants to dig a hole behind his cabin to bury him. But failing to dig it himself he begrudgingly hires a young man from Afghanistan, Adib. While the two struggle to trust each other, Adib finds ways to pacify and appease the angry old man. Senft finds out that Adib has a wound on his foot, which seems rather badly covered up, but Adib pretends that all is well.

When the work is done, Senft seems relieved to have the foreigner out of his back yard. Yet a little while later, when Senft finds Adib unconscious at the bus stop, he knows he will need to help the young man. When Adib regains consciousness, he refuses to go to hospital out of fear to be deported.

Senft decides to take matters into his own hands to save this young man and the two spend a night together that is so full of chance, will-power, and inner revelation, that it sometimes appears hard to believe that these two found each other.

About the Director:

Karl Markovics was born in Austria in 1963. He started his career in Vienna's Serapionstheater and spent 12 years as a freelance actor before landing the role of Stockinger in the TV Series Kommissar Rex in 1993. This brought him to wider public attention and he eventually played the leading role in Stefan Ruzowitzky's Academy Award winning The Counterfeiters in 2008. Breathing, his directorial debut, premiered at Cannes Film Festival at the Directors' Fortnight in 2011, winning the Europa Cinema Label award.

It was screened and awarded at festivals worldwide, including Sarajevo FF (Best Film, Best Actor), and Sao Paolo IFF (Best Film). Superwelt followed in 2014 and screened at Berlinale, Karlovy Vary IFF and New Horizons FF Poland amongst others.

Nobadi is Karl Markovics' third film as a director.

Image Copyright: EPO-Film Vienna and Karl Markovics. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Sarah Polley and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new film Women Talking, curiosity, imagination, the patriarchy, trauma and grief, de and re-construction, the power of community, what it means to heal, inspiration and the greater Good.

Blurb:

Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, and Judith Ivey, with Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand, star in Sarah Polley’s fearless adaptation of Miriam Toews’

acclaimed novel about a cloistered world where women struggle with an epidemic of abuse.

Oscar-nominated writer-director Sarah Polley’s fearless adaptation of Miriam Toews’ acclaimed novel grants us access to a tight-knit, cloistered religious colony in

which women struggle to recover from an epidemic of abuse. Featuring riveting, emotionally complex performances from a stunning ensemble that includes Oscar

nominees Rooney Mara and Jessie Buckley and Oscar winner Frances McDormand, Women Talking is a drama of harrowing revelations, fraught alliances, and the

search for grace.

Reeling from multiple counts of sexual abuse, newly uncovered within their Mennonite colony, a group of women gather in a hayloft to discuss how to respond. While

the men are away, the women narrow their options down to three: do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. Some fear that any act of defiance will jeopardize their entry into

heaven, while others believe they cannot survive without husbands and sons. Some are willing to take any measures to escape the terror of their domestic lives and

insist that “the truth is stronger than the rules.”

With her first feature in almost a decade, Polley showcases her unmatched skills as both a screenwriter and a director. The film is at once ferocious in its critique of

patriarchal oppression — a critique that clearly extends to our broader, secular culture — while respectful of the beliefs and traditions in which its characters were

raised. Though it is suffused with the pain of trauma, a stubborn sense of wonder and quiet joy in community permeate the film. Women Talking ushers us through a

journey of rage, grief, wisdom, and hope through to a triumphant, most gratifying conclusion.

Adapted from Jane Schoettle’s Synopsis, TIFF

About Sarah:

Sarah Polley, actor, director, writer, producer, she is one of Canada's most talented and well-known actors. Sarah is also an acclaimed director and a committed political activist. As a child actor, her natural and unaffected performances on television series such as CBC’s Road to Avonlea, and in films such as Atom Egoyan's Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter.

After choosing to pursue a career in Canadian and independent films, she embarked on a highly successful second career as a writer-director with such award-winning films as Away from Her, Take This Waltz and Stories We Tell. Her latest film is Women Talking.  

She has won multiple Genie and Gemini Awards, and numerous international honours.

Sarah is the first woman to receive a Genie Award for best director, and is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of Canada’s Walk of Fame.

Image Copyright and Credit: Universal Studios.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

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François Girard and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new film The Song of Names, history, remembrance, choices, mystery and discovery, film as music, the paradox of technology and musical, archeological digs.

Trailer

Synopsis:

Martin Simmonds (Tim Roth) has been haunted throughout his life by the mysterious disappearance of his “brother” and extraordinary best friend, a Polish Jewish virtuoso violinist, Dovidl Rapaport, who vanished shortly before the 1951 London debut concert that would have launched his brilliant career. Thirty-five years later, Martin discovers that Dovidl (Clive Owen) may still be alive, and sets out on an obsessive intercontinental search to find him and learn why he left.

Shortly before World War II, Martin’s music publisher father, Gilbert (Stanley Townsend), invites young Dovidl Rapoport (Luke Doyle), a ten-year-old Jewish violin prodigy from Poland, to live in their London home. Gilbert’s intent is to help the boy achieve his musical potential and protect him from the imminent German invasion of Poland. Martin (Misha Handley), also ten, initially sees Dovidl as an invader in his house, but Dovidl’s worries about the plight of his family in Warsaw elicits Martin’s compassion, and he is won over by the young genius’s charisma and rebelliousness.

Soon they are as close as brothers. Having the extraordinary Dovidl as his best friend and confidante opens up Martin’s narrow world, and enhances his selfconfidence. Over several years as the boys grow up, Gilbert lavishes all his attention and the money he has on developing Dovidl’s (now Jonah Hauer-King) talent, a process that elicits jealousy from Martin (now Gerran Howell), despite his love for Dovidl. Eventually, Gilbert stages an extravagant London debut for Dovidl at age 21. Unfortunately, as the audience and orchestra await Dovidl’s arrival on stage, Dovidl fails to appear.

