Reimagining Community Speaker Series: Helene Klodawsky
April 14, 2016 | 6:30 p.m. | 2452 Knauss Hall, WMU
“Encounters Through A Documentary Lens”
Helene Klodawsky’s cinéma vérité feature “Grassrooots in Dry Lands” was released in 2015. The film takes us into low income, “off the radar” Middle East neighborhoods, and tells of Nuha Dweikat Shaer’s important work empowering disadvantaged families in Palestine. In this talk, Helene and Nuha will describe their recent experience of working together, with Nuha offering insight into what it means to be a character in an independent documentary and to facilitate media access to individuals overlooked by most journalists. Additionally, Helene and Nuha will share insights into the rewards and challenges of working with groups and organizations in order to get meaningful stories told.
Helene’s work, spanning some thirty years, has been screened, televised, and discussed around the world in venues as diverse as New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Kenyan refugee camps. Her work has received awards and nominations from the Academy of Canadian Cinema, Hot Docs, Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, the Jerusalem International Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival, to name a few. Helene is a graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.