I was recently asked to speak on a panel about Asian representation in film and television during the Asian Heritage Month Film Festival, in Toronto. I was joined by fellow filmmakers Amanda Joy, Jag Parmar, and Kieth Lock, and the panel was moderated by Bobby Del Rio.

It was a lively conversation, and it was great to hear how fellow diverse / asian filmmakers had moved forward in their careers – and what kind of barriers they faced along the way.

Apparently there is a video they are going to post, so I’ll link that here when I get it.

From left to right: Bobby Del Rio, Keith Lock, Jag Parmar, Amanda Joy, Faisal Lutchmedial

Here’s a sample of what I can do.

Faisal Lutchmedial Editing Demo from Faisal Lutchmedial on Vimeo.

Three short clips from documentary projects I’ve edited.

1) Burgundy Jazz “Vice”. Part of the award winning interactive web series for Radio-Canada, produced by Catbird Productions. This clip has some fun motion graphics integrated with the interviews, putting live video “inside” the newspaper archives.

Winner – Digi Awards
Winner – Prix Boomerang
Winner – Prix Numix
Nominee – Canadian Screen Awards
Nominee – Prix Gémeaux
Nominee – Rockie Awards (Banff World Media Festival)
Nominee – Interactive Design Awards
Nominee – Webby Awards

2) Boogeymen “Lagarfljótsormurinn”. 1 hr doc series about tourist destinations where “monsters” reside. Aired on Evasion, a travel network in Quebec. I edited 5 episodes of this show, and assisted on a number of others.

3) Burgundy Jazz “Trains & Porters”. Another clip from this series about the history of Jazz culture in the Little Burgundy neighbourhood of Montreal.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on the site, and I suppose that is good, because I have been insanely busy during that time. When I finished my WGC internship in The Listener’s writing room at the end of February (which I will eventually write a proper post about), I started work on editing the web capsules for the interactive web project “Burgundy Jazz“. The project launched last month, and it is safe to say this was one of the most rewarding jobs I have done in my career. The subject, the history of Jazz in Montreal told through the lens of the black community that lived in Little Burgundy, was one that urgently needed to be told, and I am proud I could have been part of it.

The project itself has a lot of elements; it’s part web series, part interactive historical document, and part time capsule. It can be experienced in a web browser, in an iOS app, and in an e-book. Each platform has different content focused on what that medium is best at. Truth be told, I had little to no involvement in anything other than the 14 short docs we made (directed by David Eng), with the rest of it being handled by a fantastic team brought together by producer Katarina Soukup of Catbird Productions. I did however wear several hats (cinematographer, motion graphics artist, and editor). Tamara Scherbak (assistant editor) and I, along with our encyclopedia-like director David set out to make short (3-4 minutes each), dynamic, informative films, that would capture the essence of the personalities, the community, and the music that made the district special. After getting a hugely positive response at the screening and cabaret show at the Corona Theatre for the launch, I can safely say we succeeded. It has given me great joy to be a part of telling this story, especially the story of people whose fame didn’t reach out past the confines of Montreal.

It was especially rewarding to find out that so many people we interviewed or talked about found their roots in the Caribbean, with some having family from Trinidad & Tobago, where my dad’s from too. I became fascinated with how their immigration stories compared with my family’s experience. I got lost in daydreams of what it must have been like to be a young man or woman from the islands, and then to be suddenly thrust into the biggest party town in North America during Prohibition. These daydreams are slowly forming into fictional stories I am developing, melding my life as a documentary filmmaker and fiction writer together in a way I didn’t expect. I feel like I’ve always had my feet in two different professional worlds, and three different countries, and sometimes this has made me feel unfocused, and lost. It’s nice to have moments where things become clear, and you feel at home no matter where your feet are planted.

If you haven’t already, please take a look at Burgundy Jazz on the Radio-Canada site by clicking on this link: http://music.cbc.ca/modularpages/dynamicPage.aspx?pageUrl=Burgundy-Jazz&permalink=Burgundy-Jazz

You can download the free iOS app here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/burgundy-jazz/id658159457?ls=1&mt=8

You can buy the e-book here: https://itunes.apple.com/book/id663804807?mt=11

And the soundtrack (essential for jazz lovers) is available on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/burgundy-jazz/id659705582

Trailer below.

Recently a “This American Life” broadcast highlighted the injustices at Apple Foxconn factories and sparked an outrage. There has been a great deal of discussion about outsourcing and improving working conditions because of it, which I think is an amazingly positive thing. Any time activists and ordinary concerned citizens get together to put the word out on a problem there is the possibility of real change happening. It represents a chance for the workers, who are all too often forgotten cogs in the machinery of mass production, to get a fair share of the pie.

