I Am YEG Arts: Gabby Moukhaiber

Gabby Moukhaiber is a local filmmaker and producer who also serves as a Board member and Programming Lead for Edmonton’s FascinAsian Film Festival. Driven by a love for his city and the diverse stories from this place, Gabby is a champion for film culture in Edmonton, and the opportunity to uplift the voices of Pan-Asian artists. In this week’s I Am YEG Arts feature, we chat with Gabby about how he got his start in filmmaking, his role with the FascinAsian Film Festival (running May 12 – 16), and his picks from this year’s festival that you can’t miss. 

Tell us about your connection to Edmonton and what keeps you living and working here.

Having moved here 26 years ago, Edmonton was very interesting in that it felt like a city where everyone loves to build and make things happen. I have worked in Vancouver, Toronto, and all over the country, but I find myself drawn back to Edmonton because there is nowhere else in Canada where I can come up with my awesome, sometimes crazy ideas, pitch them, and then all these folks are eager to pitch in. There’s this spirit of wanting to get it to the finish line that I found was very prevalent here. People’s hearts are open to make it happen and put the city on the map. Everyone that we talked to for FascinAsian, be it Edmonton Screen to the Mosquers, echoed this spirit of collaboration, and they all have a story similar to mine where they had a crazy idea, wanted it to happen, and the folks here banded together to bring it forward. All these amazing arts spaces and film spaces are a testament to people wanting this change, wanting this space, and creating it for themselves. 

What first drew you to film production/​editing, and how did you get your start in the local film industry?

I was the kid that always picked up the family’s camcorder. While taking family videos, I slowly began to play around with the zoom and make these little edits or cuts by pausing and unpausing. I didn’t know how to edit; it was just a matter of record and unrecord. I enjoyed that a lot, but I never really did anything with it. But in my brain, I began to see everything visually, and I would later learn that that’s what an editor does. I ended up going into computer sciences, and while I was there, I remember a moment when I had a bug in my code, and to get the project done I went to a classmate for help. He’s like, ​“yeah, you’ve got this bug. I can’t tell where it is and that’s wonderful”. We are having two different reactions. I am stressed because I want this delivered while he had this light in his eyes, like he loved doing this. And it dawned on me that I did not love it, so I left class that day. 

I was sitting in MacEwan thinking about what I wanted to do, and right across from me was this team that was filming something for MacEwan. I went up to the poor soul leading the project, whose name is Tim, and asked him if I could shadow him and learn from him. He was kind enough to not say go away. He walked me through the process and gave me a very brief education on what the camera does and the various roles they had on the team. As I began to watch, I had a moment of realization that this is what I wanted to do. [Tim] told me MacEwan had a film course, and sure enough, it was the exact thing I was looking for. 

Coming full circle, one day someone asked me about this error they were having in Adobe Première, and I was like, oh my gosh, I had become my classmate who knew so much about the subject and was so passionate about it that I was happy to find these errors. I found what I love, and it’s never too late to find it. 

Looking back, tell us about a project you’re particularly proud of, and why? 

The one that is the most near and dear to my heart is the first appearance of Gabby and Shawn Tse together. During the pandemic, there was the rise of anti-Asian hate happening. I remember going out with a few of my friends who were more West Asian presenting, and I noticed that the staff at this particular restaurant were aggressively wiping down everything that my friends were touching, and every time they would hand food, they would hand it off to me to hand to them. I didn’t know the word for it, but having come here in 2000 and experiencing the fallout of the tragedies of like 9/11, I felt very othered for many years, and now I began to feel it for my friends. I now know that the term is microaggression. As I was thinking about it, I talked to my friends at Alpacalypse Productions, the company that I built with my friends, and they had just talked to Shawn Tse from Fallout Media about some sort of collaboration because he was noticing that there’s a lot of anti-Asian hate happening and the statistics were there to back it. We ended up pitching to Act to End Racism to do two PSAs about the model minority and microaggression. I was able to use that experience I had with my friends to create a PSA about microaggression, and it went on to be super emotional; everyone resonated with it. We later learned that the Government of Canada picked them up and broadcast them. 

It worked out beautifully that we created these two pieces with Shawn, and later this propelled me to do more work within Chinatown and the Asian community. It led us to working together, collaborating more and more, and then eventually, he pitched me the wildest idea about an Asian film festival in Edmonton. And I was like, it sounds too good to be true and too crazy, but I’m in. And that’s how we got to FascinAsian Edmonton. 

