ABOUT

About RESO

 

RESO is a Vancouver based national office that supports the mentorship, training, funding, production, and distribution of content by racialized Canadian filmmakers with diverse stories told through our diasporic migrant lens with a major goal to build greater business opportunities and markets for content from racialized communities in and outside of Canada.

At RESO our focus is on the distinct nature of the immigrant diaspora and the opportunities, realities, and stories that live within our communities and our lived experiences. RESO is founded on the core principle of collaboration to address the culture of scarcity within governmental funding bodies. These processes prevent community organizations from cooperating with one another.

History

 

The Vancouver Asian Film Festival is the longest running Asian film festival in Canada and has been an incubator of talent for Asian Canadian creators and filmmakers for 25 years. As a community leader, VAFF has a long history of offering capacity building, mentorship and professional development programs to its Asian Canadian community and other communities of colour.

In 2017, VAFF Board and Senior Executive team participated in a Strategic Visioning workshop and during this session the team identified the need for a national organization that could focus on the advocacy activities for accessing equitable funding, increasing representation in front and behind the camera and developing connections and opportunities to bring underrepresented racialized Canadian content to global markets.

Then in 2020, with the growing recognition of the inequities racialized filmmakers faced at every level that continually resulted in under-financed and under-supported projects, VAFF realized that this was the moment to revisit its 2017 vision.

Then, after months of convening and consulting different groups, we concluded that establishing the national Racial Equity Screen Office (RESO) situated in Western Canada would be the most efficient and effective mechanism to advocate for financial, social, and geographical equity from government funding agencies while also identifying the structures and practices within the screen-based industry that negatively impact racialized creatives and impede our success.

Supporting Organizations

 

  • DOC BC

  • Iranian Film Festival Society

  • Asian Canadian Film Alliance

  • BC Minorities for Film and TV Society

  • Creative Bunch Society

  • Cinevolution Media Arts Society