Christene Browne

Blues and jazz singer Jodie Drake is a legend. From her beginnings in Detroit to her many years of breaking ground in Canada, she has consistently promoted Black music, often simply through the power of her voice. Blues in my Bread made for a CBC national broadcast, presents the women in all her glory. Browne had full access to the singer, her interview and performances combine with now rare footage from Drakes TV appearances in the 60's and 70's add an important chapter to the history of jazz and blues in Canada.

Cassandra Jones is a young woman from Toronto with a very active imagination and unique view of the world. Feeling trapped by life in her low-income community, and unable to relate to her brother Patrick, a petty criminal, or her overly pious mother, Mary, Cassandra decides to leave Toronto. She applies and is accepted into an exchange program between Quebec and West Africa. When she reaches her Quebec destination, a pig farm, she encounters, Sylvie Leblanc, a woman in need of change, her husband, Luc Leblanc, a man afraid of change and Abdoulaye Diallo, her African exchange counter-part, a man who regrets his decision to seek change. Because none of her expectations are met, Cassandra quickly becomes unhappy on the farm. Her presence creates plenty of tension, much of it humorous. A surprising conclusion comes about after a roller-coaster series of events.

What happens when the largest redevelopment in North America dismantles the place where social housing began? Will the community and its residents ever be the same? Farewell Regent is a 90-minute documentary that captures the Regent Park community of downtown Toronto (the place where social housing began in Canada) in the midst of the largest housing redevelopment project in North America. With this transition, it will go from a site of 100% social housing to a mixed-income community where condo units will outnumber the social housing units 4 to 1. The documentary profiles past and current tenants, city officials, developers and housing advocates to get an inside view of the complex issues, emotions and drama that are involved in such a massive redevelopment.

A Way Out is a documentary about breaking the cycle of poverty in Canadian's oldest and largest "ghetto," Regent Park. In addition to talking about what it is like to grow up poor in North America, it explores the reasons behind one person finding a way out of poverty and others remaining. As a former resident of a low-income community, Christene Browne went back to find out what had happened to some of her old friends. Formal and impromptu interviews are conducted and the community is revealed through footage and stills.

In 2021, improv comedian Luke O’Grady is asked to perform his first ever stand-up comedy set, and record it as a special. The only catch: there is no audience. A meditation on what the role of the comedian is without an audience to guide and assess the performance.

No Choice is a short documentary that deals with the abortion issue and how it relates to women living in poverty. Five women, ranging in age from twenty to forty speak about the lack of choice available to poor people and how, because of their poverty, their reproductive capabilities are often controlled by extraneous factors. Part of the National Film Board of Canada's "Five Feminist Minutes."

A tragedy causes an elderly woman to journey deep into her subconscious and ponder the afterlife. What do black women’s dreams look like? In Mount Misery we journey deep into the subconscious of a woman who has just suffered a great loss. Inspired by early avant-grade cinema, the film is a response and a critique of the lack of realistic representation and diversity in the mainstream media.

In this animated documentary famed black Canadian writer Austin Clarke talks about his upbringing in Barbados, his early literary influences, colonialism, race, class, discrimination and his friendship with Malcolm X.