the 2011 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival to 13 communities in Ontario.

The Tour presents a shorts program for youth, a two-day Youth Video-Making Workshop, and a free feature film for the entire family.

The Tour’s Youth Program encourages Indigenous youth to explore and discuss short film and video works made for or by youth that look at the often surreal,

significant, and often funny, coming-of-age phase of a young person’s life.

The innovative Youth Video-Making Workshop gives pre-registered youth the opportunity to make a short video work using recording and editing equipment

already available in their communities.

Led by artist Keesic Douglas, participants of the video-making workshops will have their short films entered into an online voting contest. With the support of

their peers’ votes, the young directors will have the chance to win a trip to the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival where their video will be screened in October 2012.

Last year’s winner, Keelan Keeshig of Parry Sound, attended imagineNATIVE 2011, all expenses-paid, and had his short video screened at the Festival as a part of the Ever Loud, Ever Proud Youth Shorts Program.

This year’s Community Feature Presentation brings families the animated feature

film Wapos Bay: Long Goodbyes, which closed the 2011 Festival.

Wapos Bay is a fascinating and often humorous portrait of life on a northern Saskatchewan

First Nation and is based on the classic animated TV series. The Wapos Bay TV series earned four Gemini Awards between 2006 and 2010 and features the

voices of the late Gordon Tootoosis (North of 60, Legends of the Fall), Andrea Menard (The Velvet Devil) and Lorne Cardinal (Corner Gas).

The Tour begins this month and will visit towns as far north as Moosonee/Moose Factory to Hamilton and will be in Saugeen Shores at G. C. Huston Public School in Southampton March 27 - 29.