The cancellation of the concert bankrupts and devastates Gilbert, who dies soon after. It also leaves Martin with the loss of the “brother” he loved, the lingering question of what happened, and a growing bitterness over Dovidl’s responsibility for Martin’s father’s death. Almost four decades later, Martin follows the clues that lead him ever closer to his friend, until he learns the meaning of ‘The Song of Names,’ a profoundly moving piece of music that holds the answer to why his brother vanished so suddenly from his life.

About the Director:

François Girard gained notoriety as much for his filmmaking as for his staging of operas and theater plays. In 1993, his feature film Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould would go on to garner international success including four top Genie Awards. Five years later he directed The Red Violin, featuring Samuel L. Jackson, which received an Academy Award for best original score and enshrined Girard as an important player on the international movie scene. The film also won eight Genie Awards and nine Jutra Awards. Silk, which he later directed, was adapted from Alessandro Baricco’s best-selling book, and was released worldwide in 2007. The cast includes Michael Pitt, Keira Knightley, Alfred Molina, Miki Nakatani and Koji Yakusho.

SILK received four Jutra Awards. His film Boychoir, released in 2015, features Dustin Hoffman, Kathy Bates and Eddie Izzard among others. Most recently, Hochelaga, Land of Souls, was presented at the Toronto Film Festival, and represented Canada in the race for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 90th Academy Awards. It was released in September 2017 and was greatly acclaimed by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television. Girard’s 1994 concert film Peter Gabriel’s Secret World, became a best-selling film and earned him a Grammy Award. A few years later he directed one of the six episodes of the internationally acclaimed series “Yo-Yo Ma Inspired By Bach.”

In 1997, François Girard made his opera directorial debut with Oedipus Rex/Symphony of Psalms by Stravinsky and Cocteau, which received numerous awards and was named by The Guardian as ‘the best theatrical show of the year.’ His other opera works include Lost Objects, for the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Wagner’s Siegfried; The Flight of Lindbergh/Seven Deadly Sins by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht; as well as Kaija Saariaho's Émilie. In recent years, Cirque du Soleil’s commissioned Girard to write and direct Zed, their first permanent show in Tokyo; and Zarkana, which opened at Radio City Music Hall, played at the Kremlin Theatre and has become a resident show in Las Vegas.

To date, François Girard’s accomplishments have earned him over one hundred international awards and public acclaim the world over.

Image Copyright: Serendipity Point Films and François Girard. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Yaron Zilberman, Yehuda Nahari Halevi and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film Incitement, the complicated history of the Middle East, justice, peace and racism, inclusion, war and the real cost of radicalization. 

Trailer

Synopsis:

“This rigorous psychological thriller by American-Israeli director Yaron Zilberman (A Late Quartet) depicts the lead-up to the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin through the worldview of his assassin, Yigal Amir.

In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, was assassinated by an ultranationalist, right-wing Zionist who opposed the leader's signing of the Oslo Accords. Rabin's murder is held to be a definitive — and infamous — moment in the struggling peace process with Palestinians and also in Israel's charged history. So much so that it has never been depicted in a feature film, until now.

Israeli-American filmmaker Yaron Zilberman sets out, with a rigourous, exacting gaze, to expose — through the eyes of Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir — the motivations that led to Rabin's death. Set in the year preceding the incident, Zilberman's meticulously crafted period piece is embedded in the world of Amir (portrayed with unsettling stoicism by Yehuda Nahari Halevi), moving from his family home to his failed relationships to his radicalization on illegal settlements.

At its core a psychological thriller, Zilberman's film also neatly weaves in archival footage, foregrounding the high political stakes of the era, and boldly showing the ways in which Israeli society incited one man to such deadly lengths. In this way, and with unflinching clarity, the film draws connective lines from the past to the present.

Co-written by Zilberman and Ron Leshem (who penned the novel and script for the Oscar-nominated Beaufort), and made without state money, Incitement is a gripping work of cinema that concretely writes into history a moment that many would rather not reflect on.”

With thanks to Kiva Reardon - TIFF

About the Guests:

Yaron Zilberman was born in Haifa, Israel. He studied physics at MIT before turning to filmmaking. He wrote, produced, and directed the documentary feature Watermarks. He also directed, co-wrote and produced A Late Quartet, which starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, and Catherine Keener. The film premiered in the Special Presentation program at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. Inspired by and structured around Beethoven's Opus 131, the film follows the world-renowned Fugue String Quartet after its cellist Peter Mitchell is diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. It was a New York Times Critics Pick. Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers called it “a shining gem of a movie” and Roger Ebert said, “it does one of the most interesting things any film can do. It shows how skilled professionals work.”

Zilberman made his directorial debut with his theatrical feature documentary Watermarks, which follows the champion women swimmers of Hakoah Vienna as they reunite at their old swimming pool 65 years after they were forced by the Nazis to flee Austria. Watermarks won nine film festival awards and enjoyed a successful theatrical run internationally.

Yehuda Nahari was born in 1985 in Herzliya.

After graduating from school he joined the army between 2003-2006. In 2007 he met Eyal Cohen, manager of "The Way" where he was discovered and this inspired Yehuda to become an actor. In 2008 he played a series of youth television series "Our High School Song" as "Asi". As part of his school studies he also underwent an acting technique course with Ruth Dytches.

Image Copyright: Yaron Zilberman and Metro Communications. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Robert Fisk and Yung Chang and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film This Is Not A Movie, fake news and journalism, our addiction to social media, complicity, a “dead language”, and something called, “apparent clarity.”

Trailer

Synopsis:

For more than 40 years, journalist Robert Fisk has reported on some of the most violent and divisive conflicts in the world: Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and Syria. Yong Chang’s This Is Not a Movie captures Fisk in action—feet on the ground, notebook in hand, as he travels into landscapes devastated by war, interviewing both combatants and ordinary folk, ferreting out the facts and firing reports back home to reach an audience of millions.

As corporations devour independent media, and language becomes a weapon, another less obvious battle is taking place. In an ever-accelerating 24-hour news cycle, the process of translating raw experience into incisive and passionate dispatches requires the determination to see things first-hand and the tenacity to say what others won’t.  