The problem with this damning report is that it was almost entirely fabricated. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/03/npr-retracts-foxconn-episode/

Inside a shoe workshop in Bangladesh

I made my sweatshop labour / cultural exploration documentary “My Cultural Divide” quite a while ago. It focused on a different product, clothes. But the principals are the same in terms of corporate responsibility, and protecting corporate image. When I made the movie I didn’t want to focus on one company or brand because abuses happen across the spectrum of manufacturing. To do so puts an unfair spotlight on them, when the problem is more universal. This is what I think happened in the situation with Apple, and unfortunately now that this report has been revealed as “theatre”, it will cause the opposite effect: complete apathy and confusion in the part of the consumer.

Consumers are already apathetic and confused enough. Conflicting reports about who is good and who is bad make it impossible to keep up with who we can “ethically” buy from, especially if those companies change from year to year. Does someone now say, “Okay, so it’s good to buy from Apple again? Here’s my credit card!”  I fear this is exactly what will happen, the same as when they buy their new hairdryer, their new sound system, or their new blender. (I must point out this entire episode didn’t exactly hurt Apple financially as it seems the iPad 3, released today, is a huge hit, and their stock price is as high as ever).

This is exactly why the only thing that will possibly work is exerting public pressure to get all companies to become members of  independent labour rights organizations, or for governments to ensure outsourcing companies comply to some set of standards. I admit that there are major problems to this solution as well, but it would be better than the completely unregulated, anti-union (or forced government union as it is in China) situation that exists today.

Giant companies like Apple or Walmart exert pressure on subcontracted manufacturers to get better prices for their components or clothes as the case may be. This is a reality, and it’s hard to fault them for it. The problem occurs when that push to the bottom eats away at the individual’s salary (or their workplace safety) and not the profit margin for the subcontracting company. Having a set of standards from an independent labour rights organization forces these subcontracting companies not to take away from the workers who are already making so little. Like I mentioned, enforcing those standards is the big issue – but a problem I think a solution can be found for.

In all fairness, Apple is probably one of the best when it comes to ensuring employee (even those subcontracted) safety and livelihood in the electronics industry. This whole debacle was an unfair attack at the big and easy target. It didn’t help things that Apple is also notoriously secretive about their products, which probably makes it difficult for reporters to get access to manufacturing plants. It is this level of secrecy which breeds suspicion, and as much as I do understand Apple’s mandate to have NSA level security on the specs to their latest gadget, this was probably the reason why the public was so willing to buy into the story of horrible abuse and slave like wages.

For Apple’s part, they have let down the curtain a bit, and have now asked the Fair Labour Association to access some of their factories. This happened as a result to that damning, albeit factually false, report. I don’t know what to think of this – on one hand Apple is doing something I think they (and everyone else) should have done a long time ago. On the other, it was an action sparked by a lie (or a theatre piece that was misrepresented, if you take Mike Daisey to his word).

I am left with this thought, which is similar to the ones I had eight years ago while crouching in a sweatshop, chatting with a child making sandals. We should do something about this, it’s not a problem that will just go away. The next time you buy something, anything, write the company that made it a note. Say you read that Apple recently had the Fair Labour Association investigate their factories, and you think that company X should do that too, because you care about the people who make the products you use. It will make a difference. And considering you are wearing clothes that were made at pennies an hour, and browsing on a computer that may have poisoned the small hands making it, it is the very least you can do.

A short documentary which I shot for Tamara Scherbak in Trinidad & Tobago will be premiering at Hot Docs this May. I am particularly proud of this project because of the “rich cinematography” we were able to shoot came from a very small and limiting camera, the Sony Webbie PM1. We used it because Tamara was competing in a TIFF Talent Lab Emerging Filmmakers competition, and they provided it. It’s a small and low cost HD camera that isn’t really built for filmmaking in any way, but it goes to show that when you use the tools you are given – and know what they are capable of, you can still make beautiful work.

Tamara and I discussed it for a while, and noticed a number of things about the camera. First, the compression is very high, and as a result anything moving becomes jello, or stuttered. Also, it seems as though there is a very high shutter speed when shooting with a lot of light automatically, which I assume is done to lower the light coming onto the sensor rather than stopping down. This is amazingly annoying because it looks as though everything is fast motion (even though it is not) and again stutters and strobes the footage. What we ended up doing to work with that is we went for a super 8 pushed a few stops kind of look (some of that accomplished in color correction) and I think it came out very well. Second, Tamara accented the strobe to add a feeling of desperation in the underwater (or by the waves) shots, which added a sense of uneasyness.  Along with the “haunting musical score” she created, it made the piece really stand out.

We also used an underwater bag which helped us in two ways, one obviously so we could shoot close to the water and underwater, and second, because the plastic of the bag shined from the sunlight and added really interesting lens flares to the footage. The bag itself was about $20, and we got some really nice stuff from that small investment. In fact, we used a bigger brother to that for Mr. Crab’s underwater sequence (and a DSLR), and it worked flawlessly.

Tamara and I will be attending Hot Docs this year in Toronto, so if you are around, please join us at one of the three screenings!

Everyone’s seen this video by now, but I thought I should comment on it regardless.  My first impression is that it’s brilliant.  I have a very soft spot, like about a billion others, for The Simpsons even though I haven’t really seen about 12 of the last seasons.  Anyhow, before going on take a look if you haven’t seen it already.

