About CMML

The Community Mobile Media Lab (CMML) is a purpose-designed mobile media production hub, which will house film production equipment that can be situated temporarily in Nova Scotia Communities across the province to explore innovative models of co-creation, training and mentorship.

The CMML is an innovative space that delivers infrastructure to support the creation of media art works in the sites that are outside the reach of conventional production, such as rural nova scotia where there is no infrastructure for media production, while also inviting communities and populations underrepresented in the university to have equal agency in processes of collaborative filmmaking activities.

Researchers

Solomon Nagler

Solomon is a filmmaker and installation artist working with film media to engage with experimental architecture in galleries and in public space.

His research projects include the Situated Cinema Project (2011-2015) and Speculative Cartographies (2019), a research-creation project which was exhibited at Biennale Warszawa. He is a prolific researcher and is co-founder of NARRATIVES APP a geolocative social media application that uses locative media as a means of wayfinding. This award-winning project (Mobile HCI Design Competition 2015) was funded by Innovacorps and the NSBI Innovation voucher program.

He co-edited Sculpting Cinema (2018), a book that examines the evolution of the cinematic language of expanded cinema as conceptualized through architecture, gallery spaces and public art projects. He is also co-editor of Landscape of Moving Image; Prairie Artists Cinema (2020), documenting artists’ practices and independent film histories from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Sobaz Benjamin

Community partner Sobaz Benjamin is Founder and Executive Director of In My Own Voice (iMOVe) Arts Association, is a film-director, as well as community worker, advocate, mentor, program facilitator and educator. In 2009, he partnered with the Nova Scotia Justice Department to deliver his Life Story course the (Kintsugi Monologues: KM) at the Nova Scotia Youth Facility and in 2016 at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility.

The KM has also been delivered at The Nova Scotia Community College. He was honored in 2014 by the Provincial Justice Department with a Minister’s Award for Individual Leadership in Crime Prevention. He has delivered workshops, seminars, presented and taught at a number of public schools and postsecondary institutions, as well as facilitating community-based projects around and beyond the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM).

Benjamin has also received a Humans Rights Award for his work with youth, a Crime Prevention Award from the Province of Nova Scotia and film directing awards from the National Film Board of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Cinema and Television.

Dr. Joshua Schwab-Cartas

Dr. Schwab-Cartas is a professor of Art Education at NSCAD University. His work explores notions of belonging, storytelling, memory, community building, and representation through socially engaged film and documentary. Dr. Schwab-Cartas’ research explores how technology becomes a bridge when grounded in Indigenous culture.

His innovative research explores intergenerational language revitalization and youth cultural production in Canadian and Mexican contexts and includes a SSHRC-funded PhD in Education from McGill that focuses on decolonial, Indigenous, and anti-racist approaches through visual methodologies.

Nina Acosta Bello

Nina Acosta Bello is a researcher and filmmaker born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. With a background in film production and community filmmaking, Nina's research focuses on filmmaking as an art education pedagogy, participatory filmmaking, and the exploration of identity and language through audiovisual art.

She graduated with an MA in Art Education from NSCAD University and is currently the coordinator for the CMML.