In his relentless pursuit of the facts, Fisk has attracted his share of controversy. But in spite of the danger, he has continued to cover stories as they unfold, talking directly to the people involved, whether that’s Osama Bin Laden or a young Palestinians woman whose father was recently murdered. Unlike the glamorous films that fueled Fisk’s early ambitions, justice rarely prevails, villains aren’t punished, and there are no tidy endings. As Fisk says, “the truth is that this is not a movie.”

About the Director and Robert:

Yung Chang is the director of Up the Yangtze, China heavyweight and The Fruit Hunters. He is currently completing a screenplay for his first dramatic feature, Eggplant. In 2015, Chang was selected to participate in the prestigious Sundance Labs for Eggplant. His award-winning short Gatekeeper is a Vimeo Staff Pick and distributed by Field of Vision, Laura Poitras’ curated online film unit. 

Chang’s films have screened at international film festivals including Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, and IDFA and have played theatrically in cinemas around the world. Up the Yangtze was one of the top-grossing documentary releases in 2008. In 2013, China Heavyweight became the most widely screened social-issues documentary I Chinese history with an official release in 200 Chinese cinemas. 

His films have been critically acclaimed, receiving awards in Paris, Milan, Vancouver, San Francisco, the Canadian Screen Award, Taiwan Golden Horse, Cinema Eye Honors, among others and have been nominated at Sundance, the Independent Spirit Awards and the Emmys.

​

Chang's films have been shown on international broadcasters including PBS, National Geographic, ARTE, ZDF, Channel 4, HBO, TMN, NHK, CBC, Bell Media, TV2, SBS, RTS and EBS. He's received funding from major organizations like Sundance Institute, BRITDOC, Telefilm, SODEC, Hot Docs, National Film Board and Canada Council for the Arts.

Chang is the recipient of the Don Haig Award, the Yolande and Pierre Perrault Award, and the Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award. He is a member of the Directors Guild of Canada. In 2013, he was invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Academy Awards.

Up the Yangtze and The Fruit Hunters were co-produced by the National Film Board and Eyesteel film. 

Robert Fisk is the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain, according to The New York Times. He is the Middle East correspondent of the London Independent and has won more than 20 major British and international journalism awards for his reporting from the region. He is the author of several bestselling books, including Pity the Nation, an eyewitness account of the Lebanese Civil War, and the historical volume The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. In 2006, he was awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation.

First for The Times of London and then for The Independent, Fisk has been reporting from the Middle East for nearly 40 years, covering everything from the Lebanese Civil War in the 1980s to the Israeli invasions of Lebanon. He was among the first Western journalists to report the massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. He also witnessed and reported from the Iranian Revolution (1979), the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), the Algerian Civil War (1990–1998), the US-Iraqi Gulf War (1991), the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts (1992–1995, 1998), the American attack on Afghanistan (2001), and the US invasion of Iraq (2003). He covered many of the 2011 Arab revolutions, especially Egypt, and is today reporting from the civil war in Syria.

He is the only journalist to have interviewed Osama bin Laden three times—first in Sudan and then in Al-Qaeda’s secret camps in Afghanistan. Born in England in 1946, Fisk holds a BA in English and Linguistics from Lancaster University in the UK, and a PhD in Politics from Trinity College, University of Dublin. He has received 17 honorary doctorates from British, Canadian, and other universities. He is a frequent broadcaster and lecturer around the world.

Fisk is the author of five books, including two works on Irish history, one of them an account of Irish neutrality in the Second World War; it remains a bestseller. Outside of the Middle East, Fisk has written and lectured extensively on the First and Second World Wars. He was the first Englishman to be invited to give a lecture to the families of Irish Catholics killed by British soldiers on Bloody Sunday.

He remains based in Beirut as The Independent’s Middle East correspondent and is currently working on a new history of the region called Night of Power.

Image Copyright: TINAM Inc. and the NFB. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Klaudia Reynicke Barbara Giordano and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film Love Me Tender, anti-superheroes, mental health issues, agoraphobia, connecting with others and the sometime difficult journeys we all seem to take.

Trailer

Synopsis:

The daily life of a 32-year-old woman suffering from agoraphobia, SECONDA, suddenly changes when her mother dies and her father abandons her. Alone and unable to leave her home, she clings to the phone messages of a snarling bailiff who one day stops calling. Unable to end her life, she offers a deal to SANTO, a bottle picker: she will give him her house in exchange for her own murder. Santo runs away, leaving Seconda alone in her despair.

The only link she has left with the outside world is the repetitive and disconcerting visit of a little girl who attacks her from the outside, pushing her to the limit.

In order to feel protected, Seconda wears her blue suit and goes out, walking in the streets of her city in search of her freedom, until she confronts her own demons that she will have to face.

A tough and determined anti-super heroine, she will achieve this with her own resources.

About the Director and Cast:

Klaudia Reynicke is a Swiss Peruvian scriptwriter and film director. Before dedicating herself to film, she studied visual arts and sociology. In 2005 she attended the Tisch School of Arts at the NY University where she directed her first short. Later, her encounter with the Swiss director Jacqueline Veuve whom she assisted during 2006, confirmed her desire to become a film director herself.

In 2010 she obtained a M.A. in filmmaking from the ECAL-HEAD. Love Me Tender is her 2nd feature film.

Barbara Giordano studied at the Silvio D'Amico National Academy of Dramatic Art. She made her debut at the age of 15 as a protagonist at the Teatro Stabile in Catania in I Beati Paoli directed by G. Di Pasquale. Before being the protagonist of Love Me Tender she starred in Meraviglioso Boccaccio by the Fratelli Taviani. She has been a prominent TV and theatre actor since 12994.

Her mother was well-known actress Mariella Lo Giudice. At the age of 18 she moved from her native Sicily to Rome where she still lives.

