Camilla Gibb presents The Unknown Famine and Ye Wonz Maibel: Deluge at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema
PEN Picks presented in partnership with Hot Docs
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Fiction meets fact as some of our most celebrated writers present a documentary of their choice. Each author will discuss their personal interest in the film after the screening, and will participate in a Q&A with the audience. These events will give audiences unprecedented access and insight into the processes, preoccupations, and motivations of Vincent Lam, Camilla Gibb, Miriam Toews, and Linwood Barclay.
Award winning novelist Camilla Gibb is the second of four authors in this documentary series presented in partnership with Hot Docs.
Camilla Gibb’s PEN Pick: The Unknown Famine and Ye Wonz Maibel: Deluge
Monday, March 3, 2014
6:15 p.m.
The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, 506 Bloor street west
Tickets are $15 ($12 for The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema members) and $45 for series passes ($36 for The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema members) and will be on sale through the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema box office.
Full list of events:
Vincent Lam (February 10)
Camilla Gibb (March 3)
Miriam Toews (March 24)
Linwood Barclay (April 14)
Co-presented with the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema
Camilla Gibb is the author of four novels – Mouthing the Words, The Petty Details of So-and-so’s Life, Sweetness in the Belly and The Beauty of Humanity Movement – and has been the recipient of the Trillium Book Award, the City of Toronto Book Award and the CBC Canadian Literary Award and has been short listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Camilla has a Ph.D. from Oxford University and has been writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta. She is an adjunct faculty member of the graduate creative writing programs at the University of Guelph-Humber, the University of Toronto and the Humber School for Writers.
I lived and worked in Ethiopia in the mid-1990s. Growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, all I knew of Ethiopia was that it was a land of famine. Dimbleby’s The Unknown Famine, was the first film to show us the harrowing images we came, in the west, to associate with the country. Ethiopian forces opposed to Haile Selassie’s Imperial rule used that footage to bring about the end of an empire that had reigned for nearly 2000 years. Here, documentary played a direct role in the political future of a country as well as a being the starting point for what could arguably be called an industry of famine relief.
The Unknown Famine
D: Ian Stuttard | UK | 1973 | STC
Commissioned by Thames Television, The Unknown Famine was the first documentary to report on the horrific famine in Ethiopia to western audiences. Featuring reporter Jonathan Dimbleby (who later wrote a book on his experience filming this documentary), this ground-breaking documentary opened the dialogue regarding world hunger to a larger audience.
Ye Wonz Maibel: DELUGE
D: Salem Mekuria | Ethiopia | 1996 | 61 min | STC
A powerful story about conflict and the road to reconciliation, Ye Wonz Maibel: Deluge follows a group of Ethiopian students who launched a revolution that resulted in a brutal military dictatorship.
Headshot courtesy of Camilla Gibb