| Ninth Floor | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Mina Shum |
| Written by | Mina Shum |
| Produced by | Selwyn Jacob |
| Edited by | Carmen Pollard |
| Music by | Brent Belke |
Production company | |
Release date |
|
Running time | 82 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
Ninth Floor is a 2015 National Film Board of Canada documentary film written and directed by Mina Shum about the 1969 Sir George Williams affair, a student occupation led by Black West Indian-born students to protest alleged racism at the Montreal university. [1] [2] [3]
The film's producer, Selwyn Jacob, had long intended to make a film about the riot since his own university days when, as a student at the University of Alberta, Jacob had been impacted by the Montreal events—especially since one of the protestors had been from his own village in Trinidad. [3] [4] [5]
In a 2015 interview on the NFB's blog, Jacob recalled the very first time he'd heard about the Montreal unrest:
I learned about the events in a curious way, through one of my professors in Edmonton. I’d invited him to various Caribbean student events, and we’d become good friends. Then one morning, he turned to me in class and said, “Well, I hope we’re still friends.” I was puzzled by the remark, and it was only later, when I heard the news from Montreal, that I understood where his comment was coming from. [6]
Jacob remained interested in producing a film on the riot for decades. In 2010, he raised the idea again at a programming meeting of the NFB's Pacific & Yukon Studio in Vancouver. At the time, the studio had been considering a film adaption of a book about 1968 and Jacob believed the Sir George Williams Riot was "an interesting prism through which to look at that whole period in Canadian history." Though working on Mighty Jerome at the time, he started actively researching the project. [6]
Jacob first raised the project with Mina Shum at the Whistler Film Festival, where she was on a documentary jury. She initially wasn't familiar with the riot but was immediately interested, and the two of them began a lengthy discussion about the project. [6]
To make Ninth Floor, Shum combined archival footage and news clippings of the day with first-hand accounts from former student protesters such as Anne Cools, an archival interview with Rosie Douglas, and also spoke with others affected by the event— including the son of Perry Anderson, the professor who had been the initial focus of protests. [7]
The film includes video footage from Concordia University's archives, transferred from the original reel-to-reel videotape, a now-obsolete format. Ninth Floor also makes use of archival images from Radio-Canada, CBC, CTV, Associated Press and the NFB’s own stockshot library. [8]
The film premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. [1] At the 2015 Vancouver International Film Festival, Shum won the Artistic Merit Award from Women in Film + Television Vancouver for Ninth Floor. [9] In December 2015, the film was selected for TIFF's annual Canada's Top Ten screening series as one of the ten best Canadian feature films of the year. [10]
The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and alternative dramas. In total, the NFB has produced over 13,000 productions since its inception, which have won over 5,000 awards. The NFB reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It has bilingual production programs and branches in English and French, including multicultural-related documentaries.
The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, founded in 1976 and taking place each September. It is also a permanent destination for film culture operating out of the TIFF Lightbox cultural centre, located in Downtown Toronto.
The Sir George Williams affair was a 1969 event at Sir George Williams University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, now a part of Concordia University. It was the largest student occupation in Canadian history, and resulted in $2 million of property damage.
Alanis Obomsawin, is an Abenaki American-Canadian filmmaker, singer, artist, and activist primarily known for her documentary films. Born in New Hampshire, United States and raised primarily in Quebec, Canada, she has written and directed many National Film Board of Canada documentaries on First Nations issues. Obomsawin is a member of Film Fatales independent women filmmakers.
Mina Shum is an independent Canadian filmmaker. She is a writer and director of award-winning feature films, numerous shorts and has created site specific installations and theatre. Her features, Double Happiness and Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity both premiered in the US at the Sundance Film Festival and Double Happiness won the Wolfgang Staudte Prize for Best First Feature at the Berlin Film Festival and the Audience Award at Torino. She was director resident at the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto. She was also a member of an alternative rock band called Playdoh Republic.
"Harry" Winston Jerome was a Canadian track and field sprinter and physical education teacher. He won a bronze medal at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo and set a total of seven world records over the course of his career.
Don Owen was a Canadian film director, writer and producer who spent most of his career with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). His films Nobody Waved Good-bye and The Ernie Game are regarded as two of the most significant English Canadian films of the 1960s.
Ann Marie Fleming is an independent Canadian filmmaker, writer, and visual artist. She was born in Okinawa, USCAR, in 1962 and is of Chinese, Ryukyuan and Australian descent. Her film Window Horses was released in 2016.
Torill Kove is a Norwegian-born Canadian film director and animator. She won the 2007 Academy Award for Animated Short Film for the film The Danish Poet, co-produced by Norway's Mikrofilm AS and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
Sturla Gunnarsson is an Icelandic-Canadian film and television director and producer.
Charles Officer was a Canadian film and television director, writer, actor, and professional hockey player.
Theodore Asenov Ushev is a Bulgarian animator, film director and screenwriter based in Montreal. He is best known for his work at the National Film Board of Canada, including the 2016 animated short Blind Vaysha, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He is a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France.
Stories We Tell is a 2012 Canadian documentary film written and directed by Sarah Polley and produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). The film explores her family's secrets—including one intimately related to Polley's own identity. Stories We Tell premiered August 29, 2012 at the 69th Venice International Film Festival, then played at the 39th Telluride Film Festival and the 37th Toronto International Film Festival. In 2015, it was added to the Toronto International Film Festival's list of the top 10 Canadian films of all time, at number 10. It was also named the 70th greatest film since 2000 in a 2016 critics' poll by BBC.
Selwyn Jacob is a Canadian documentary filmmaker whose work has often explored the experiences of Black Canadians as well as other stories from Canada's multicultural communities, as both as an independent director and since 1997 as a producer with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
Fractured Land is a 2015 Canadian feature documentary film directed by Fiona Rayher and Damien Gillis, profiling the Dené activist Caleb Behn as he goes through law school and builds a movement around greater awareness of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on First Nations lands.
Hadwin's Judgement is a Canadian documentary film, released in 2015. Directed by Sasha Snow and based in part on John Vaillant's 2004 book The Golden Spruce, the film is about Grant Hadwin, the logger who protested logging company practices by cutting down the sacred Kiidk'yaas in 1997. The film also includes some docudrama elements, in which Hadwin is portrayed by actor Doug Chapman.
Caroline Monnet is an Anishinaabe French and Canadian contemporary artist and filmmaker known for her work in sculpture, installation, and film.
Randall Okita is a Canadian film director, screenwriter and visual artist known for creating work that involves rich visual language and innovative approaches to storytelling.
Tess Girard is a Canadian filmmaker and cinematographer.
