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The Documentary Media Society is proud to present the 4th annual Connexions Youth Forum, an educational program designed and dedicated to fostering documentary filmmaking and storytelling skills in youth between 19 and 26 years of age. In partnership with the National Film Board of Canada, Connexions immerses young aspiring documentary filmmakers through workshops, mentoring sessions and attendance at the DOXA Festival.
DOXA and the National Film Board are pleased to welcome: Mangla Bansal, Dominique Basi, Geneviève Cloutier, Jessica Gates, Ingrid Nilson and Sarah Wang.
Watch the shorts made by the Connexions participants during the 2009 DOXA festival.
Connexions Partners
 
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Elisa Chee (Animation Instructor)
Elisa Chee graduated from the animation program at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Since then she has worked on commercial projects as well as independent animated films. Mentoring with the NFB allows her to share her love for the craft of animation and storytelling. |
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Catrina Longmuir (Associate Producer, Instructor)
Catrina Longmuir is an Associate Producer with the National Film Board of Canada (Pacific & Yukon Centre). She produces “Our World” an initiative that works with aboriginal youth living in remote First Nations communities to create short films in First Language. Other projects in production include a partially-animated doc, “Kids in Jail” and the documentary “Finding Farley”. |
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Lisa Nielsen (Filmmaker Instructor)
Lisa Nielsen is an award winning short filmmaker who has been involved in the technical side of digital storytelling for the NFB since 2005. From seniors to at-risk youth, from first nations communities to elementary school communities, artist to novice...we all have a story to tell. Lisa “g” is currently working on part 2 and 3 of a trilogy of films about Riverview Hospital. |
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Mo Simpson (Filmmaker Instructor)
Moira Simpson's work as an award-winning freelance director, cinematographer and editor spans 30 years. The subjects of her documentaries range from strife in Kosovo, to youth and drug addiction, to the complexities of offering aid to Africa. She was recently DOP on Finding Dawn, looking at the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women across Canada. As a filmmaker in residence with Fearless City Mobile, Mo is currently exploring the use of mobile phone video technology with residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
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Mangla Bansal is a young Indo-Canadian filmmaker born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a graduate from Capilano College, ‘07. She shot her first two documentaries in India dealing with international issues, as well as, personal stories. Mangla’s passion in filmmaking revolves around meaningful stories but a sense of humour is just as important to her. She has worked in the film and television industry in various roles.
Mangla has a real future in film. She is comfortable in two languages and two cultures. She has a perceptive eye and the ability to put her perceptions on the screen. Mangla’s favourite quote is “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier” -Mother Theresa.
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Dominique Basi graduated with honors from high school in 2004. She spent a year volunteering across Canada with Katimavik, and got a lot of messiness out of the way all at once. In 2006 she graduated from Langara College’s intensive three term Publishing: Techniques and Technologies certificate program. There, in addition to learning the ins and outs of publishing for print and web, Dominique worked on Pacific Rim Magazine as the Advertisement Traffic Manager. After graduating from that program, she remained at Langara for an additional three terms to study sociology. She is a recent graduate of the Capilano University Documentary Program and is proud to have finished her final project, an 11 minute documentary short called Bus Driver.
While Dominique enjoys publishing and sociology, nothing has inspired and motivated her more than documentary filmmaking. She is grateful for the opportunity that DOXA’s Connexions Youth Forum offers, and is eager to begin her next project.
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Geneviève Cloutier was born in Ottawa in 1983. She moved to the west
coast after being enrolled in development studies at Queen's
University. She has just graduated from Emily Carr's Film, Video and
Integrated Media program; her work explores cognitive and geographical
landscapes, identity, gender, and the objects of subjectivity in
relation to a theatrical society. She employs video, performance,
documentary and installation to linguistically explore these tropes,
while using the grammar of a self-proclaimed imagined
situationalism. She recently gave birth to a son named Mordecai.
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Jessica Gates graduated from the Selkirk College Independent Digital Film Program in 2009. There she focused on documentary film and completed two short pieces. Both of these films set to deconstruct assumptions about others and challenge viewers to embrace the diversity that exists amongst us. Jessica approaches film as a way to explore the world around her. Through this medium she hopes to expand her interests in travel, social and environmental activism, art and health, as well as, pursue a career as an independent documentary filmmaker.
To quote the program coordinator at Selkirk “Jessica possesses a natural talent for documentary filmmaking. Not only does she produce beautifully composed work – rich in colour and substance, but she is very sensitive to the people she documents and the stories they tell."
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Ingrid Nilson
Having worked professionally as an actor in the film industry for eight years, Ingrid just recently began to explore the other side of the camera. This transition was inspired by her love for storytelling and writing - skills that she has been honing as an honour roll student at UBC. Raised in Regina, she played one of her first roles in the Saskatchewan-filmed, internationally-acclaimed feature Falling Angels, directed by documentarian Scott Smith. She was also proud to play the role of "Patti" for five seasons on the multicultural, Gemini Award winning youth TV series renegadepress.com, also filmed in her home province. With the aspiration of a continued and multifarious career in film, she is very grateful for this opportunity.
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Sarah Wang has been making movies since 2007 and starring in them since 1985. This spring she graduated from the Documentary Program at Capilano University, where her first project was shot entirely in the documentary classroom and examined her classmates' growing reliance on popcorn and granola bars whilst working on their first projects. Taking the lessons of the initial exercise she just completed a piece about night work entitled 'The Weird City'.
In film and general her greatest interest is food, its relation to everything else in life, and hopefully exploring these connections cinematically. She has designs on travelogue/food guide films of the cities she knows best, and a documentary about men and barbecuing. Some day she also plans to work on a cooking show.
In her pre-documentary days she lived in England for a couple of years, and one blissful autumn afternoon made prolonged eye contact with Kevin Spacey outside the Old Vic Theatre. |
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