“REEL CANADA: In-School Film Festivals as a Medium for Values Based Education” Jack Blum and Sharon Corder Saturday August 11 from 2:30 – 3:30

1. EARL HAIG SECONDARY SCHOOL
Department of English
Monday, February 27th, 2012
Ontario Arts Council
151 Bloor Street West
5 th floor
Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1T6
Re: REEL CANADA
To Whom It May Concern:
A week tomorrow, we will be running our 7th annual REEL CANADA Film Festival at Earl Haig
Secondary School. We were a pilot school for the project in its first two years when REEL
CANADA came in with projection equipment, crews, films and guests to help put on the festival.
Since then, we have continued to mount our own festival each year with the blessings of REEL
CANADA founders, Jack Blum and Sharon Corder.
At Earl Haig, about 800+ students are involved in a REEL CANADA festival. After next week,
we will have shown 28 feature or documentaries films as well as a number of short and animation
programs. Each screening is followed by a guest speaker (see separate list of films and some of the
many speakers.) While the films are rich on so many levels, the opportunity to engage with people
like Gordon Pinsent, Sarah Polley, Don McKellar, Peter Lynch and Peter Raymont is invaluable.
Students have benefited from experiencing the passion and commitment to film making and to
ideas that all the guests bring with them. This is true education and these guests impart important
life lessons to students that, coupled with the films, have a huge impact on our teenagers.
Over the years, I have watched REEL CANADA develop better-and-better support resources for
teachers and students like curriculum-related study guides. Teachers even use their rich resource
catalogue in preparing Grade 10 students for the literacy test. REEL CANADA reaches out to
teachers from all disciplines and I recently attended a workshop of theirs with 200 other teachers
from the TDSB on our Pro-D day on February 17th.
100 Princess Avenue, Toronto, ON, M2N 3R7
Telephone: (416) 395-3210 Extension 20090 Fax: (416) 395-4203

2. With the Claude Watson School for the Performing Arts as part of the larger school, Earl Haig is a
strong promoter of the Arts and mounting a REEL CANADA film festival underscores the
importance of Canadian film as one of our art forms. In 2007, Earl Haig graduated its first class of
Screen Arts majors, and REEL CANADA has helped strengthen many of the curriculum
expectations for their courses. Over the years, we have tailored the festival to reach into the other
areas of arts curriculum besides Screen Arts – Drama, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts. As well, we
have selected Canadian films that target other departments like English, Modern Languages,
Science, Socials, Phys Ed, and ESL. The festival has generated more discussion in the school
about Canadian feature and documentary films and as a result, we are using more Canadian film in
our teaching. Within the English Department alone, films like Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, The
Snow Walker, Passchendaele, Shake Hands With the Devil, Who Has Seen the Wind, Such A Long
Journey, and the NFB’s McLuhan’s Wake, RiP: A Remix Manifesto, Ryan, and Reel Injun, have all
been added as they complement curriculum expectations, themes and other materials. We have a
large ESL population in this school of 2200+ students and this festival helps these students with
their enculturation process as new Canadians.
When I first began teaching Canadian Literature in the mid-1970s, Margaret Atwood’s thematic
treatment of Canadian Literature, Survival, was an important reference guide. While our context
has changed considerably – e.g. the make-up of our population and the growing importance of
film as text and story-telling – Atwood’s basic thesis remains relevant for me:
“Literature is not only a mirror; it is also a map, a geography
of the mind. Our literature is one such map, if we can learn
to read it as our literature, as the product of who and where we
have been. We need such a map desperately, we need to know about
here, because here is where we live. For the members of a country
or culture, shared knowledge of their place, their here, is not a
luxury but a necessity.”
REEL CANADA helps us rediscover the importance of our Canadian stories. This organization is
creative in its programming, professional in delivering it at many levels, totally responsive to
teachers’ requests and a school’s needs, and fun to work with. In my long teaching career, I can
say that this has been one of the most rewarding projects that I have been involved with. With the
support from REEL CANADA, I am proud that Earl Haig has been able to carry on its own
Canadian film-festival and become a model for other schools in Ontario.
Yours sincerely,
David Reid
Department of English
(former Curriculum Leader)
100 Princess Avenue, Toronto, ON, M2N 3R7
Telephone: (416) 395-3210 Extension 20090 Fax: (416) 395-4203

3. ---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dan Retson <danretson@hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 7:57 AM
Subject: Reel Canada Funding
To: Mark Meeks <mark@reelcanada.com>, alison@reelcanada.com
To Whom it May Concern,
I am a teacher with the Toronto District School Board. I would like to
express how lucky my school has been to host the Reel Canada Film
Festival. For three years the festival has come to our school and
been nothing short of transformative for our students.
When we first contacted Reel Canada, we thought we understood
what it was, a day of Canadian culture to act as a value added event
in our school year. Of course it was that, but we underestimated its
value, the true effect of the event was so much greater.
The festival provided a venue for students and teachers alike to
partake in an authentically Canadian cultural experience; an
exchange of ideas that was truly Canadian. As I write the word
Canadian I realize that in no small way the festival has helped to
shape what that word means to me. Though we use it every day, our
understanding of the word Canadian is informed mostly when we are
given opportunities to view the marvelous mosaic of cultures and
peoples our country includes.
The festival is one such opportunity. It provides Canadian youth with
a rare change to feel the beating cultural heart of who we are and
what we have to say. These are the youth we are trying to encourage
to get involved in the conversation of what it is to be Canadian. If we can
show them what it feels like to be Canadian, we are giving them the power
to shape the future of our national identity, to keep it alive and growing.
Beyond tired stereotypes of Canadiana, the Festival is one of the rare
chances our students have to gain insight into what Canada looks
like. Refreshingly, that picture of Canada often looks at lot like them.
Seeing their faces reflected in the variety of
cultural artifacts incorporated into the Festival's program addresses
the needs of our the most at risk students. Students who so often

