What is the importance of controlling, directing and creating spaces for the kinds of stories we want to hear, witness and learn from and about? In episode 10 of the TBC podcast, producer Anna Shah Hoque talks to Adrienne Row-Smith and Hingman Leung about filmmaking, photography and visual storytelling and production.  

Anna, Adrienne and Hingman think through developing visual archives directed by their respective lived experiences. They talk about racial bias in visual technologies and cultivating and practicing ethical artistic practices while working with people and creating spaces for stories that centre Black and racialized lives and communities. 

Credits: Season 3 graphic created by Hunter Dewache. Custom intro / outro sounds created by Bucko aka Chris Binkowski. Podcast editing is by fin-xuan, with post-production audio work by Nicole Bedford. This season of To Be Continued: Troubling the Archive is generously funded by a Digital Now grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.    

Participants: 

Adrienne Row-Smith 

Adrienne is a photographer and videographer working in both Ottawa and Toronto. Through the utilization of bold and dark imagery, Adrienne aims to bring marginalized voices to the forefront of media representation and inclusion via her media company Strast Media. Adrienne’s work has been featured in the magazines Splice Media Group & Monkey Goose Magazine and the exhibition To Be Continued: Troubling the Queer Archive at Carleton University Art Gallery (2020). Find her @adriennersphoto and @strastmedia. 

Hingman Leung 

Hingman is an Ottawa-based filmmaker with a passion for telling stories that bridge different ways of seeing the world and specializing in telling stories through the lens of culture and food. Her first short documentary, on food waste in China (2015), received the Public Ethnography Award. Since then, she’s produced several documentaries and narrative films as director and editor, reaching audiences nationally through CBC and locally in film festivals such as Inside Out Toronto, Ottawa Canadian Film Festival and Digi60. She teaches beginner videography through the Digital Arts Resource Centre and currently volunteers on the Board of Digi60 Filmmakers’ Festival.