Image Copyright: Amka and First Hand Films. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

August Diehl and Valerie Pachner and Face2Face host David Peck talk about Terence Malik’s new film A Hidden Life, true love, pacifism and evil, truth and justice, taking an ethical stance and standing up to power.

Trailer

Synopsis:

“..for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

George Eliot

A Hidden Life is based on the true story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian peasant farmer who refused to take the oath of allegiance to Hitler during World War II, sacrificing everything, including his life, rather than to fight for the Nazis.

When Franz is called up to basic training, a requirement for all Austrian men, he is away from his beloved wife and children for months. Eventually, when France surrenders and it seems the war might end soon, he is sent back home. His mother and sister-in-law Resie come to live with them, and for a while things seem to go on as normal.

Instead of retreating, the war escalates, and Franz and the other men in the village are called up to fight. The first requirement of a new soldier is to swear an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Despite pleas from his neighbors, fellow soldiers and commanding officers, Franz refuses the oath—objecting to Hitler and the Nazi regime. With a sense of personal responsibility and the inability to do what he believes is wrong, Franz refuses.

After months of incarceration, the case goes to trial. Franz is found guilty and sentenced to death. Franz continues to stand up for his beliefs and is executed by the Third Reich in August 1943. His wife and three daughters survive.  

The relationship, however, between Franz and his wife Fani endures. The film portrays their bond as deeply as Franz’s devotion to his cause. At every turn Fani is there for Franz - strong, unfaltering and supportive of his path while raising their daughters and running the farm alone, eventually with help from her mother-in-law and sister.

Terence Malik’s film draws on actual letters exchanged between Franz and Fani while Jägerstätter was in prison. The collection was edited by Erna Putz and published in English by Orbis Books. Some lines have been added to the letters, and sometimes the letters are paraphrased.

The story was little known outside of St. Radegund, and might never have been discovered, were it not for the research of Gordon Zahn, an American who visited the village in the 1970s.

About the Cast:

August Diehl made his debut in 23, which garnered him a Bavarian Film Award for Best Young Actor and a German Film Award for Best Actor. Best known for his role in the Academy Award-Winning The Counterfeiters and Inglorious Bastards Diehl’s additional credits include The Ninth Day, Slumming and If Not Us, Who.

Valerie Pachner was Born in Wels, Upper Austria, and trained at the famous Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. She moved to Munich after completing her studies. In 2013 she became part of the permanent ensemble at the Residenztheater.

In addition to her stage work, Pachner also took on movie roles, among them Egon Schiele: Death and The Maiden, a part for which she was awarded the Austrian Film Prize. Pachner played the lead in The Ground Beneath My Feet which received its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019.

Image Copyright: Elizabeth Bay Productions Productions. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Mahnaz Mohammadi, Farzad Pak and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film Son/Mother, activism, family, choices and women’s rights, tradition, values and storytelling, patriarchy, empathy and how things do change bit by bit, over time. 

Trailer

Synopsis:

Leila is a single working mom of two. The factory she works at faces a crisis and jobs are at stake. Kazem, the factory bus driver, proposes marriage to Leila, but she hesitates to accept his conditions. Kazem has a daughter the same age as her 12-year-old son, Amir, and since tradition frowns upon a young girl sharing a household with her step-brother, Kazem tells Leila not to bring her son until he marries his daughter off.

After Leila is fired from her job, she makes the decision to stay with Kazem and leave Amir at a boarding school for deaf children, while she tries to manage his return. There, Amir is forced to pretend he’s deaf-and-dumb, and after a few months tries to run away to search for his mother. On the run, he faces Kazem who asks him to think about his family’s future. Amir has to decide.

About the Directors:

Well-known for her provocative documentaries on social issues as well as her tireless activism, Iranian director Mahnaz Mohammadi has made headlines in the likes of The Guardian, the Hollywood Reporter or Variety, and has been supported by Amnesty International and the French Directors Guild (Société des réalisateurs de films) among others.

Mohammadi wrote and directed her first short documentary, Women without Shadows, in 2003. She instantly received praise at international film festivals for her depiction of homeless and abandoned women in a state-run shelter, and continued documenting everyday lives and struggles of people in her next couple of films.

The award-winning feature documentary Travelogue was shot on a train going from Tehran to Ankara, where Mohammadi questioned passengers about the reasons why they decided to flee the country. The film premiered in 2010 at the ‘A Day in Tehran’ event in Paris, with the director in attendance, which became one of the reasons for Iranian authorities to ban Mohammadi from leaving the country and from producing any more films.

The avid women’s rights activist also contributed to Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s documentary We Are Half the Iran’s Population, which portrayed the demands of Iranian women in the 2009 presidential election. At the time, Mohammadi was already considered a public enemy, her passport was withheld by the court, and her home was searched. The authorities also confiscated her work and filming equipment along with other personal belongings, while banning her from working as a filmmaker. Several of her films have been banned in Iran. In 2011, she starred in Reza Serkanian‘s drama The Momentary Marriage and was invited to the 64th Cannes Film Festival, but was not allowed to attend. Greek-French filmmaker Costa-Gavras read a letter she sent, including the famous words: “I am a woman, I am a filmmaker, two sufficient grounds to be guilty in this country.” In June, she was arrested and jailed in Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison. A month later, she was released on bail.

Farzad Park is the producer, long-time member of the Association of Independent Iranian Producers, and head of the Filminiran production company.

During his 20-year career in documentary and fi lm, he has worked in both Iranian and international productions spanning from Joanna Lumley’s silk road documentary to Costanza Quatriglio’s war drama Just Like My Son (Sembra mio fi glio), which was released in 2018 as an Italian, Croatian, and Belgian co-production.

Image Copyright: Farzad Park and Europe Media Nest. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

IGG Nabwana, VJ Emmie and Alan Ssali Hofmanis talk about their new film Crazy World, African storytelling, action films, traditions and taking chances and the super success of the Ugandan Wakaliwood.

