Our team at Cine 3 productions is committed to creating opportunities in marginal neighborhoods by teaching film production to youngsters. This learning experience and the skills it affords will develop their capacities to fight marginalization by providing opportunities to preserve and communicate their stories and experiences in their own images, their own narrative voice.

We understand this form of communication as a positive alternative to violent reactions such as those exhibited, for example, in Clichy-sous-Bois, France in October and November of 2005. There, events spread to poor housing projects in various parts of France with the result that a state of emergency was declared in November and subsequently extended for three months by Parliament.
 
If we recognize burning cars and buildings as a form of expression resulting from limited venues of communication and recognize among the functions of such rebellion the political unification of young and voiceless people of diverse colors, roots, accents and mother tongues, we then recognize one important reason for developing the alternative our commitment seeks to provide.

More than this, however, is at stake. In our view, being marginal is not just a matter of not being heard and staying out of frame, but rather includes thinking and acting as marginal and out of frame. Without a means of expressing his or her unique voice and image, an individual in the ghetto tends to lose that voice and image and, without these, important elements of our history and experience are irretrievably gone.

We are, of course, presently experiencing processes of marginalization and their consequences in Montreal at, in our view, potentially great loss to our young people. It is, then, not only to provide alternatives to what in France became the biggest riots since 1968, nor only to provide opportunities to tell the stories of marginalized individuals such as those of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré whose accidental deaths triggered those riots. Beyond these, and perhaps more importantly, we seek to provide opportunities to reject the self-imposed definition as marginalized persons by making their own films.

Despite the difficult task of adapting to a new culture and the challenge of growing up in more than one culture and language, living in a marginalized neighborhood with financial hardship, we can still see a fertile garden with its uniqueness of experiences and stories. In these times when the future is so unclear, art and culture become essential means of bringing about communication, feeling, and understanding.