Regent Park revitalization inspires documentary

October 17, 2019

In 2013, the Regent Park revitalization was celebrated with an 80-minute musical using spoken word narrative, dance, song, film and still images to document the public housing neighbourhood history.

Author & filmmaker Christene Browne, who resided in the community for 15 years until 1985, felt a bit let down by the performance.

“It was as if nothing existed in the community and this group that was engaged in the revitalization was coming in as a saviour,” she said. “I took offence to the claims they were making and the way they were portraying the community. When I saw the play, I had not been back to the community for quite a while. So I took some time to walk around.”

Traversing the neighbourhood brought back fond memories.

“I walked by the spaces that I rode my bike through and where I got my first kiss,” said Browne. “Those places that those things happened hadn’t changed. The building I lived in at 274 Sackville is still there.”

Wanting to capture the community pulse in the midst of the neighborhood transformation, she attended a few town hall meetings.

“By the time the third meeting came around, the community’s voice was muted,” Browne recalled. “It was if they had thrown their hands up and decided there was nothing they could do about the massive changes that were about to take place in their community.”

That was the motivation for Browne’s 90-minute documentary, ‘Farewell Regent’, that debuts at the Reelworld Film Festival.

“This 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’s involved in such a massive project,” she pointed out. “The Regent Park community is used to examine the larger issues of the social housing crisis that’s plaguing so many urban centres throughout the globe. As a human right, housing is central to the discussion.

“Through interviews, stills, home movies, archival footage from the Regent Park Video Workshop, footage of community events, construction, protest and everyday Cinema verite style shooting, this documentary bears witness as residents experience one of the most traumatic experiences of their lives. The perspectives which are often contradictory and controversial of local politicians, developers and housing authorities are also put forth.”

While filming, Browne discovered that many dislocated residents, mainly from the Caribbean and Hispanic countries, weren’t allowed to return to the neighbourhood after revitalization.

“Young people have been put in harm’s way by being relocated to rival communities and some of the social housing units that the city was mandated to replace were built outside the community,” she said. “The low-income residents feel like there’s an orchestrated attempt to get rid of them and those who remain feel as if they are being segregated from the new condo owners. This goes as far as the colour coding of the doors – brown for rent-geared-to-income units and blue for condos.”

Communities across Canada and the world are struggling with what happened to the neighbourhoods they used to know.

“Gentrification is a global phenomenon and one that many times causes disruption and discord to the community that’s gentrified,” Browne pointed out. “This is true of the Regent Park community. ‘Farewell Regent’ gives a face to this dissonance and is an intimate portrayal of a community in the midst of transition. The issues affecting the community are as vast and complex as the diverse community. The documentary does its best to bring these issues to light and give voice to the diversity. It is my love letter to my former home, a place where I spent my formative years and made my first documentaries. The film is also a call to action for change.”

‘Regent Farewell’ is dedicated to Lemard Champagnie and Mackai Bishop Jackson who were murdered in Regent Park in 2017 and 2018 respectively and late Toronto city councillor and social justice advocate Pam McConnell.

Witnessing racism growing up in Toronto and not seeing herself reflected on the big screen inspired Browne to become a filmmaker.

With funds accrued from working at McDonald’s for a few months, she bought a camera at age 15. In 1999, she completed the semi-autobiographical film, ‘Another Planet’, which is the first feature film to be directed by a Black woman in Canada.

“That was my story,” she recounted. “When I went to Jarvis Collegiate Institute, I saw that the White students were going to Africa and coming back sharing their wonderful experiences. I thought that if anyone should be going to Africa, it should be me.”

Browne applied to the Canada World Youth Program committed to providing young people with a voluntary opportunity to learn about other communities, cultures and people while developing leadership and communications skills.

Successful candidates split six months between a Canadian community and a Third World country.

She turned 19 in Mali.

“Going to Africa was quite the experience and I felt at home for the first time since leaving St. Kitts 14 years earlier,” said Browne whose first two films, ‘Brothers in Music’ and ‘No Choices’, -- they are about two struggling jazz musicians and abortion related to women living in poverty respectively  – debuted at the 1991 Toronto International Film Festival.

In 2008, the accomplished filmmaker completed ‘Speaking in Tongues: The History of Language’ which is a groundbreaking five-part documentary series looking at language’s history from prehistoric time to modern day.

Browne is also producing an animated documentary on award-winning author Austin Clarke who died in 2016.

“I met him a few years before he passed away and we sat for about three hours in his backyard talking,” she said. “I wanted to know what made him the man he was and who his early influences were. We spoke about almost everything leading up to his first novel.”

Published in 1964, ‘The Survivors of the Crossing’ was the first of Clarke’s 11 novels, three of which won prizes.

Working with three animators, Browne expects the film to be completed early next year.

“I didn’t want to do a straight documentary,” she said. “I saw two animated documentaries and decided that’s the route I would take with this. The images that come to me when I talk to him about something will be accompanied by a visual illustration.”

If Browne had her druthers, she would prefer writing books instead of movie scripts.

“I am an avid reader who spent a lot of time in libraries,” said the Ryerson University Radio & Television Arts lecturer who has published two novels. “I could spend all day alone writing.”

She’s working on her third novel which is a science fiction allegory.

“It’s about the world ending with climate change and I am having fun with it,” she added. “I like to infuse humour in heavy subjects.”

Browne is the proud mother of three grown children. The youngest, Jonah Zapparoli, is the film’s Director of Photography while his siblings Daley and Maya Zapparoli are an occupational therapist and French Immersion teacher respectively.

‘Farewell Regent’ will be screened on Saturday, October 19 at 5 p.m. at the Famous Players Canada Square Cinema, 2190 Yonge St.