4. find teachers nothing more than authority figures, are able to laugh
and cry sitting next to their teachers. They get to finally see an image
that resembles their Canada or possibly for the first time they begin
to understand what Canada is for others across the country by
viewing an honest portrait of their lives.
Not only does the festival inspire our students on a cultural level, but the
Canadian guests who came to our school and made and starred in the
films inspired our students to understand that the movies are not just a
Hollywood product which we consume. Film can be a labour of love made
by people just like themselves.
In an age when our students are becoming increasingly media savvy,
their potential as media producers is sadly under-encouraged in our
schools. We show them how to use a camera, but if we cannot show
them a venue where their product speaks to an audience then we are
not really giving them any idea of why they would bother to put their
ideas to film.
The Reel Canada Film Festival is a gift in our school. A response to
the deafening roar of foreign culture in which our students are
perpetually engulfed. The festival has given our students another
view. A view not just of film, but of who they are and what they can
be. I for one believe that what Reel Canada accomplishes in our
schools everyday provides our students with the knowledge that they
have a voice and they live in a country waiting to hear it.
Dan Retson
Teacher
Monarch Park Collegiate
Toronto Ontario

5. Learning the Now
Gino Bondi
Why Aesthetic Literacy?
Posted on November 25, 2010 by Gino Bondi
This is going to be good. I like public things. I like public schools and public people.
Leon Bronstein in The Trotsky
Today, thanks to the indefatigable efforts of Dustin Keller (http://jo-online.vsb.bc.ca/keller/ twitter:
@Solitaryvox) we hosted our first ever John Oliver Film Festival. Sponsored by Reel Canada, 8 movies were
screened all day throughout the school with over 1200 students serving as a viewing audience.
A whole day watching films: why?
Because we need to celebrate the brilliant work of Canadian film makers;
Because we want our students to appreciate that walking into a theatre, a public, communal space is an
“experience”;
Because aesthetic literacy, an understanding and appreciation of the arts, is essential if we expect those around us
to be responsive and empathic to the wonders and, concomitantly, the mundane in the world;
Because if we do not give our students ‘access points’ to film and the arts we will have failed in our efforts to
provide them with a comprehensive education;
Because, as Film: 21st Century Literacy espouses, “in the same way that we take for granted that society has a
responsibility to help children to read and write – to use and enjoy words – we should take it for granted that we
help children and young people to use, enjoy and understand moving images; not just to be technically capable
but to be culturally literate too.”
As I was sitting in the South Gym watching “The Trotsky” this morning, I couldn’t help but be moved by the
beauty and significance of the event. There were 350 students, eating popcorn, being respectful of the ad hoc
theatre space and each other, and truly engaging in the movie (when 17 ½ year old Leon Bronstein (Jay Baruchel)
kissed 27 year old Alexandra (Emily Hampshire), I smiled as the 200 boys in the crowd started clapping – yes
dreams can come true! However, a line that truly did resonate with me was spoken by Frank (Michael Murphy), a
burned-out activist-turned-college professor, who tells Leon that “things have a way of improving if we
improve them ourselves.”
Things have improved at JO because rather than being drowned out by the squeaky wheel noise of our
surrounding political and organizational inertia, we (staff, students and parents) have improved our school . . .
ourselves. Initiatives, directions and curriculum will always change; however, in hosting this film festival, in using
film as a means to engage with our community, in speaking with our students today about what they saw and what
they experienced, we continue to improve our community by ‘connecting’ and speaking to the hearts of all,
addressing not only what they learn but what they feel; we stay committed to the promise that, through the arts,
our students can and will grow in their understanding of themselves and the world around them.
As I was leaving this evening, still all emotional and teary eyed over how “special” this day was, I realized that I

6. had forgotten my blackberry on the stage in the auditorium. Not wishing to run halfway across the school toting
all of my bags, I approached a couple of grade 9 girls who were sitting on the floor doing homework – how could I
go wrong?!? I called one of the girls over and asked her if she would go to the auditorium for me. Her nod
signifying acceptance of the mission, I took out my school master key and ceremoniously enlightened her with the
fact that for the next 2 minutes, with this key, she would be the most powerful person in the school. She looked at
me in awe; soft lighting engulfed her as she took the key from my extended fingers, gracefully turned to her friend
and with an innocence and excitement which could not be feigned said, “Look, the custodian’s keys.”
Cut! That’s a wrap!
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Learning the Now
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