Photo exhibit opening to feature prize-winning author Miguel Syjuco and Laura Cliche, just back from mission to Ampatuan

The opening of a photo exhibit - On movements in Manila - at the Kaza Maza cafe in Montreal will feature a presentation by prize-winning Filipino author Miguel Syjuco as well as Montrealer Laura Cliche, who has just returned from a mission to investigate the Ampatuan massacre in the Philippines.

On movements in Manila
photo exposition by Stefan Christoff at Kaza Maza

Exposition opening
Thursday, February 4, 2010 18h - 20h
Kaza Maza, 4629 Avenue du Parc
(north of Mont-Royal St.)
Montréal Québec

* Miguel Syjuco is from Manila and has lived in Montreal for almost three years. In 2008, the manuscript for his debut novel, Ilustrado, won Asia's biggest literary award, the Man Asian Literary Prize. Ilustrado will be published in May in 16 countries and 12 languages. http://www.syjuco.com/

* Laura Cliche is a Masters student at the Université de Montréal who lived in the Philippines for the last five months. As an intern at the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), she had the opportunity to join the International Solidarity and Fact-Finding Mission following the Ampatuan Massacre, where 57 people were brutally murdered, including 32 journalists. She met with the families of the victims, a survivor of the massacre, government officials and local journalists. Back in Montreal, she is working in close relationship with Filipino activists to demand justice for the victims and to put an end to the killings in the Philippines.

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On Facebook

A photo exhibition presenting portraits and visual mediations from Manila, Philippines captured by Stefan Christoff showing throughout the month of February 2010 at Kaza Maza.

In striking colors Christoff's photos portray moments, symbols and faces from the Philippines, focusing particularly on grassroots social movements.

Present in the photographs is the human impacts of an economic crisis in the Philippines, fueled by corporate globalization and free trade policies.

Today the majority of people in the Philippines live below the poverty line, according to the U.N. more than 15 million people survive on less than one U.S. dollar a day.

In the Philippines extreme economic disparity is leading to increasing political unrest, channeling grassroots support towards revolutionary political parties in the cities and guerrilla movements in the countryside.

In photographs this exhibition offers images that attempt to capture the mood of a country struggling against intense poverty, state corruption and for national liberation.

* on twitter:
http://twitter.com/spirodon