The Guelph Lecture - On Being Canadian 2004

Alexandre Trudeau

Alexandre Trudeau

This year's lecture featured Alexandre Trudeau, an independent documentary filmmaker and freelance journalist. Alexandre screened portions of his films and discussed his experiences living with typical families - in such places as Israel, Liberia, Belgrade, and Baghdad - who tried to live as normally as possible in spite of bombings and hardships. In Baghdad, he lived for 40 days and 40 nights with a family as they endured the "Shock and Awe" bombardment and the U.S.-led occupation. His latest documentary The Fence tells the story of families on either side of the recently erected security barrier between Israel and the West Bank.

Alexandre Trudeau graduated in philosophy from McGill University with a specialization in modern post-metaphysical thought. After his studies, in 1998, Alexandre went on to co-direct an experimental project on the Liberian civil war: Liberia. The Secret War - decontructing the obscure and terrifying crisis into three contrasting perspectives: the war's media significance, its geopolitical underpinnings and finally its spiritual connotations.

From 1998 to 2000, Alexandre worked as a videographer and reporter on the bilingual CBC Newsworld/RDI program Culture Shock. In his reports, he focused mainly on Canadian aboriginal issues.

In 2000, Alexandre reported on the democratic hopes and despairs of the Yugoslavian youth caught between the machinations and sanctions of the West and the escalating tyranny of Slobodan Milosevic. His report aired on CBC's 'the National Magazine'.

In 2003, Alexandre produced and directed his first full length documentary Embedded in Baghdad. Shot over six weeks during the U.S. led war on Iraq, Embedded is the intimate journal of the filmmaker living with a middle-class Iraqi family. The film explores the true meaning of the war for those civilians caught at its epicentre.

Produced in 2004, The Fence is Alexandre's second documentary. It recaps the experience of Embedded in Baghdad whereby the filmmaker tells his story from within an intimate family context. In this case however, Alexandre is embedded with two families on opposing sides of the newly erected security barrier between Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Alexandre is also a contributing editor at Canada's national news magazine 'Maclean's'. He has reported from Iraq, Liberia, Haiti and Israel.

Alexandre lives in Montreal. He is 30 years old.

Also on the Bill

Mading Angeth

The evening also included remarks by Mading Angeth, a B.C. high school student who says that only from his position here in Canada can he see that there might be a solution to the conflict in his native country of Sudan. Angeth, who left the Sudan 4 years ago, has aspirations to return to the Sudan one day, perhaps as president. His compelling remarks and insightful comments have caused CBC's Shelagh Rogers to say he is one of "the most impressive people I have ever interviewed."

Seventeen year old Mading Angeth was born in a small village in southern Sudan. When the hostilities reached his rural community, he fled to Kenya where he lived in Kakuma refugee camp. Even in the camp, life wasn't stable: refugees were still attacked by the local people; so Mading was sponsored as a convention refugee by the Canadian government to come and build a life here in Canada. He arrived on April 22, 2001 and started school in New Westminster, BC. This year he won a scholarship to Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific, a United World College, where he is studying Economics, Anthropology, English, Math, French, Theory of Knowledge and Biology.

House of Velvet

House of Velvet, one of Guelph's most exciting musical groups, provided live music .

William Whitehead

Timothy Findley and William Whitehead
This year's reading featured William Whitehead reading from Timothy Findley's A Nation of One.