News and events

  • August 24 – 27: Mighty Niagara Film Festival

    The 2022 edition of the Mighty Niagara Film Festival (MNFF) is upon us, and this year one of the featured artists and honoured guests will be St. Catharines’ own Richard Kerr, a filmmaker and installation artist who first studied filmmaking at Sheridan College in the 1970s, and whose filmography dates back to 1976.

    Kerr began as a documentary filmmaker working in the observational style, but over time his work became more narrative-based, and eventually highly experimental – quite literally so: many of Kerr’s projects involve experiments with the materiality of film’s technologies.

    Kerr’s The Demi-Monde is a media installation that will screen nightly during the duration of the MNFF, August 24-27, beginning at sunset at the old Towne Cinema in downtown St. Catharines (280 St. Paul Street).

    This will be followed by two screenings of Kerr’s work – one focusing on early works like Canal (1981) – which deals with Kerr’s memories of his childhood along the Welland Canal – and one focusing on Kerr’s most recent film, Field Trip (2022).

    Part One of this retrospective will take place Friday the 26th of August at the RiverBrink Art Museum (116 Queenston St, Queenston, ON L0S 1L0), beginning at 7:00 pm.

    Part Two of this retrospective will take place Saturday the 27th of August at the Film House (250 St Paul St, St. Catharines, ON L2R 3M2) at 4:00 pm, with a Q & A hosted by Anthony Kinik, Associate Professor, Film Studies to follow at Mahtay Café, across the street, immediately following the screening.

    Categories: Events

  • August 16: Author Talk with Emily West

    Author Talk – Emily West

    Tuesday, August 16
    2:00pm – 3:00pm

    Join us as we welcome Emily West to discuss her book, Buy Now: How Amazon Branded Convenience and Normalized Monopoly.

    Dr. Emily West is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research on digital platforms, consumer culture, and media appear in multiple academic journals and books, and she is co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture (2013). After growing up in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Emily West attended McMaster University and earned her PhD at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

    Signed copies will be available for $30 cash.

    To learn more and register click here.

    Categories: Events

  • Canada Games Research Spotlight: Duncan Koerber

    Assistant Professor of Communication, Popular Culture and Film Duncan Koerber’s research focuses on the teaching of writing skills and the theory of crisis communication. In crisis communication, he is particularly interested in understanding why public crises develop in social media, and why social media crises have become so common and so damaging to organizations’ images and people’s careers. He also studies media and journalism history.

    Koerber is one of 11 Brock researchers and scholars who received funding under the 2020-21 round of the VPR Canada Games Grant program. Here, he discusses his research project titled “Social Media and Large Sporting Events: Social Media Crisis Monitoring of the Niagara 2022 Canada Games.”

    Please give a brief overview of your research project

    This project is about how crises during large sporting events are sparked or amplified by social media users on Twitter. I’m also interested in researching best practices for dealing with crises that occur on social media.

    Part One of the project, now completed, saw a Brock student produce a literature review report of previous studies on the use of social media during large sporting events. Part Two of the project will see a Brock student use public relations industry software to monitor Canada Games-related Twitter posts during the event in August. What’s uncertain is that we obviously don’t know if a social media crisis will occur during the Canada Games. But we’ll be ready, capturing all the Games-related tweets. If a crisis happens, we can use the tweets as our primary source material for analysis on many different levels.

    What do you expect will be the outcome of your research?

    This project will generate new research on social media content during one large sporting event. As well, Part One of the project, the literature review, found that very little research has been done in this specific area. Instead, researchers in different fields have been studying slightly different topics. I hope this study will bring together these streams of research and push them forward in a new direction. With the Canada Games as a central case study, the project will offer insights into social media, crisis communication and large sporting events.

    How will this contribute to knowledge, or understanding, of the Canada Summer Games? 

    This project is a case study of one Canada Games, which will provide analysis and advice for social media managers of future Canada Games. But it will also link this major Canadian sporting event to others like the FIFA World Cup and Olympic Games. Researchers and practitioners studying those events will be able to build on the analysis and advice from the Canada Games.

    How did you become interested in this research?

    For the past three years, I’ve been working on a book about social media and crisis communication. The study of social media in crisis situations is a relatively new research area. Even less research has been done on sports and social media crisis. I’m a big sports fan too, so this project brings these interests together.

