Congratulations to MFA film student Cari Green who has earned the 2013 Mayor’s Arts Award for Film & New Media.
“This year’s Mayor’s Arts Awards honourees and emerging artists exemplify the tremendous depth and diversity of talent we have in Vancouver,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “Our creative community bolsters our city’s cultural vitality and economic well-being, and support for local arts and culture is a top priority of our work at City Hall. On behalf of my colleagues on Vancouver City Council and the citizens of Vancouver, I would like to congratulate these artists and thank them wholeheartedly for their leadership in making this such a creative and vibrant city.”
Currently Cari is teaching a documentary course at Langara College and executive-producing two feature documentaries, Heartwood and Dancing in the Hurricane. She’s perhaps most well-known for co-producing the award-winning 2003 documentary The Corporation.
Cari Green’s thesis film is Citizen Jane is partly inspired by the real life work of Michelle Douglas, the woman who single-handedly reversed the policy against lesbian and gay people serving in the Canadian military. Cari is petitioning the government to apologize to the many lesbian and gay soldiers dismissed prior to 1992.
“My lifelong goal as a filmmaker has been to shed light on injustices that might have gone unnoticed. I decided to go back to school to get my master’s degree and I was looking for a film idea that I could be passionate about. I stumbled across a story about a dark time in Canadian history, discovering that prior to 1992, the Canadian military was carrying out a secret war against gays. They were searching rooms for incriminating evidence, reading private love letters and secretly spying on gay meeting places and bars near bases. I felt passionately that this was a story that had to be told, and that’s how Citizen Jane got started.” – Cari Green
Check out the campaign on Indiegogo campaign intended to market and distribute Cari’s thesis film Citizen Jane to a larger audience.