Trailer

Synopsis:

In the latest from Uganda’s gonzo action auteur IGG Nabwana, a gang of child-snatching mobsters make a fatal mistake when they kidnap the Waka Stars, a team of pint-sized kung-fu masters who soon turn their cunning wits and deadly skills upon their captors.

For the past decade, IGG Nabwana and his crack team of fearless filmmakers and martial artists in the slums of Kampala, Uganda, have steadily produced dozens of exhilarating gonzo action films as part of an inspiring creative movement known as Wakaliwood. With their meagre resources buoyed by an exuberant ingenuity, these self-consciously scrappy epics chronicle domestic scandals and adversities ripped straight from the local headlines with brash exploitation-filmmaking gusto.

Conceived by Nabwana as a pre-emptive measure to discourage the kidnapping of his own children (seriously), Crazy World opens with the notorious Tiger Mafia (a frequent Wakaliwood antagonist) embarking on a child-abduction spree. Intending to sacrifice children in a misguided belief that their blood contains magical properties, the criminals make a crucial mistake when they snatch the WAKA STARS, Uganda's pint-sized kung-fu masters. Before long, these badass brats start applying their martial-arts prowess and cunning wits to escape their captors, while their desperate parents commence a rescue/revenge mission of their own.

Crazy World is the third Wakaliwood feature to be translated for an international release following Who Killed Captain Alex? and Bad Black, both of which earned accolades and awards at international film festivals around the globe. Per a Ugandan oral tradition, every outrageous moment is both contextualized and accentuated by the acerbic wit of an offscreen narrator or "video joker," who at one point exclaims: "BEST KIDZ MOVIE EVAH!" He is not wrong. Welcome to Wakaliwood.

About our Guests:

IGG Nabwana was born in Kampala, Uganda. Since 2005, he has directed nearly 50 feature films, including Who Killed Captain Alex?, Rescue Team, Bukunja Tekunja Mitti: The Cannibals, The Revenge, and Bad Black. Crazy World is the first of his films to screen at the Festival.

VJ Emmie (Video Joker) is Part Narrator, part Cheerleader, a Video Joker is a unique Ugandan style of storytelling where a translate a movie live before an audience, when normal subtitles are not possible for technical reasons or illiteracy. It is an extremely popular art form within Uganda and VJ Emmie is easily the most famous with over 5000 titles to his name and a career spanning 10 years, starting with Who Killed Captain Alex: Uganda's First Action Movie. 

The World Premiere of Wakaliwood's Crazy World at TIFF will be the first live VJ performance outside Uganda, and the first time VJ Emmie has traveled outside Uganda.

Neither he nor filmmaker Nabwan IGG have ever been to a movie theatre.

Alan Ssali Hofmanis is the co-producer and a festival program director in a previous life, Alan Ssali Hofmanis sold everything he had in NY and moved into the Ugandan village of Wakailga with Nabwana IGG and his team to help produce, translate, and share these films with the world. He is also a bonafide Ugandan action move star, starring in Wakaliwood's previous hit film, Bad Black, winner of the Audience Award at Fantastc Fest in Austin, TX.

Image Copyright: IGG Nabwana and Wakaliwood. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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Fisher Stevens and Malcolm Venville and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film And We Go Green, the environment, Climate Change, eco-capitalists, Electric Cars, Formula E and social innovation. 

Trailer

Synopsis:

Formula E, the groundbreaking electric car racing series, has grown from upstart championship to the world's fastest growing sport in 4 short years. Through its pulsating and unpredictable racing spectacle featuring the most skillful drivers and most advanced car manufacturers, Formula E is exciting millions about the potential of electric performance in order to combat climate change and air pollution in our cities.

With unprecedented access, And We Go Green is the human story of the live wires, underdogs and visionaries who have made this sport such a success and are reinventing racing for the next generation of motorsport fans.

Directed by Fisher Stevens and Malcolm Venville and produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, this highly cinematic documentary uses intimate character-driven storylines, behind-the-scenes vérité, and thrilling race footage to thrust you into the drama of a climatic 2018/19 championship and leave you in the driving seat in a race against the clock for a cleaner future.

About the Directors:

Fisher Stevens has been in the entertainment business for over 30 years. He directed The Confidence Man, ”for Netflix original series Dirty Money, and, with Leonardo DiCaprio, National Geographic’s Before the Flood, winner of the Hollywood Film Award. He co-directed two-time Emmy-nominated Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds for HBO, and directed three-time Emmy-nominated Netflix original film Mission Blue. He co-directed Independent Spirit Award-winning Crazy Love.

Stevens also produced Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove, and follow-up film, Racing Extinction for Discovery, nominated for an Academy Award for best song. He produced Emmy-nominated film Woody Allen: A Documentary for American Masters, SXSW Grand Jury Award-winner Beware of Mr. Baker, and 2016 Sundance opening-night documentary, Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang for Netflix. Stevens directed Paramount Classic’s feature film Just a Kiss, starring Marisa Tomei, Kyra Sedgwick and Taye Diggs. He produced films including five-time Academy Award-nominated drama In the Bedroom, A Prairie Home Companion, Piñero, Swimfan, and Uptown Girls. Stevens directed feature film Stand Up Guys for Lionsgate starring Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin. He also directed John Leguizamo’s Ghetto Klown, on Broadway, which he later adapted and directed for an HBO special.

As an actor, Stevens appears in numerous television shows and movies, including The Blacklist, The Good Fight, the Cohen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar! and Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs.

Malcolm Venville is a performance driven visual storyteller whose projects span the mediums of film, television, commercials and documentaries.

His advertising campaigns include Apple, Volkswagen, Nike, Porsche and Google. Notable commercials Apple iPad Air Pencil, Google's New Baby, and Squarespace's debut Super Bowl spot.

More recently, he gave an introduction to the workers at Jack Daniel's in the spot From the Maker's Of. Venville made his feature film debut with the dark comedy 44 Inch Chest starring Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, John Hurt, and Tom Wilkinson.