Tell us about your role with the FascinAsian Film Festival and what makes it special to you and the city.

This festival is amazing. As a filmmaker, I have submitted to various festivals — and won some awards, which is great — but I never felt like we had a festival that particularly celebrated pan-Asian or pan-Asian-Canadian filmmakers. When we came together last year, it was like building the ship as it was sailing. There were many hurdles, many barriers, and many challenges for us to face, but we wanted to make it happen. And thankfully, it was super successful. Edmonton is tenacious. When we love something and we care about it, we will show up and ensure that it succeeds.

This year was different because we have fleshed out many of the challenges, and we’ve expanded the festival. Last year was three days, this year it’s five days because of the demand and the amount of folks that wanted to come out. They wanted more content, more films. I also undertook a gauntlet this year. 138 films made it past like our first round of selection, and normally those are distributed in batches among various judges all over the city. I put in a formal request to watch all 138 so I could understand what kind of content we get. We had to take that 138 and bring it down to a final 20. It got so difficult because you get to see the passion, love, and creativity of all these filmmakers. Of the films that were considered, we had films from 25 different countries; 43 of them had already previously won awards; 34 stated they were first time filmmakers; 56 of those submissions were Canadian filmmakers. I would really encourage you to come out this year because the selection seems to be getting better and better.

As you discussed, putting together the short program for the festival is no small feat! With so many great offerings, tell us about your top three picks from the festival that you think everyone should check out.

All of the films are amazing, but there were three that immediately upon watching them, I knew they were my picks and I would die on the hill to ensure they come through. They happen to be on our Saturday programming list; the list that we dubbed ​“The Ones We Leave Behind”. They are Khmerican, A Good Day Will Come, and The One Who Plays. All three touch on very heavy subjects. They are not feel-good films but I felt like with our mission and mandate to elevate and uplift the Asian community and Asian filmmaking, those three really struck me at the heart. I would advise you to see all of the selections, because they’re great. But if you’re down to shed a few tears and see some amazing stories, those three would be the hardest to watch, but also really focus on people that deserve to be elevated and really highlight some very marginalized folks.

What do you hope festival-goers take away from the experience?

I always hope that everyone that comes out gets to experience the beauty of creating film. The wonderful thing about the Fascination Film Festival is that with all these films that we showcase, the creators, directors, everyone behind them is open to coming out, either doing a Q&A, or discussing the film. They’re ultra passionate. When you yourself are passionate, the crew is passionate, you respect each other and work collaboratively, it translates to your final product. I want folks to come in and watch films — again, no dig at Hollywood — where people are focused on the passion. We’re trying to create this space to uplift and to elevate voices and welcome everyone in. We want you to come in, have an amazing time, enjoy seeing some very high-quality productions and leave with a smile on your face (except for Saturday haha).

It’s also the first year that we’re trying out the movie and the lunch idea. We have four amazing food sponsors that we’re collaborating with to bring together food and film. There have also been huge collaborative efforts this year between the Art Gallery of Alberta, Metro Cinema, and Landmark Cinemas. It’s so nice to be able to reach out and ask, ​“are you open to doing this?” and hear back, ​“absolutely, I’m surprised you didn’t ask me last year!”

What’s next for you? Do you have any projects on the horizon that you’re especially excited about?

I’m currently working with an amazing team — Arthur Mah, Gabriel Lima, and Megan Tsang — to produce a short film for Telus Storyhive called Mah Jon. It talks about the experiences our director Arthur Mah had with not feeling Asian enough. He wanted to go to the local Mah Society here in Chinatown and play some Mahjong, but was very hesitant because he felt a disconnect to his culture and that he was not fluent enough in the language. And then lo and behold, he goes, he plays, and he discovers that the Mah Society did not care. They were just happy to have him come out. He decided to turn that into a short that we’re going to be shooting together to describe that experience and hope it resonates with many folks who can sometimes feel like they’re not X enough or not part of said culture and community. The whole goal is to encourage people to try new things and try to reconnect with their culture if they feel like they’re separated from it.

From the FascianAsian end, of course, we would love to see you all May 12 – 16 for the festival. We’re also planning to do many other pop-ups within the summer, hopefully working with awesome local organizations. We want to do more than just the festival. We want to do pop-up events, create documentaries– anything that involves pan-Asian storytelling. We want this to be a year-round thing. We want to continue to grow, elevate, and build up the community.

To learn more about the incredible films at this year’s FascinAsian Film Festival, check out the program guide. Click here to purchase tickets and festival passes.