Face2Face with David Peck

Barri Cohen, Brian Logie and Face2Face host David Peck talk about Unloved: Huronia’s Forgotten Children, trauma, empathy and love, “othering”, labels and woodcarving, oppression, institutions and junk science, capitalism and dehumanization and why it’s so important to never forget.   For more info head here and www.remembereveryname.comBlurb:Filmmaker Barri Cohen leads part detective story, part social history in UnLoved: Huronia’s Forgotten Children as she uncovers the truth about Alfie and Louis, her two long-dead half-brothers. They were institutionalized at the Huronia Regional Centre in Orillia in the 1950s, with one brother unceremoniously buried in secret in an unmarked grave as a small child. Their lives were cut short, but their story stands as a microcosm of the immense tragedy of the western world’s 20th century disastrous treatment of intellectually disabled children and youth - a question preoccupies the film: how do we allow ourselves to dehumanize the most vulnerable people in our care?UnLoved: Huronia’s Forgotten Children is a heartbreaking yet redemptive work that moves outwards from a highly personal and painful family secret to an investigation of hidden, searing truths about an entire government-enabled system of institutional cruelty and ugliness against vulnerable children. Yet, humanity is hopefully restored by assembling community and survivor testimony, along with the filmmaker’s insistence that these experiences be fully recognized and memorialized.About Barri:Barri Cohen is an award-winning writer, director, and producer whose career spans over 20 years of making independent documentaries and television series acrossa range of genres from lifestyle to comedy for general and specialty audiences in Canada and around the world. Many of Cohen’s independently produced anddirected works involve health, mental health, and environmental, social justice stories. Among her awards and nominations include those for her feature documentaryToxic Trespass: Children’s Health & The Environment & the recently co-produced Toxic Beauty — Phyllis Ellis’s multiple Canadian Screen Award winning andinternationally nominated feature documentary for White Pine Pictures and documentary Channel which had its premiere at the 2019 Hot Docs InternationalDocumentary Film Festival. Cohen also produced Ellis’s Canadian Screen Award nominated documentary for CBC, Girls Night Out. Cohen is the past NationalExecutive Chair of the Documentary Organization of Canada, past editor and publisher and current columnist of Point of View Magazine and was the co-chair and cofounding member of the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival. She is currently developing a family drama/comedy series, writing a memoircollection with essays, and studying psychoanalysis.Image Copyright and Credit: Barri Cohen and White Pine PicturesF2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound

Jo Brunini and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new book Never A Cloud,  empathy, listening, loss in a marriage, storytelling and self-correction, mysticalencounters, authenticity, and why fighting for your free space is so important.For more info head here.Blurb:Never a Cloud charts the course of three women—Violet, Ava, and Margot— who find their way to a new understanding of home and family at Otyrburn, an estate inrural Scotland. Violet Grey, a child of the sixties, writes from an island in Maine as the novel travels between Scotland, New York City, and Venice, Italy. Otyrburnbelongs to George Lowell and Margot Reid, who is the half-sister of Violet’s daughter, Ava. This is something Margot discovers only when Ava unexpectedly arrives.George, a director at the Metropolitan Museum, finds himself under suspicion for illicit activity as Margot reconnects with her childhood sweetheart, who is helpingrestore the worn-at-the-edges Regency manor, where secrets long forgotten, and those newly discovered, converge.“The novel often feels like the film Gosford Park populated by readers of the London Review of Books... Brunini’s prose is often evocative...”Kirkus ReviewsAbout Jo:Jo Brunini’s paintings and poetry can be found at giovannabrunini.com.Among her regrets are losing the handwritten letter from William Steig and not taking Tasha Tudor up on an invitation to tea.Jo lives in Vermont with her family.Image Copyright and Credit: Jo BruniniF2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Nadine Pequeneza & Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new film Last of The Right Whales, conservation and general ocean health, hope, despair, joy and plankton, plant intelligence, cohabitation, community and grass roots movements.Watch it on