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the Mis(re)education of the invisible yet furious five
Paul Daniel Torres

Film
NFS

The Mis(RE)education of The invisible yet Furious Five, is a piece that was commissioned by the City of Toronto and TO History Museums. I was asked to make a film about “decolonizing education” centered around Zion Schoolhouse. The first public school in Ontario, created by Egerton Ryerson. I wanted this film to examine the intersections between our public school system, residential schools, and it’s effects on children of immigrants from colonized populations.  How the legacy of Egerton Ryerson persists in  how our public school systems, creates erasure by ignoring the shared trauma of colonization that’s present in  multicultural populations. That via erasure, we value proximity to whiteness as opposed to realizing the shared struggle we have with other racialized settlers and the Indigenous peoples whose lands we are settled on. Analyzing how these system separate us, but also how we must grow and unite outside of these institutions for freedom and progress.

Paul Daniel Torres is an award winning filmmaker and community worker, specializing in media literacy, cinematic, narrative, and performance art. His Latin, working class roots, and the multicultural mosaic of Toronto is what informs his work. This manifests in a narratively/visually eclectic style which focuses on how colonial systems effect racialized folks ability to connect and love the world around them, as well as the hope of overcoming them. However, he’s an entertainer at heart and hopes to deliver as many lessons as he does thrills as a filmmaker. His favourite film is the Iron Giant which is also why he’s hard of hearing in his left ear, due to an accident with a q-tip while pretending to be a robot.

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