TRU President's Lecture series presents Sacha Trudeau
Contacts: Diana Major, Advancement Office, (p) 250.828.5264
October 21, 2008
Thompson Rivers University is pleased to announce that Alexandre "Sacha" Trudeau will be the next guest in the President’s Lecture Series, Monday, Nov. 3 at 7:30pm in the Grand Hall of the CAC.
Tickets are not required, but seating is limited, for his highly anecdotal talk where he will share his often-controversial views on the political, social and economic forces behind the headlines.
Trudeau is a renowned documentary filmmaker, freelance journalist and speaker. After graduating with a philosophy degree from McGill University, he began making documentaries with a strong social conscience. His first documentary on the Liberian civil war caught the attention of the CBC and he was enlisted as a videographer on the show ‘Culture Shock’. Following this, he was employed by CBC’s ‘The National’ to produce a piece on the youth in Yugoslavia and their hope for democracy.
In 2003 Trudeau personally slipped into Baghdad shortly before U.S.- led invasion. For six weeks during the bombing campaign he lived with an Iraqi family to tell the story from their perspective. This culminated in the 60-minute documentary film for the CTV program W5, ‘Embedded in Baghdad’. From there he continued to produce films about controversial topics, including ‘The Fence’ (2004) a documentary that shed light on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where he spent a summer with families on opposing sides of the Israeli security barrier in the West Bank. In ‘Secure Freedom’ (2006) Trudeau investigated the Canadian federal government's steadfast support of the use of security certificates on the grounds of national security. The certificates allow Canada to indefinitely detain non-citizens without charge, trial or the release of evidence against them.
Trudeau is President and Chief Producer at Juju films as well as a contributing editor at Maclean’s magazine. He is also a director of Canada World Youth, and of the Trudeau Foundation for excellence in social sciences and humanities research and innovation. He is currently working on a book about China.
The TRU President’s Lecture Series sponsors one or more speakers each academic year on topics of global importance. Over the past four years, TRU has welcomed such international figures as Stephen Lewis, Romeo Dallaire, Lloyd Axworthy, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, David Frum and Buffy St. Marie. Some of these highly regarded presentations have generated local and international responses that include the founding of the CanGo Grannies and motivating many TRU students to become actively involved in a variety of developing world projects.