His next film, Henry's Crime, featured Keanu Reeves, Vera Farmiga, and James Caan. His work also includes the documentary shorts Portrait of a Dancer and Philophiles. He has published three works of photography: The Women of Casa X, Lucha Loco, a collection of more than 100 portraits of Mexican wrestlers; and Layers, a monograph of his work as an art and advertising photographer.

Venville has most recently been working on a feature length documentary about Formula E “And We Go Green”, the electric car racing formula and a limited series for A&E on the life of United States President, Civil War hero, and abolitionist, Ulysses S. Grant.

Image Copyright: Appian Way and Bloomfish Productions. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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Jan Komasa and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his brilliant, engaging, thoughtful new film Corpus Christi, redemption and the power of communities to reconcile and restore, the Polish Bible Belt, shame, guilt and forgiveness and the ability to healing through our relationships with others. 

Trailer

“Komasa directs with an impressive rigor that fits the subject matter, and the incorporation of subtle ecclesiastical embellishments in the score adds to the imposing solemnity. The smoldering center of it all is Bielenia’s remarkable performance.”                                            

The Hollywood Reporter

Synopsis:

Recently released from a youth detention facility, a young man hiding from his past poses as a priest in a small Polish town, where the healing he provides may not be enough to resolve his own test of faith. When the whole world is at odds and all seems lost, what is left? Corpus Christi is the story of 20-year-old Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia, a major talent on the rise), who, after serving a sentence in a youth detention centre for a violent crime, must face his inner demons while searching for redemption.

Running from the troubles that haunt him and hiding from his past by posing as a priest in a small Polish town, Daniel is, clandestinely, given the chance for spiritual transformation. Meanwhile, the arrival of this charismatic young preacher provides an opportunity for his divided flock to begin healing after a polarizing tragedy. But not everyone is capable of forgiveness or deliverance, and following the road to salvation can also lead one astray.

As his past sins catch up to his already heavy and burdened conscience, Daniel's intentions are murky and the haven of religion may prove to be more than just a spiritual escape. Set in a country with increasingly blurred lines between church and state, Corpus Christi calls dogma and prostrating into question as Daniel's real test of faith ultimately presents itself at a moment when he's not at the altar.

With thanks to Dorota lech from TIFF

About the Director:

Jan Komasa is a Polish film director, screenwriter, and producer best known for directing the films Suicide Room and Warsaw 44. His films were premiered or won awards at Cannes Film Festival Berlin Film Festival, Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival.

Komasa was born in Poznan, Greater Poland. His father, Wieslaw Komasa, is an acclaimed theater actor and professor at National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw. His mother, Gina Komasa, is a singer, music producer, music supervisor. She was a Director of Entertainment Department at Polish Television and a director of festivals: Sopot International Song Festival, National Festival of Polish Song in Opole. His brother, Szymon Komasa, is a bass-baritone singer, graduate of Jiulliard School in New York and Guildhall School of Music in London.

He has two sisters: Maria Komasa-Łazarkiewicz is a singer, composer and wife of a composer Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz. Zofia Komasa is a costume designer. Komasa clearly come from a talented family of artists and was raised in Warsaw, where they moved in 1988. He attended Stanislaw Moniuszko Primary Music School. He, along with his siblings, was a child actor in television shows, programmes and movies due to his mother professional engagement at Polish Television.

In 1993 his father played a part in Schindler's List. Watching the film crew work and meeting Steven Spielberg made him consider film directing as his future profession.

He graduated from National Film School in Łódz and currently teaches at the Theatre Academy in Warsaw.

His new film Suicide Room: The Hater is to be premiered in 2020.

Image Copyright: Aurum Film and Jan Komasa. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Rebecca Snow and Steve Gamester and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film Cheating Hitler: Surviving The Holocaust, survivors guilt, meaningful history and the power of memory, pivotal moments in personal stories and why we never should forget.

Trailer

You can watch the film here.

Synopsis:

Rose, Maxwell and Helen were 10, 9 and 7 years old when the Second World War began. Robbed of their childhood, they were old before they were young.

They endured the terror of forced labour, killing squads and concentration camps. After the war, they discovered their families had been decimated, that their homes were reduced to rubble, and their possessions lost or stolen. Now, 75 years after the war ended, these three survivors are looking for answers to deeply personal questions they’ve carried with them their entire lives.

Cheating Hitler is a modern-day investigation into lingering mysteries from the Holocaust. Three survivors and family members travel to Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania exploring some of the hidden and rarely visited sites where the Holocaust occurred. They consult with historians, genealogists and forensic experts and uncover new life-changing information.

Children have always been central to the story of the Holocaust. The most recognized victim, Anne Frank, was a child. And yet, for decades, the testimony of most child survivors was overlooked. Some felt overshadowed by the experiences of their elders, too traumatized to share their memories, or felt guilt for surviving and living long lives.

This film focuses entirely on the unique experiences of children survivors, now in their final years, and often telling stories and revealing secrets on camera for the first time. Their testimony provides a powerful warning from history and a last chance to solve lingering mysteries.

Cheating Hitler is about one of the darkest chapters of human history, but what shines through are stories of resilience, bravery and survival.

About the Guests:

Rebecca Snow is an award winning director, writer and producer specializing in history and social issue documentaries. 

Rebecca won the 2018 Canadian Screen Award for Best Direction in a Documentary Program for Real Vikings: Viking Women. Her early career was spent in the UK working on BBC’s The Battle for North America, Simon Schama’s Power of Art and the dramatized series Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire.

Her writing/directing broadcast credits include CBC’s Nature of Things, NBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? And for History Channel; Museum Secrets, Perfect Storms, Battle Castle and Mummies Alive. She also co-produced Hunting Nazi Treasure. 

In 2018 Rebecca created, produced and directed the online documentary series The Better is Possible Project. Intimate and inspiring mini-documentaries about six very different people facing their own personal struggles and how they are using their experiences to fuel change. A number of the shorts are currently playing festivals worldwide.

