Brianna Setaro (she/her) holds an MA and BA in Film Studies from Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In the past, she has worked as a cultural agent at la Maison de la Culture Marie-Uguay, where she developed and exhibited a participatory timeline, "m[a/i]crohistoire]" and as a project coordinator and cultural mediator for Montreal-based home movie project, Fragments Fugaces. She currently works as a conservation and laboratory technician at the National Film Board of Canada and continues to collaborate on home movie projects and events.
Brianna Setaro was a research assistant for the Mapping Parc-Ex project.
Claire Begbie is a PhD student in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University. Her research looks at the subject and history of Palestine in Arab and transnational cinema. As a lab coordinator, she recently co-facilitated a day of screenings for the Palestine Solidarity Week with a group of Art History students.
She is also a member of the Montreal-based film collective, Regards Palestiniens, which organizes an annual three-day screening series in the city. Claire published her first monograph, Representations of Palestine in Egyptian Cinema: Politics of (In)visibility with Peter Lang Publishing in 2023.
Representations of Palestine in Egyptian Cinema: Politics of (In)visibility
Joys Sekpon is a multifaceted storyteller currently enrolled in film production at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. Her artistic practice showcases an everlasting fascination with the intricacies of the human experience and the mundane. As part of the RAAH lab, she took on the role of social media coordinator.
Jared is a 3rd year PhD student in Film and Moving Image Studies, who is interested in the intersections between migration and disability justice. Jared became passionate about disability justice when the socially-constructed “end” to the COVID-19 pandemic was transparently built on a logic of systemically excluding disabled and medically-vulnerable people from participation in public space as the virus continued (and still continues!) to spread unmanaged, with the worst effects impacting marginalized communities. Through Raah, Jared has co-led a disability studies reading group and is developing an exclusive podcast. Outside of Raah, Jared is currently serving on the board of QPIRG, and is a founding member of the QPIRG working group COVID Action Now.
Jared Aronoff co-led the Disability Studies reading group.
Kevin Jung-Hoo Park is a Korean-Canadian filmmaker and visual artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal. Being born and spending his childhood in Canada, going through his adolescence in Korea, and coming back to Canada as an adult, Park has gone through several identity crises in his lifetime. He practices art as a means to reflect and eventually find a sense of belonging in this world. He has been interested in how the social and/or existential identity of an individual is constructed in relation to the act of (both personal and collective) recollection. He has explored personal narratives through various mediums including (but not limited to) film/video, photography, and performance as ways to address how one establishes and recreates their spatio-temporality surrounding as they form their identity.
Kevin Jung-Hoo Park was a research assistant for the Mapping Parc-Ex project.
Nildeep Paul is a graduate student at the Department of Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University. His research work takes place at the confluence of border studies, migration studies, and media infrastructure. He spends his leisure time cooking, baking and thinking of new ways to annoy his cat.
Sneha Kumar is a PhD student in the department of Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University. Their research work looks at how popular Indian streaming platforms construct the sexualities of nationalism through a focus on the fetishisation of data, desire as infrastructure, and practices of censorship at the level of the state as well as within fandom. As a member of the Raah Lab, they co-led the Disability Studies Reading Group, which focused on the many meanings of disability, the principles of disability justice, and the intersections between the projects of disability, race, and sexuality. In their free time, you will find them watching trashy reality television, thinking about complex celebrity texts, and dreaming of a world without gender.
Sneha Kumar co-led the Disability Studies reading group.
In his Phd project, Egor deals with the late-Soviet postpoetic documentary cinema, its aesthetics and its modes of production and circulation through an examination of documentaries produced in the Baltic Soviet republics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) throughout the 1980s, focusing on the transformation of aesthetic mechanisms of representation within Baltic visual strategies through a postcolonial perspective. The project unpacks the entanglements between the last Soviet generation of non-fiction filmmakers and the representations and negotiations of issues of national identity they had to face.
Egor makes all of the lab’s incredible posters.
Amir Hossein Siadat is an Iranian film researcher and critic with over 15 years of experience in film journalism. As a member of the Association of Iranian Film Critics, he has published articles in both Persian and English-language magazines, including Film, Chāhār, Filmkhāneh, Cinema va Adabiāt, and Senses of Cinema.
He served as the Director of the Cinematheque at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art for more than five years, where he organized several international film weeks, gaining extensive experience in film curation.
Siadat co-authored Shatranj-e Bad (The Chess of the Wind) with Sahar Khoshnam, a study of Mohammad Reza Aslani’s 1976 film. His second book, Yek Daricheh, Yek Cherāgh (Hatch & Light), is a collection of his own cinematic articles.
He is currently pursuing graduate studies in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University, focusing on first-person documentary. At Raah Lab, he collaborates on social media.
Armaan Chainani is an artist, community worker and graduate student in the department of Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University. His research interests lie in the intersections of media, violence and mobilities, and is currently writing his thesis on the representations of violence in digital politics pertaining to the renewed Zionist aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip. Armaan tries to incorporate both research and creation into his work, believing that the two are intrinsically linked and is integral for material change.
At the Raah Lab, Armaan collaborates on communications, outreach and social media. In his day to day life, he lives for his two pets, and for collective liberation.
Dipti Gupta is a teacher, researcher, independent documentary filmmaker with special interest in social and women’s issues. She teaches in the department of Cinema-Communication at Dawson College and in the Department of Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal.
She directed the South Asian film Festival of Montreal for four years and been on its programming committee for 10 years. She has served on the jury of the MISAFF film festival, Yorkton Film Festival and moderated a panel for Cannes for their 2021 festival.
Dipti serves on the board of Teesri Duniya Theatre – a Montreal based culturally diverse theatre company and is on the advisory committee of Montreal Serai.
Mostafa Henaway is a longtime community organizer at the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal which organizes with precarious im/migrant workers regardless of their status from undocumented workers, to temporary foreign workers, and those living with precarious status fighting for workplace and migrant justice. Mostafa Henaway has also been a long-time solidarity activist for Palestinian self-determination with Tadamon (Solidarity in Arabic) which organizes to build active support for the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign to end Israeli Apartheid.
Currently, Mostafa is a PHD candidate at Concordia University focusing on the economic geography of Amazon's logistics operations, and the role of labour within Amazon's distribution network. Mostafa Henaway is also a writer on im/migrant workers struggles, and precarious work. He has currently published "Essential Work, Disposable Workers: Migration, Capitalism and Class in July 2023(Fernwood Publishing).
Stefan Christoff is a musician, community radio host and student living in Tiohtià:ke / Montréal.
Instagram : @spirochristoff
X : @spirodon