CBC and find out more information here about the film.Blurb:These gentle giants no longer die of natural causes. Instead, they are run over by ships or suffer lethal injuries from fishing gear. Over the past decade they’ve been dying at a rate of 24 per year. This staggering death toll is fueling a movement to save the first great whale to face extinction. Last of the Right Whales is the story of a disparate group of people - a wildlife photographer, a marine biologist, a whale rescuer, and a crab fisher - united in their cause to save the North Atlantic right whale. By joining forces these formidable allies are determined to stop the world’s first great whale extinction. The film combines the 4K cinematography of a blue-chip nature film with the character-driven, vérité storytelling of a high-stakes drama. With unprecedented access to film the migration of the North Atlantic right whale from their calving ground off the coast of Florida to their new feeding area in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, this feature documentary brings a message of hope about the most at-risk, great whale on the planet.About Nadine:Nadine Pequeneza is an award-winning Producer/Director specializing in character-driven films that offer unique access to stories about a wide range of topics from criminal justice to global finance, to wildlife conservation. With more than 15 years international experience her work has garnered worldwide recognition, including a Canadian Screen Award for Best Writing in a Documentary Program, nine CSA and Gemini nominations, Gold and Silver Hugos from the Chicago International Film Festival and a Silver Gavel Award honourable mention from the American Bar Association. Through her company HitPlay Productions Nadine produces, directs and writes feature documentaries: The Invisible Heart, Next of Kin, Road to Mercy, 15 to Life: Kenneth’s Story and Inside Disaster: Haiti. HitPlay’s broadcast and funding partners include CBC, SRC/RDI, PBS, ARTE, SWR, TVO, Knowledge Network, Canal D, Telefilm, Ontario Creates, NFB, Rogers Documentary Fund and the Bell Fund. Nadine is immediate past Chair of the Documentary Organization of Canada and a graduate of the Fledgling Foundation’s inaugural engagement lab. Her most recent work Last of the Right Whales is a story with far reaching implications about the endangered North Atlantic right whales.Image Copyright and Credit: Hit Play Productions.F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Karen Wookey, Andrea Constand and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film The Case Against Cosby, trauma, purpose, trust and aha moments,authenticity, fear, risk, and faith, finding a safe community and how healing is possible.Watch now on CBC GemSurvivors.orgHope HealingBlurb:Of the sixty-three women who have come forward to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault, only one was able to gain a conviction. This is her story. With intimate access to Andrea Constand and her family, Cosby’s prosecutors, journalists in the courtroom, and experts on predation, pedophilia, and trauma, we are taken on a journey that will leave us shocked, informed, and deeply changed. Woven throughout the stunning legal story are the first-person accounts of five Cosby survivors as they confront the impact of sexual trauma with world-renowned physician and best-selling author Gabor Maté. We will bear witness to the power of healing as these women find strength in one other. A heroine’s journey, The Case Against Cosby is a feature length documentary in Canadian markets and a 2 x 1hr documentary in international markets that reveals how one woman’s unstoppable courage and search for justice helped raise the voice of an entire generation of women seeking lasting change.About Karen:Karen Wookey has produced numerous feature films and over five hundred hours of series television, both scripted and unscripted. As a Showrunner, Writer/Director Wookey has created and produced several shows for television including Crimes of Passion, a doc series exploring intimate partner homicide, Intervention Canada, Vegas Rat Rods for Discovery Channel, and In Their Own Words: 6 premium bio docs for PBS showcasing Elon Musk, Pope Francis, Jimmy Carter, Lady Diana and Chuck Berry.Since 2011 Karen has been partnered with Prospero Pictures’ Martin Katz and together, they have produced many series and feature films, including Man on the Train (Tribeca) starring Donald Sutherland andLarry Mullen Jr., as well as Our House (XYZ International), in partnership with Resolute Films & Entertainment’s Lee Kim, directed by Anthony Scott Burns and starring Thomas Mann and Nicola Peltz. They arecurrently in production on Caitlyn Cronenberg’s