    How do you plan on sharing your research? 

    The research will be disseminated in a journal article, likely in the area of communication studies or public relations.

    Categories: News

  • Documentary filmmaker Courtney Montour to speak at upcoming virtual event

    Courtney Montour, award-winning Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) filmmaker from Kahnawake, will discuss her documentary film, Mary Two-Axe Earley: I Am Indian Again, at a special online event.

    On Tuesday, March 22 at 7 p.m., the Brock University community is invited to join in on a virtual conversation with writer and director Montour, whose documentary tells the story of Mary Two-Axe Earley, who fought for more than two decades to challenge the sex discrimination against First Nations women embedded in the Indian Act and became a key figure in the women’s rights movement in Canada.

    Montour’s previous films include the documentaries Sex Spirit Strength and Flat Rocks, as well as episodes of the documentary series Mohawk Ironworkers and Skindigenous. She also co-created and co-ordinated McGill University’s Indigenous Field Studies course, held in Kahnawake, for eight years.

    Registrants for the free event will receive online viewing access to Mary Two-Axe Earley: I Am Indian Again five days prior to next Tuesday’s virtual conversation.

    American Sign Language interpretation will be provided.

    The event is co-sponsored by the Faculty of Humanities Dean’s Discretionary Fund, the Department of Communication, Popular Culture, and Film, the Department of History, Indigenous Studies, the Centre for Canadian Studies, the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies and the Office of the Vice-Provost, Indigenous Engagement.

    The co-sponsors are grateful to Donna Cowan of the National Film Board for her assistance.

    What: A Virtual Conversation With Courtney Montour
    When: Tuesday, March 22 from 7 to 8 p.m. online
    How: Register online to gain access to this virtual event

    Categories: Events

  • Film fans yell ‘action’ on a double-feature wedding

    In 2013, Teagan Chevrier met Tyrell Lisson on Facebook, where the two began chatting in a group for incoming first-year students to Brock University and noticed they had similar interests: both were film studies majors and enjoyed listening to Fall Out Boy and Bring Me the Horizon. They agreed to meet up during the second day of orientation week to wander around campus – and ended up spending the next eight hours together. “We had so much in common, it was spooky,” Chevrier, a film editor, says. “The time just flew by.”

    Within a week and a half, they were officially an item.

    At first, Lisson, a film producer, was drawn to Chevrier’s punk aesthetic. And he quickly realized her temperament perfectly complemented his. “She’s the yin to my yang,” he says. “I can get pretty wound up about things, and she’s there to ground me.” Chevrier felt like she had finally met someone she could talk to forever.

    And they’ve been talking ever since. After six years of dating, Lisson decided to propose while in Hawaii on a vacation with Chevrier’s family. On the second day of the trip, while the rest of the family was watching hockey playoffs, Lisson suggested they take a stroll on Waikiki Beach. Choppy waves crashing onto the shore kept Lisson from getting down on one knee, but he clinched the “yes” regardless.

    They chose 10/10/2020 as their wedding date because Chevrier liked the symmetry and selected The Elm Hurst Inn & Spa in her hometown of Ingersoll, Ont. as the venue because, she says, “we didn’t want to do something that was ‘modern city,’ but we also didn’t want to go full-on ‘wedding in a barn.’”

    Due to pandemic restrictions, the Elm Hurst pushed their wedding into 2021, but rather than wait, the couple opted to keep the special date they’d already picked out. They cut down their guest list from 150 to 25 and hosted an outdoor wedding in Chevrier’s parents’ backyard. Chevrier sourced vintage mismatched glassware from flea markets and thrift shops to avoid drink mix-ups and served individual picnic baskets complete with a single serving of prosecco. Her Kleinfeld dress didn’t arrive in time, so Chevrier found a vintage 1970s wedding dress on Kijiji, which her grandmother altered into a two-piece set. Lisson wore an H&M suit he already owned, and the couple exchanged last-minute $70 rings from Mejuri. Though little went as planned, Chevrier says, “it turned into a perfect day with no stress because it was so low-key.”

    The highlight of the ceremony involved handfasting, an ancient Celtic tradition in which a knot is tied around the couple’s hands to signify their intent to marry. (It also happens to be the origin of the phrase “tying the knot.”) Chevrier was drawn to the tradition because of her Scottish heritage and because she “liked the idea that if the situation isn’t perfect, you’re doing this for now with the understanding you will revisit it and make it official.”

