My name is Eve Cable and I am entering my third year at 91社区, majoring in Cultural Studies and minoring in World Cinemas and History. This Summer, I interned at Regent Park Film Festival (RPFF), a film festival based out of Regent Park, Toronto. Each year, RPFF hosts an outdoor film festival in the park called Under The Stars, which was shifted to an online format for this summer and to abide by social distancing guidelines. Usually, the festival has pre-show events before the films, and the team at RPFF worked hard to ensure that we still had pre-shows each week from local organisations in spite of the online format. I plan on moving to Toronto and pursuing work in the film and television industry post-graduation, and so seeking experience in this industry and in Toronto (even though I actually did the internship remotely from Montreal!) was extremely important to me. As well as this, I generally like to take classes that focus on how cinema can be used as an educational tool and as a vehicle for community expression. Working at a film festival that is specifically focused on serving the community in which it is based, and specifically focused on amplifying work by BIPOC creators (reflecting the identities of many Regent Park residents) was important to me, as it demonstrated how to keep integrity within an organisation and how to promote positive social change.
My host organisation was an extremely positive place to work and gave me a lot of tools moving forward in my career regarding the maintaining of a healthy work environment. The maintaining of both a professional space but also a space for us as a team to chat and share interests was really helpful in our overall engagement and bonding as a team 鈥� for example, we were able to bounce ideas off each other based on our own personal interests that often resulted in great guidance regarding picking films to screen, or thinking of pre-show activities. This was also a very healthy environment for individuals to be represented of many different races, sexualities and genders. Given the nature of the films screened, which are often focused on the identities of marginalised groups, it was a very positive thing to have a diverse workspace that ultimately led us to make more informed and personal decisions.
As an intern, my responsibilities were slightly different than what we envisioned pre-COVID. Normally, I would be based in Toronto with the RPFF staff and would have been present at the on-site location of the screenings in Regent Park and would be responsible for supervising and managing large groups of volunteers as well as organisations involved with the pre-shows. Due to the nature of remote work, this transitioned to be a little more focused on Marketing and Outreach. I was responsible for contacting local organisations, such as Regent Park Sewing Collective, Regent Park Social, and Regent Park School of Music and getting them involved in our pre-shows for each of our screenings. This was an interesting adaptation for the whole team and required us to really get creative 鈥� for example, we got the Sewing Collective to pre-record a tutorial on how to decorate and make masks which went down very well with the community. We also arranged for some pre-shows to be live instead of pre-recorded, such as an interactive local trivia quiz, which was a really great way of keeping the festival focused on the local community it intends to serve.
I will not be using this internship for credit in my major, but I was appreciative of the work that I learned here that will influence my work in Cultural Studies, and I was grateful to go into the internship with knowledge I had gained in those classes. For instance, Professor Osterweil, who wrote my reference letter, had introduced me to the work of Sky Hopinka in class, which subsequently became something I could discuss with my co-workers at RPFF, and share his work as part of their Free Online Cinema series, separately to my work on Under The Stars. I was also able to circulate the online screening for Under The Stars in online communities and groups related to Cultural Studies, which taught me a lot about the engagement that can be possible when a focus is given to communities and cinema is used as a tool for activism and education.
I was extremely grateful to receive the Lev Bukhman Internship Award in Arts to fund this internship, and I would not have been able to finance this summer without this generous donation, which was truly invaluable for my internship. I learned a lot about my future career, and through the kindness of my co-workers, I was even able to make connections with other professionals in the field, and ask them relevant questions pertaining to their career paths. While it is odd to have never met my co-workers in person, I learned so much about the importance of technology in my industry, and I know that I will take these lessons - particularly regarding the circulation of free online cinema 鈥� with me in my career. Thank you Ms. Heather Sokoloff and Mr. Bukhman.
