BLK, An Origin Story

Last updated

BLK: An Origin Story is a Canadian documentary television series, which aired in 2022 on History. [1] Created, directed and produced by Sudz Sutherland and Jennifer Holness for Hungry Eyes Film and Television, the series explores Black Canadian history. [2]

Contents

The four episodes explored the initial migrations of Black Loyalist, Black Refugee and Jamaican Maroon communities to Nova Scotia in the 18th and 19th centuries; [3] the history of the Little Burgundy neighbourhood in Montreal; [4] the history of the Hogan's Alley neighbourhood in Vancouver; [5] and the story of John "Daddy" Hall, a free-born Black and Mohawk Canadian man from Owen Sound who was captured by the American military when he fought in the War of 1812, and forced into slavery for 13 years until escaping and returning to Canada. [6]

The series premiered on February 26, 2022. [7]

Awards

Tom Third received a nomination for Best Original Score for a Non-Fiction Series or Limited Series at the Screen Composers Guild of Canada's inaugural Canadian Screen Music Awards. [8]

The series won five Canadian Screen Awards at the 11th Canadian Screen Awards in 2023, for Best Photography in a Documentary Program or Factual Series (Ricardo Diaz), Best Editing in a Documentary Program or Series (Avril Jacobson), Best Direction in a Documentary Series (Holness), Best Original Music in a Documentary Series (Third) and Best Writing in a Documentary (Sutherland). [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History (Canadian TV channel)</span> Canadian English-language specialty TV channel

The History Channel is a Canadian English-language discretionary specialty channel that primarily broadcasts programming related to history and historical fiction. It is owned by History Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Corus Entertainment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Euzhan Palcy</span> French film director (born 1958)

Euzhan Palcy is a French film director, screenwriter, and producer. Her films are known to explore themes of race, gender, and politics, with an emphasis on the perpetuated effects of colonialism. Palcy's first feature film Sugar Cane Alley (1983) received numerous awards including the César Award for Best First Feature Film. For directing A Dry White Season (1989), she became the first black female director to have a film produced by a major Hollywood studio, that being by MGM.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hogan's Alley, Vancouver</span> Alley in Vancouver, British Columbia

Hogan's Alley was the local, unofficial name for Park Lane, an alley that ran through the southwestern corner of Strathcona in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The alley was located between Union and Prior (north–south) and ran from approximately Main Street to Jackson Avenue (west–east). The area was ethnically diverse, populated by Black, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, and Indigenous residents during the first six decades of the twentieth century.

<i>Hicksville</i> (comics)

Hicksville is a graphic novel by Dylan Horrocks originally published by Black Eye Comics in 1998. The novel explores the machinations of the comic book industry, and contains a slightly fictionalized account of the history of mainstream American comics, with particular attention paid to the era of Image Comics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Little Burgundy</span> Neighbourhood in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Little Burgundy is a neighbourhood in the South West borough of the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Officer</span> Canadian writer, filmmaker, ice hockey player

Charles Officer is a Canadian writer, actor, director and former professional hockey player.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Holness</span>

Jennifer Holness is a Jamaican-born Canadian film and television director, producer and screenwriter. She operates Hungry Eyes Media Inc., along with her business partner and husband Sudz Sutherland. Her production and writing credits include the film Subjects of Desire, Love, Sex and Eating the Bones and the television series Guns, She's the Mayor and Shoot the Messenger.

John Spotton C.S.C. was a Canadian filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada.

<i>Highrise</i> (documentary) Multimedia documentary project about life in residential highrises

Highrise is a multi-year, multimedia documentary project about life in residential highrises, directed by Katerina Cizek and produced by Gerry Flahive for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). The project, which began in 2009, includes five web documentaries—The Thousandth Tower, Out My Window, One Millionth Tower, A Short History of the Highrise and Universe Within: Digital Lives in the Global Highrise—as well as more than 20 derivative projects such as public art exhibits and live performances.

The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television presents an annual award for Best Feature Length Documentary. First presented in 1968 as part of the Canadian Film Awards, it became part of the Genie Awards in 1980 and the contemporary Canadian Screen Awards in 2013.

Black Canadians, numbering 198,610, make up 11.3% of Montreal's population, as of 2021, and are the largest visible minority group in the city. The majority of Black Canadians are of Caribbean and of continental African origin, though the population also includes African American immigrants and their descendants

The Donald Brittain Award is a Canadian television award, presented by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to honour the year's best television documentary on a social or political topic. Formerly presented as part of the Gemini Awards, since 2013 it has been presented as part of the Canadian Screen Awards. The award may be presented to either a standalone broadcast of a documentary film, or to an individual full-length episode of a news or documentary series; documentary films which originally premiered theatrically, but were not already submitted for consideration in a CSA film category before being broadcast on television, are also considered television films for the purposes of the award.

Canadiana is a documentary web series about Canadian history. The first video in the series premiered on the Canadiana YouTube channel on August 14, 2017. Episodes are hosted and feature on-location footage, cut-out archival animations and visual effects.

Background

The following is a list of events affecting Canadian television in 2022. Events listed include television show debuts, finales, cancellations, and channel launches, closures and rebrandings.

<i>The Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks</i> 2022 Canadian film

The Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks is a 2022 Canadian documentary film, directed by Reginald Harkema. Released to coincide with Amazon Prime's relaunch of the influential Canadian sketch comedy series The Kids in the Hall and based partially on Paul Myers's 2018 book The Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy, the film documents the history of the troupe through both archival footage and contemporary interviews with the members, largely filmed at The Rivoli, the Toronto club where the troupe got their start on stage.

Dear Jackie is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Henri Pardo and released in 2021. Conceived as a love letter to Jackie Robinson, the film explores the way the city of Montreal used its embrace of Robinson, when he played for the Montreal Royals in the 1940s, to construct a mythical image of itself as a post-racial city that had moved beyond anti-black racism, even while Black residents of the city's Little Burgundy neighbourhood were still suffering profound effects of racism in reality.

Tom Third is a Canadian film and television composer. He is most noted as a two-time Gemini Award and Canadian Screen Award recipient, winning Best Original Music Score for a Dramatic Program, Mini-Series or TV Movie at the 25th Gemini Awards in 2010 for The Summit, and Best Original Music Score for a Program at the 2nd Canadian Screen Awards in 2014 for Borealis.

Patty vs. Patty is a 2022 Canadian short documentary film, directed by Chris Strikes. The film recounts the true story of the "patty wars" of 1985, when restaurants in Toronto which served Jamaican patties had to fight a bureaucratic edict that they could not call their product a "patty", on the grounds that consumers might confuse them with hamburger patties, through a mixture of documentary footage and satirical dramatic reenactments performed by Star Trek: Discovery and Bite of a Mango actor Orville Cummings.

References