What We Choose To Remember

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Guy Rex Rodgers arrived in Quebec in 1980, the year of the first referendum on independence. As a student at the ‘bilingual’ National Theatre School he discovered two worlds that coexisted in stubborn silence and has been trying to make sense of his adopted homeland ever since.

He has worked extensively in multimedia, writing shows in Canada, the USA, Europe and the Middle East, as well as working with the Montreal International Jazz Festival for many years on music documentaries.

While making a new home in Quebec Guy Rex Rodgers founded or co-founded several cultural institutions: The English Language Arts Network (ELAN), the Quebec Writers’ Federation and the Quebec Drama Federation. He was also a member of the founding board of le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) and in 2015 he was appointed to the newly created Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec.

Youssef Shoufan is a filmmaker, photographer, author and creator of multiple projects. Very active in the artistic, cultural and social scenes in his hometown and around the world, he uses his professional and personal communication skills as vectors of positive change, for the short and the long term.

Born in Damascus in 1987 and based in Montréal since 1994, his interests in minimalist aesthetics and his values of social justice and representation of marginalized narratives are at the heart of his work. To do so, Youssef uses his creativity, curiosity, mediation tools, leadership and critical thinking.

English being the third language he has learned, working on What We Chose to Remember was a way for him to discover many new realties through the stories of the people met on the journey of creating this documentary.

Betty Esperanza - is a first-generation Canadian of immigrant parents of France-Hungary descent who was the first in the family to attend English Protestant School where she  was exposed to diverse cultures and welcomed into the English-speaking diaspora.   

She has been building communities worldwide for three decades through her passion to unite people of all cultures to champion causes in the philanthropic, skateboarding,  and arts and culture spheres.  She studied diplomacy and business and marketing while juggling careers as an artist, musician and entertainment manager of Canadian Jazz Musician, Vic Vogel  for 10 years, as well as an avid street photographer participating in over 30 International exhibits where some of her black and white series “A BOOK ABOUT DEATH” are archived in the Museum of Modern Art. She is also the Founder and Organizer of 100 Thousand Poets 4 Change, a Montreal poetry festival in its 10th year.  

She is part of the TED Talks brand and a recent Radio Canada documentary “L’Esperanza de Cuba” tells her story in Cuba about her non-profit, Skateboards For  Hope which empowers youth using skateboarding as a tool to break the cycle of poverty. 

Working on the documentary, Betty felt very connected to the storytellers she interviewed and found her own sense of belonging as an English-speaking Quebecer  anchored and validated.