After seeing it a few times my opinion stays pat: brilliant.  It’s true that I could say that this dumbs the issue of sweatshops down to a homer simpson level, and making black humour over the very serious issues of child labour is not productive.  But I don’t believe that.  I think anything, especially in mass media, that makes people think critically on even a subconscious level about sweatshops and their own personal consumption, is good.  I also think that the whole discussion about sweatshops can be unapproachably dark, and sometimes a joke can start the conversation going, breaking the ice.  How many discussions, serious discussions about sweatshops do you think got started by this viral video?  It’s got 2.5 million hits thus far, so even if 1% of people started talking, that’s a huge impact.

A unique magical taste.

My Cultural Divide tried to do this to a point, but only with a micro fraction of the viewership.  I am proud of my film, and I am glad that people still have the chance to see it online via this website.  But I could never have the viewership a a major tv show on a major network has. Hopefully, people who have begun to think about working conditions for adults and children (and unicorns) because of Banksy and The Simpsons, will seek out more information and more in depth discussions. Maybe some of you found yourselves here because of it.  If that’s the case, you’re welcome to watch my film, start up a discussion, or follow some of the many links on sweatshops connected to this one.

My Cultural Divide Official Site

Found an article written about Useless Things on the web, prompted by the upcoming screening in Toronto. The article can be found here.

I also thought that I would plug Adam Reider’s soon to be completed short film “Dog Sitter” which I produced. It’s taken us a while to get this film finished, part because of being busy on other projects, and part because we were trying to find out about music rights (which by the way, as a filmmaker can be an impossible and incredibly annoying task). We finally figured it all out and are working on the colour correction with editor James Hoffman and sound edit with Emory Murchison. On a somewhat related note, I’ve just signed on with Emory and Gabi Kislat on a documentary project as producer, and I’m really excited about it. Their company, Hot Smoked Pictures, is finishing up a doc about a Parkinson’s patient entitled “Musically Medicated” (it’s a subject I am very close to and have given them advice here and there about the production). Now, it’s time to get a new project up in the air, so to speak.

Lastly I am going to be producing a music video for the United Steel Workers of Monteal with James Hoffman directing. It’s for the song “Little Girl” off their latest album Three on the Tree. We’re collaborating with animator extraordinare Eva Cvijanovic and making a part animated, part live action / live show piece which I am sure to post here when it’s made.

I didn’t actually make this title, mine was “Bangladeshi Garment Workers”, just to set the record straight. In any case, this was a short film I made for Current TV while visiting Dhaka while showing My Cultural Divide at a film festival there. It was important for me to reconnect with the issues and people while visiting again, and I was really glad to have met a lot of new activists and workers that are trying to make changes to the way things are done. Please take a look and tell me what you think:

Lots of people are watching My Cultural Divide online, and it makes me very happy. I think putting the film online with a CC license was one of the best things I have ever done – it gives me great satisfaction that this issue is in the minds of many people, and the film creates discussion and hopefully creates some good. I am about to shoot another documentary, albeit one not as focused on politics as my first, so it is exciting that this doc lives on in this space.

The holiday season is upon us and it’s time to start collecting those presents for friends and family! In celebration of this festive time I’ve decided to put my entire feature documentary “My Cultural Divide” on the internet for anyone to watch free of charge. In fact – you can download it, pass it along, and screen it for groups if you’d like. My Cultural Divide played in many film festivals around the world, including the Montreal World Film Festival, the Visions du Réel (Switzerland), and even now in film classes at the University of Zurich.

Here’s the link: http://vimeo.com/6393377

And the film’s website: http://www.lutchmedial.ca/myculturaldivide/

There’s a reason I am doing this now, and it’s because of the documentary’s focus on sweatshop labour in Bangladesh and the rest of the world. It shows garment workers inside the factories and their plight, as well as the difficult choices conscientious consumers face when standing at the checkout. And although the film is about clothing manufacturing, the same applies to virtually every product we buy including electronics, toys, and even a lot of our food. That said, I am not telling you to stop buying entirely – just when you do go out shopping this year, take a little time to think about where the things you put in your basket came from, and at what cost. Often there are alternatives out there, and even when there are not, a quick email or letter demanding sweatshop free products to a big corporation actually does make a difference. Better yet, email you Member of Parliament or Congressperson and tell them this issue means a lot to you!

I am not going to say much more because the film speaks for me – but here are a few places you can get information about the subject of sweatshop labour:

National Labor Committee: http://www.nlcnet.org/

Unitied Students Against Sweatshops: http://usas.org/

The Maquila Solidarity Network: http://en.maquilasolidarity.org/

You can always contact me about the film as well at info@lutchmedial.ca and if you are interested in buying a DVD copy of My Cultural Divide (better quality and you can play it easily on a TV) they are now available for $15 + Shipping and Handling.

Happy Holidays, and enjoy the film!