Her first feature documentary Period: a film about menstrual equity is scheduled for release in 2019.

Steve Gamester is a founding partner of Saloon Media. He has worked as a Development Executive, Broadcaster, Executive Producer, Producer and Series Show Runner for clients in Canada, the United States, the UK and Germany. 

He is currently producing two feature-length documentaries, the first about the impact of 9/11 on American society, and the second about children survivors of the Holocaust. Both are due for release in late 2019. In 2016-17 he developed and produced Hunting Nazi Treasure (8 x 60), a Canada-UK co-production for History Canada, Channel 4 UK and AHC in the US. The series travelled to 13 countries on 4 continents to investigate the Nazi looting of cultural objects during the Second World War. In 2016 he developed and produced the 1 x 60 special Auction House for History Canada.

In 2015 he produced Mummies Alive, a six-part UK-Canada co-production for Smithsonian Channel US, UKTV, History Canada and ZDF. In 2013-14, he produced Miracles Decoded, for AETN International. In 2012-13 he developed and produced Perfect Storms: Disasters that Changed the World, for History Canada, Smithsonian US, UKTV. In 2011, he co-produced the feature one-off documentary The Great Escape: Secrets Revealed for Channel 4 in the UK and History in Canada. 

Prior to joining eOne he developed and was the Series Producer of Museum Secrets, a returning series that broadcasts on History in Canada, Smithsonian in the USA, Yesterday in the UK, and is distributed by BBC Worldwide.

Steve’s productions have been nominated for over twenty Canadian Screen Awards.

From 2005 to 2009, Steve was a Production Executive of Original Programming at Canwest and Alliance Atlantis and oversaw more than 300 hours of programming for History, National Geographic, Showcase, and Global Television. 

Steve has a Masters in Public History from the University of Waterloo and an Honors BA in History from Huron College.

Image Copyright: Saloon Media, Steve Gamestar and Rebecca Snow. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Joshua Jay and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new book How Magicians Think, mystery, philosophy and wonder, asking good questions, doing what you

love, problem solving and why magic matters.

To buy tickets for Thursday, November the 10th head to Jokers.

About Josh:

Joshua has performed on stages in over 100 countries. He was awarded the top prize at the World Magic Seminar and has fooled Penn & Teller on their hit show, Fool

Us. He holds a Guinness World Record in card magic. Jay has performed magic on numerous television shows, including appearances on The Tonight Show with

Jimmy Fallon and The Late, Late Show with James Corden.

Joshua Jay is the author of several books, including the best-selling MAGIC: The Complete Course, and the upcoming How Magicians Think.

He has designed illusions for stage and screen, including a recent collaboration with HBO for Game of Thrones. Joshua consulted with the United States Postal

Service on the design of their postage stamp series, Magic.

Joshua appeared at the 2008 Inaugural Ball for President Barack Obama and has also delivered private performances for former President Clinton.

Most recently, Joshua was awarded Magician of the Year 2020 by the Society of American Magicians Parent Assembly for his contribution to the art of magic.

Image Copyright and Credit: Joshua Jay.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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John Walker and Aaron James and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film Assholes: A Theory, the public good, economics and indifference, activism and authoritarianism, capitalism and greed, public spaces and shared prosperity.

Trailer

You Can Buy the Book here.

Synopsis:

Ever get the feeling that assholes are taking over the world?

Bad behaviour is as old as human history, something we all encounter at some point—whether on the playground, in the workplace or in public life. But the phenomenon seems to be amplified in an age of venomous social media and resurgent authoritarian politics.

With rampant narcissism threatening to trash civilization as we know it, the time has come for Assholes: A Theory, an entertaining and oh-so-timely new doc from acclaimed director John Walker. Built around a lively conversation with philosopher Aaron James, author of the New York Times bestseller of the same name, Assholes: A Theory investigates the breeding grounds of contemporary “asshole culture”—and locates a few hopeful signs of civility in an otherwise rude-’n-nasty universe.

Venturing into a predominantly male domain, Walker moves from the frat clubs of elite colleges to the bratty princedoms of Silicon Valley and bear pits of international finance. Why do entitled assholes thrive in certain environments? What explains their perverse appeal and success? And how do they keep getting elected!

Weighing in with pungent commentary are observers like actor John Cleese, referring sweetly to the hedge-fund trade as an “arsehole factory”—echoing law professor Saule Omarova’s tart appraisal of financial services as “a quintessential asshole industry.” While Leslie Miley, one of the few African-Americans to rise through Silicon Valley’s ranks, assesses the damage done by the move-fast-and-break-things mantra, and former police officer Sherry Lee Benson-Podolchuk shatters the clichéd image of the courteous Mountie with Women Not Wanted, her exposé of misogynistic assholery within the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Other featured interviews include policy consultant Robert Hockett, who worked for both Occupy Wall Street and the US Federal Reserve in the wake of the 2008 crash; banker Paul Purcell, who has pioneered a novel “no asshole rule” at his company; and Italian LGBTQ activist Vladimir Luxuria, a former parliamentarian who famously locked horns with Silvio Berlusconi, the p***y-grabbing prototype of the 21st-century demagogue.

About the Guests:

John Walker is one of Canada’s most prolific and respected documentary filmmakers. His films have been widely broadcast and have appeared at major international film festivals in Toronto, Vancouver, New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London and Tokyo. From the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, he has received 19 nominations and awards, including the coveted Donald Brittain Award for best social/political documentary, for Utshimassits: Place of the Boss.

Walker also received a Gemini for best documentary director (The Hand of Stalin) and a Genie for best feature documentary (Strand – Under the Dark Cloth), a personal portrait of his mentor, the photographer and filmmaker Paul Strand. His film on the Cape Breton coal miners’ choir, Men of the Deeps, won three Gemini Awards, including best performing arts, best documentary photography and best sound, as well as a best director nomination.