first feature entitled Humane.Image Copyright and Credit: Karen Wookey & Prospero Pictures.F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Sarah Polley and Face2Face host David Peck talk about her new film Women Talking, curiosity, imagination, the patriarchy, trauma and grief, de and re-construction, the power of community, what it means to heal, inspiration and the greater Good.Blurb:Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, and Judith Ivey, with Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand, star in Sarah Polley’s fearless adaptation of Miriam Toews’acclaimed novel about a cloistered world where women struggle with an epidemic of abuse.Oscar-nominated writer-director Sarah Polley’s fearless adaptation of Miriam Toews’ acclaimed novel grants us access to a tight-knit, cloistered religious colony inwhich women struggle to recover from an epidemic of abuse. Featuring riveting, emotionally complex performances from a stunning ensemble that includes Oscarnominees Rooney Mara and Jessie Buckley and Oscar winner Frances McDormand, Women Talking is a drama of harrowing revelations, fraught alliances, and thesearch for grace.Reeling from multiple counts of sexual abuse, newly uncovered within their Mennonite colony, a group of women gather in a hayloft to discuss how to respond. Whilethe men are away, the women narrow their options down to three: do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. Some fear that any act of defiance will jeopardize their entry intoheaven, while others believe they cannot survive without husbands and sons. Some are willing to take any measures to escape the terror of their domestic lives andinsist that “the truth is stronger than the rules.”With her first feature in almost a decade, Polley showcases her unmatched skills as both a screenwriter and a director. The film is at once ferocious in its critique ofpatriarchal oppression — a critique that clearly extends to our broader, secular culture — while respectful of the beliefs and traditions in which its characters wereraised. Though it is suffused with the pain of trauma, a stubborn sense of wonder and quiet joy in community permeate the film. Women Talking ushers us through ajourney of rage, grief, wisdom, and hope through to a triumphant, most gratifying conclusion.Adapted from Jane Schoettle’s Synopsis, TIFFAbout Sarah:Sarah Polley, actor, director, writer, producer, she is one of Canada's most talented and well-known actors. Sarah is also an acclaimed director and a committed political activist. As a child actor, her natural and unaffected performances on television series such as CBC’s Road to Avonlea, and in films such as Atom Egoyan's Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter.After choosing to pursue a career in Canadian and independent films, she embarked on a highly successful second career as a writer-director with such award-winning films as Away from Her, Take This Waltz and Stories We Tell. Her latest film is Women Talking.  She has won multiple Genie and Gemini Awards, and numerous international honours.Sarah is the first woman to receive a Genie Award for best director, and is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of Canada’s Walk of Fame.Image Copyright and Credit: Universal Studios.F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here. 

Joshua Jay and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new book How Magicians Think, mystery, philosophy and wonder, asking good questions, doing what youlove, problem solving and why magic matters.To buy tickets for Thursday, November the 10th head to Jokers.About Josh:Joshua has performed on stages in over 100 countries. He was awarded the top prize at the World Magic Seminar and has fooled Penn & Teller on their hit show, FoolUs. He holds a Guinness World Record in card magic. Jay has performed magic on numerous television shows, including appearances on The Tonight Show withJimmy Fallon and The Late, Late Show with James Corden.Joshua Jay is the author of several books, including the best-selling MAGIC: The Complete Course, and the upcoming How Magicians Think.He has designed illusions for stage and screen, including a recent collaboration with HBO for Game of Thrones. Joshua consulted with the United States PostalService on the design of their postage stamp series, Magic.Joshua appeared at the 2008 Inaugural Ball for President Barack Obama and has also delivered private performances for former President Clinton.Most recently, Joshua was awarded Magician of the Year 2020 by the Society of American Magicians Parent Assembly for his contribution to the art of magic.Image Copyright and Credit: Joshua Jay.F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.