Bay Street Film Festival / Vox Popular Media Arts Festival

In 2005, Flash Frame Film and Video Network founded the Bay Street Film Festival in Thunder Bay, ON to showcase local and regional media arts productions. During this first festival, they have screened 80 films and organized eight panels of out of town speakers, as well as two photo exhibits. In 2006 we received our first grant which allowed us to pay artist fees and travel grants for filmmakers to participate in live discussions. This festival has continued annually in Thunder Bay since its inception in 2005. 

Bay Street Film Festival became its own entity in 2010, and the festival’s name was changed to the Vox Popular Media Arts Festival in 2017, however Flash Frame maintains a close relationship with the festival. Over the 18 years, the festival has paid out over $325,000 in artist fees to local, regional, and Canadian artists. 

When the Vox Popular Media Arts Festival went virtual in 2020, Flash Frame members helped to produce six filmmaking master classes by recording, editing, and streaming the interviews via Facebook. Flash Frame members also helped produce the Vox Popular Concert Series that was showcased that same year.

To see what Vox Popular is up to now, be sure to check out their website for more information!

Spotlight on Academics

Spotlight on Academics is a film festival that recognizes the value of using film as a teaching tool and we are dedicated to presenting films that are suitable for use in post-secondary classrooms. This does not mean that our audience is limited to academics or that we favour films produced by academics. We are interested in independent films that have a solid academic foundation and that are produced with high production values. Our priority is to provide the audience with quality films that contain reliable information and perspectives that enhance our understanding of the world. We are open to films on any subject that are suitable for classroom use. Mostly, these are documentary films that are less than 90 minutes in length, but we are open to films in any format and on any subject.

The Spotlight on Academics festival is held annually in Thunder Bay, Ontario and it is also streamed online through researchtv.ca to ensure the broadest possible audience.

Catch the 3rd Annual Spotlight on Academics Film Festival February 9th-12th, 2024! More information at spotlightonacademics.ca

ResearchTV

We live in a rapidly changing world where the catalyst for change is the ever-advancing march of digital technologies. The proliferation of new media has served to better inform and engage people, but viewers are often left wondering about the value and accuracy of information on the internet. At the same time, pressure has grown on Social Sciences and Humanities researchers to broaden the impact of the knowledge they produce by sharing it with their peers through academic publications, but also to non-academic audiences. Along with this call for wider public dissemination is the rise of new digital media formats which have emerged as an exciting and accessible form of communication for new audiences. ResearchTV is an academic video streaming platform that provides viewers with assurances about the quality of research and the production value of films offering critical perspectives on the world we live in. ResearchTV is dedicated to the sharing of knowledge and expertise through film.

Although most of our programming is in the form of polished films, ResearchTV also includes channels that contain such things as academic presentations, archival footage, community programming, oral histories and other research results that can be used for instruction in the classroom. This content is broad in scope and often an extension of academic research, but it is not peer-reviewed. As our content grows we will be highlighting films in our ResearchTV Guide and on our New Releases Channel. See below for a quick sample of the variety in content you can find via these channels.

Click the link to find which Flash Frame films are streaming at researchtv.ca