Masterclass APTN - The development of an Indigenous audiovisual industry
Jason Ryle is an Anishinabe from the Lake St. Martin First Nation in Manitoba and lives in Toronto. He is currently the Executive Director of imagineNATIVE, an Indigenous-run organisation mandated to support Indigenous media artists. imagineNATIVE presents the annual imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, the imagineNATIVE Film + VR Tour, and professional development activities through the imagineNATIVE Institute. Jason joined imagineNATIVE's Board of Directors in 2002 and served on the Board to 2010 when he became Executive Director, overseeing operations and artistic programming. He has served on the board of directors for Vtape and Toronto Council Fire, and currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Toronto Arts Council where he is the Co-Chair of the its Visual & Media Arts Committee. Jason is also an Advisor for Indigenous films at the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) and is part of the Indigenous Advisory for the National Film Board of Canada. He is an emerging producer whose first short film SNIP (d. Terril Calder, 2016) was named as one of Canada's Top Ten Shorts in 2017 and won a prize at the Berlinale (Special Mention, 14Plus, Generation). Jason is currently in early production on three narrative features as a producer. In addition to this work, since 2006 he has been a script reader for the Harold Greenberg Fund, which provides financial assistance to Canadian screenwriters.
