A York University student’s 20-minute mockumentary has captured a prestigious prize in a US film festival, reported The Expositor in Brantford May 8. Jesus TM by Jordan Hellyer, who is going into his third-year of film studies, was named Best Foreign Film at the Back East Picture Show in Hoboken, New Jersey, in an awards gala on April 26. Back East screened more than 30 independent features, shorts and documentaries, including many sophisticated, big budget works. Jesus TM, meanwhile, was shot over three days in Simcoe last summer, features a cast made up of Hellyer’s friends, and cost “about 40 bucks,” Hellyer said.
Evolution of an urban park
In the April/May issue of Building, Canada’s national magazine about the building development industry, two York University cultural theorists trace the evolution of an urban park. Jody Berland, humanities professor in York’s Atkinson Faculty of Liberal & Professional Studies, and Bob Hanke, communication studies professor in York’s Faculty of Arts, say the fight over whether to save the Toronto Transit Commission’s Wychwood Avenue streetcar barns marks a change in the idea of an urban park. “Initially, neighbourhood response was in favour of tearing down all but one of the car barns in order to install a ‘grass and trees’ park,” wrote Berland and Hanke. “The desire to remove the barns was a local example of late modernism’s ambivalent response to its own constructions – which is to tear them down. Through the public process and ensuing debate, what emerged is a postmodern view of this urban space and a new urbanist approach to park design.”