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DIVA was invented in June of 1999 with a borrowed ten-year-old camera and an activist urge to counter the corporate media spins with our own visual record.
With a new digital camera and an awakening civil society, we're still at it, countering the corporate media stranglehold by covering grassroots activism, going where the big players choose to stay
away, documenting the little-known struggles that take place in our community.
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NEWLY COMPLETED - Mothers' Day at Wescam (May 2006) - creative resistance and civil disobedience with Homes Not Bombs and the Mother's Day Coalition for Peace at Burlington Ontario's L3/Wescam war production facility. 16 minutes. In August 2003, DIVA's CRITICAL MASS: HOW YOU SEE IT was selected to be part of PHOTOPHOBIA 5, making two-years in a row that DIVA has shown at this free, open air art festival in our home-town! (see below for previous year's entry) DIVA documented much of the resistance to the destruction of the Red Hill Valley, contributing footage to a collection of activist video (The Red Hill Video Collective and Grass Through Concrete)on the struggle against the expressway. [go to the Red Hill Red Alert page] DIVA Celebrates Hamilton-based activism and activist culture with a screening of, you guessed it, activist video with the NOT ONTV showcase at the Staircase Cafe Theatre. Click here to read the VIEW Magazine article. DIVA's WARGAMES IN THE PARK made the cut in 2002, in the Art Gallery of Hamilton's annual PHOTOPHOBIA SHORT FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL! Read our media release, see the photos and articles about the original encounter between DIVA and the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry as the RHLI attempts to occupy Bayfront Park for their war games. Our first work was the 1999 production "Target Audience: Children, War and the Hamilton International Air Show" which aired at public gatherings and helped bring to light the militarism of the HIAS. In 2000 we produced the entertaining "Buy Nothing Day," a glimpse of local culture jammers working Limeridge Mall as they donned construction worker costumes and warned potential shoppers of the outbreak of "affluenza." 2001 saw the completion of "Car-Free Day" which was used by local transportation activists to try and convince Hamilton City Hall to support the concept of car-free areas in the city; featuring exclusive clips of car free day 2000, critical mass bike rides, and a downtown parking meter party, the video will help to open up the world of sustainable transportation activism in Hamilton. DIVA has collected footage from the FTAA demonstrations in Quebec City involving local Hamilton activists (A.K.A. the satiric singers "Cash-Happy Bastards"); the Hamilton War Show "Festival of Life demonstrations;" exclusive footage of the Catholic Worker "Litany of Resistance" demonstration at the 2000 War Show; local peace marches, and more. |
DIVA would like the thank the following individuals for supporting the October 2001 purchase of a new *digital* camera after our antique model went "phewt" one day in Kitchener in the freezing rain (or was it in Quebec in the gaz...?)
(in no hierarchical order): Ruth and Richard Pickering; Ruth Frager and Don Wells; Wey Robinson; Joanna Santa Barbara; Mary Foster; Matthew Behrens and Laurel Smith; Andrew Loucks; David Jefferess; Murray and Linda Lumley, Kate Higginson and Daniel Knapp; Sara Tedford; Thom Oommen; Rolf Gerstenberger; Beth Gray; Scott Neigh; Randy Kay and Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko and family; Gail Lorimer; Elizabeth Skakoon and David Farr; Imre Szeman; Ian Graham. |