Walker’s directorial credits on Great Britain’s Channel 4 include Hidden Children, a film about children who concealed their Jewish identity to survive the Holocaust; Orphans of Manchuria, also nominated for the Donald Brittain Award; and the groundbreaking Distress Signals, based on the communication theories of Canadian scholar Harold Innis, which also received a nomination for a Donald Brittain Award. With Utshimassits: Place of the Boss, he turned his attention to a tragedy on Canadian soil – juxtaposing the powerful testimony of the Mushuau Innu of Davis Inlet with the vast Labrador landscape. Walker’s feature-length films include the Genie-nominated The Fairy Faith, Tough Assignment, Strand – Under the Dark Cloth, and the critically acclaimed feature drama A Winter Tan, starring Jackie Burroughs, which received seven Genie nominations including best motion picture and best director, and won best actress.

Walker also co-produced, wrote and directed the provocative feature film Passage, a fiction/documentary for BBC and History Television about the search for the fabled Northwest Passage. The Toronto Star called it “One of the great triumphs in Canadian documentary film history.” His feature documentary A Drummer’s Dream was described by the Globe and Mail as “Beautifully shot and recorded with a lovely sound … (it) isn’t really about drumming, but about joy and self-expression.”

His passionate commitment to the documentary form led him to co-found DOC, Documentary Organization of Canada (formerly Canadian Independent Film Caucus). Now based in Halifax, Walker conducts master classes across the country and mentors numerous emerging filmmakers. He served as guest programmer for Hot Docs, the Canadian International Documentary Festival, and has been a board member since 2011.

Aaron James holds a PhD from Harvard and is professor of philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Assholes: A Theory, Assholes: A Theory of Donald Trump, and Fairness in Practice: A Social Contract for a Global Economy and numerous academic articles. He was awarded a Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and spent the 2009-10 academic year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

He’s a skilled, lifelong surfer and lives in Irvine, California.

Image Copyright: John Walker Productions Ltd. and the National Film Board of Canada. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Coky Giedroyc and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new film How To Build a Girl, friendship, loyalty and family, discovery and how life unfolds in front of us in a real, messy and wonderful way and the uncertain personal journeys we all seem to take.

Synopsis:

Johanna Morrigan (Beanie Feldstein) is a sixteen-year-old, extrovert from the outskirts of Wolverhampton with raging hormones and gigantic dreams. Even though she loves her big, boisterous, dysfunctional family, Johanna knows with absolute certainty that there is something bigger and better for her out in the world. And when she finds it, only then will she start ‘being me’. But quite what ‘me’ is, hasn’t been invented yet.

With her inimitable wit and bottomless imagination, writing is surely her ticket to a brand-new self. After a couple of false starts, Johanna wins a job at top music magazine, D&ME and reinvents herself as revered and feared music critic – Dolly Wilde, the enfant terrible. As she slaughters her way to greater and greater success, the lines between Johanna Morrigan and Dolly Wilde begin to haze. Can she curate her success and hold onto her family, her heroes and her heart? And once you’ve built your girl, is it possible to tear her down and start again?

Based on the novel by Caitlin Moran, How To Build a Girl is an irreverent coming of age comedy about what it’s really like to be a girl.

About the Director:

Coky Giedroyc is a British, critically acclaimed director most recently celebrated for her work on Harlots, written by Moira Buffini for Monumental Television and Hulu.

In 2016, she was awarded a BAFTA for best director of The Sound Of Music

Live starring Kara Tointon and Alexander Armstrong. Coky set up the award-winning drama The Hour written by Abi Morgan and starring Dominic West, Ben Wishaw and Romola Garai which she was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Emmy. She was nominated for both an International Emmy and a BAFTA for the BBC Drama, The Virgin Queen, starring Anne Marie Duff and Tom Hardy. She directed Oliver Twist and

Wuthering Heights, both of which also starred Hardy. Other credits include the four-part BBC1 series What Remains written by Tony Basgallop, Spies of Warsaw, an adaptation of Alan Furst’s novel and Nativity, a Canadian co-production starring Tatiana Maslany.

Her work in the US has included: The Killing, Penny Dreadful with Eva Green and Rory Kinnear, Broad Squad, a pilot for ABC, Veena Sud’s series Seven Seconds and Gypsy, starring Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup. Coky served for four years on the board of Directors UK and is a mentor to young female filmmakers starting out in the industry.

Image Copyright: Coky Giedroyc and Film 4 and Tango Entertainment. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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

Shawney Cohen and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new Rat Park, addiction, mental health, context and environment, boredom and drug decriminalization and rats that meditate.

Trailer

Watch on CRAVE TV and for more info on the film head here.  

Synopsis:

The secret to solving the world’s drug crisis lies in a forgotten psychology experiment involving rats and heroin. Thirty years later, RAT PARK shows how the experiment’s radical findings are more relevant than ever. Following three stories 10,000 miles apart, we witness why drug laws and addiction are not really about the drugs. They’re about the cages we live in. In Portugal, a ceramics artist struggles with an all-consuming heroin problem even in a society that unconditionally supports drug users On the other side of the world, a young grieving mother and a hardened photojournalist in the Philippines grapple with the extrajudicial killings of drug users.

And in Palm Beach, an outlaw recovery worker fights for life-saving tools for drug users living in ground zero of America’s opioid crisis. Through the perspective of the rat experiment's creator and leading drug policy experts, RAT PARK shows us that a world where all drugs are legalized might be the only option in the aftermath of the futile war on drugs.

About the Director:

Shawney Cohen is a Toronto based filmmaker who has created some of the most important documentaries for VICE. His film Dopesick gained international attention for being one of the first feature documentaries to uncover the street use and origins of fentanyl. The film was part of the VICE Canada Reports Series which won a Canadian Screen Award in 2017. The Manor was Cohen's feature directing debut and nominated for Best International Documentary at the Zurich Film Festival. The documentary was also awarded a special mention jury prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and selected as the opening night gala film at Hot Docs.

Image Copyright: Shawney Cohen and VICE Studios. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

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

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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