    On Oct. 30, 2021, a little more than a year later, the couple made it official, as their original invitees descended on the Elm Hurst. Their second wedding was almost a “carbon copy” of the first, says Lisson, with the same florist and photographer – only this time things went according to plan.

    At the second wedding, they employed an innovative way for the guests to request the bride and groom kiss without clinking glasses: answering movie trivia. Chevrier, who wrote questions for each table thinking there wouldn’t be much interest, didn’t expect the competitive showdown. “Tables were fighting other tables to get the answers,” she says.

    The wedding turned into an impromptu concert when groomsmen took turns playing songs by the Band and the Proclaimers. A friend wrote the couple a song as a wedding gift and performed it for the first dance – and had it pressed onto seven-inch vinyl so they could treasure it forever.

    Now, the pair can cherish double the nuptial memories. “We’re so lucky we got to have two weddings,” Lisson says. “People continually make the joke, When are you going to have a third?”

    By Isabel B. Slone, Special to the Toronto Star
    Feb. 27, 2022

    CPCF alumni stories
    Categories: News

  • Congratulations to Nick Printup

    The Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film congratulates Nick Printup, one of four winners of the National Share Your Roots Virtual Reality Competition hosted by Uber, the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business and ORIGIN.

    Printup, a Media and Communication Studies graduate, pitched an idea for a virtual reality video to create a cultural learning experience about the origin of Lacrosse. He was selected as a semi-finalist (1 of 15 from across Canada) at which point the competition called for people to vote for the semi-finalists online to aid the judges in making their decisions.

    Having been selected as one of four recipients, he will be awarded a video production of I approximately $35,000 to turn his idea into a (virtual) reality. Printup hopes to begin filming by the end of the summer within the Niagara Region.

    Congratulations Nick!

    Read Nick’s bio here.

    Categories: News

  • March 12 – Connect Networking Event

    The annual Connect Networking Event is happening virtually this year on Friday, March 12 from 4:30-5:30pm on Microsoft Teams. Guest speakers will participate in a facilitated Q&A panel discussion about small businesses in Niagara adapting to the restrictions and economic challenges influenced by the pandemic.

    Make sure to register by March 5th to receive the Teams event link.

    Categories: Events

  • Nov. 19: 20th Annual Terry O’Malley Lecture

    Join us for the

    20TH ANNUAL TERRY O’MALLEY LECTURE IN MARKETING AND ADVERTISING

    Thursday, November 19 at 6pm
    Lifesize link

    Looking back, to see the future
    What the biggest marketing, media and advertising stories of 2020 can tell us about 2021 and beyond.

    As editors of The Message, Chris Powell and David Brown spend every working hour (and many non-working hours) tracking and reporting on the most newsworthy marketing, media and advertising stories from Canada and around the world.

    In this fast-paced presentation, they will review some of the key stories from the past year, which they think are important signals for where the industry is going.

    David Brown joined Marketing magazine in 2005. As news editor, he had a front row seat for the digital transformation of the industry—there for the first Marketing stories about Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. He was eventually promoted to executive editor, responsible for all day-to-day editorial output for the magazine. David left Marketing in late 2014 to explore the fast-growing world of content marketing, while remaining a regular columnist and contributor until its closure in late 2016. He co-founded The Message in 2018.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Chris Powell has been covering Canadian media, marketing and advertising since first joining Marketing magazine in 2001. He witnessed digital’s transformative effect on the legacy advertising industry first-hand, and has spent the past two decades covering the “new” ad world. His work has also appeared in Maclean’sCanadian Business and The Globe and Mail. He co-founded The Message in 2018.

    Categories: Events

  • 2020 Dobson Case Competition

    Start putting your teams together!

    To learn more click here

    Categories: Events, News

  • March 5: Interdisciplinary Panel Discussion of Perdita, or The Winter’s Tale

    Poster

    This event is part of Brock University’s Department of History Speakers Series. The panel – featuring Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film Associate Professor, Anthony Kinik – will discuss the ins and outs of adapting Shakespeare, this production’s David Bowie soundtrack, and Cold War politics and popular culture.

    Categories: Events