Indigenous-focused filmmaking is growing | Farhan Umedaly | December 2nd, 2025

A groundbreaking Indigenous-focused filmmaking program is opening doors for new creators across Western Canada. Vancouver filmmaker and instructor Farhan Umedaly, founder of Empowered Filmmaker, joins us to reveal how this project is transforming lives, giving young storytellers real gear, real experience, and a platform to tell powerful stories about homelessness, addiction, culture, resilience, and community. We talk about how the program started, how students created full films in just days, and how Southern Alberta creators like Jory Charlebois brought urgent local issues to the screen.

Jeannette Rocher

Born in Puerto Rico, raised in Minnesota and Manitoba, Jeannette has had the opportunity to live in a variety of places including New York, Arizona, and Nevada. After completing college and a paid internship with CBC Winnipeg, Jeannette embarked on her journalism career by moving overseas to take a job on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. While overseas she covered stories in Fiji, Guam and Japan including the 2011 tsunami that hit Japan and its surrounding islands. She covered a mass shooting, an Earth quake, murder cases and other substantial court cases. In 2013 she moved to Alberta where she covered the devastating floods of High River and Medicine Hat for CTV News. She then went on to produce and host Go! Southern Alberta for Shaw TV. She now calls Miracle Channel home. In addition to reporting in the field, you can catch her anchoring daily weather reports, as well as longer interview segments on BCN, and the week-in-review show on BCN Weekends. 

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