Writer, filmmaker, activist. Sylvia Spring was born in Galt, Ontario in 1942. She received a Bachelor of Arts from the State University of New York at Buffalo in English Literature and Drama. Spring is noted for being the first woman to direct a feature-length fiction film in Canada. Madeleine Is… (1971) tells the story of a French-Canadian woman living in Vancouver, trying to make sense of the city and become self-reliant. In addition to this, Spring worked in journalism, advertising, radio, and television. She led the Task Force on Sex-Role Stereotyping in the Broadcast Media, which analyzed and devised guidelines to improve the portrayal of women in popular media. The task force led to the creation of the watchdog organization Media Watch. Since 1984, Spring has designed and facilitated workshops and lectures on equality in and the democratization of media and media literacy for national and international agencies such as the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Canadian International Development Agency, and the United Nations Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization. Spring’s documentary, Breaking the Silence: Stories from AIDS Activists in Southern Africa (1996), which tells the stories of women working at the front lines of the AIDS epidemic, won several international awards.
Discrete project sites documenting the work of specific artists and collectives in detail.
Essays and conversation providing a context for exploring the Project Sites and Archives.
Video interviews conducted between December 2008 and May 2009 reflecting on Vancouver’s art scene in the sixties.