Anya Kasuri, TVM President and Post-Credits Editor-in-Chief, attended the event dressed in a sparkling gown and touted the magazine’s sole physical copy. The magazine, which she co-founded alongside TVM’s graphics coordinator, Sascha Siddiqui, encourages authors to thoughtfully analyze their favourite films. Kasuri is in her third year, studying International Development with a double minor in Political Science and World Cinemas.

In an interview with The McGill Daily, Kasuri says, “Film is the medium that influences our everyday character and aspirations.” Not only does it influence you, it allows you to understand yourself: “Critiquing film is a social activity, an intellectual engagement, and at its core, is a self-assessment of your values and beliefs…the meaning you derive from it can be really telling of your character too. ”

Her favourite part of the magazine is the graphics: “[Unlike writing, graphics] provide visuals to cinema…to perfectly complement the [article’s] argument. Sascha [Siddiqui], our graphics coordinator, did an incredible job bridging the gap … When I saw the final [magazine] it was her creativity that grounded the writing back to its roots — an appreciation of cinema.”

“Films should always be critically analyzed this way. I feel like that’s a value that I’ve derived from my film classes, particularly with Professor Ara Osterweil,” she replied when asked about the vision behind the magazine. “The process of watching and experiencing a film is not only viewing it, then going home and going to sleep. It’s about watching it with your friends, watching other people, reacting, [and] hearing everyone’s reactions in the crowd. Afterward, [the experience is about] discussing it as you understand it — because when you come out of a movie, you’re not going to know exactly what you have to say; it’s not a fully fleshed-out thought. When you spend time discussing it, you learn more about it.”

The key difference, for Kasuri, between short- and long-form analysis lies in its depth: “[Long-form analysis] offers full fledged evaluations of films’ formal elements: cinematography, mise en scene, visual tone, colour palette, acting, narrative — being able to evaluate that in a longer form analysis lets you see each film individually…and its directors’ vision apart from one another because you get into the depths of each films’ elements’ meaning[s].” To conclude: “It’s a better, more engaging, intellectual, and educational alternative to short-form media.”

However, she notes that many people forget the core of analysis: what the film wants to be. “A lot of people misjudge pieces of media by applying the same expectations to all [of them]. It’s important to judge a film based on what it’s striving to be…they all have different standards of their visual language, their pacing, their acting, their sets,” said Kasuri.

I encountered Elena Degas at a bar table next to the DJ booth, listening intently to the live band. As TVM’s music composer, she wanted to “provide insight from a musical perspective.” Writing to the Daily, she highlighted how the score was integral to the story: “Sinners was by far the film that impacted me most from the last year, and I felt that it was special in the way that the score/music was so integral to the story and the conversations that were happening around the film.”

Degas got her start in film scoring when she watched Euphoria in 2019. The music was what made her love the show; she found that it could tell a poignant story on its own.

Her favourite part of the article she wrote for Post-Credits was her analysis of the use of blues at the centre of Sinners. It gives the viewer insight into the film’s characters and their struggles. Especially the song “Pick Poor Robin Clean,” demonstrates the turn from oppressed to oppressor in Remmick, an Irishman. It opens up a “space for a larger conversation about the history of predominately Black genres of music and how they’ve evolved and continue to live on today.”

From her article: “It is immediately following [the surreal montage] scene when the people in the juke joint are faced with the vampires, who dauntingly perform an upbeat, folk-inspired rendition of ‘Pick Poor Robin Clean’ for the group.” The song is “a blues song that [embodies] someone trying to survive by picking apart and taking everything they can from a dead robin.”

For Degas, “this jolly folk rendition exemplifies the white vampires’ inability to engage empathetically and thoughtfully with the community they are attempting to infiltrate, and recalls a common pattern in genres such as blues and jazz, in which white musicians have historically appropriated and overshadowed Black artists.” Remmick’s positionality is especially striking because of his Irish heritage and experience with colonialism. His desire to completely consume the music is shaped by a selfish desire to preserve it the way he was unable to with his own heritage. However, in doing so, he reproduces colonial violence, with music becoming a tangible symbol of culture.

TVM has allowed Degas to explore her passion for the soundscape of a movie: “Film is now one of the main cornerstones of my life, I have found a huge love for making music for films at TVM, and have found a great community of other film-lovers here; I now plan on attending film school next year for sound design in hopes of a career in film audio/music!”

McGill’s distinct lack of a creative arts programme is no secret. However, student initiatives like Post-Credits Magazine are working to allow student film lovers to think critically about the art they are passionate about.

TVM will be hosting its largest event of the year, FOKUS Film Festival on Thursday, March 26 at Cinema Du Parc. For more information, visit TVM at tvmtelevision.com or @tvm.television on Instagram.

The post TVM Reveals the First Issue of Post-Credits Magazine appeared first on The McGill Daily.

GardaWorld’s involvement with ICE was revealed last July in a Miami Herald report that detailed how a subsidiary of the Montreal- based firm, GardaWorld Federal Services, was approved as one among ten companies to aid in running Alligator Alcatraz. The company was awarded eight million USD by ICE for the security contract.

Montreal activists — accompanied by Québec solidaire, Amnesty International, and several union representatives from the Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux (CSN – Federation of National Trades Unions) and the Fédération Autonome de l’Enseignement (FAE) — gathered at Place Vertu, before making the approximately two-kilometre march towards the security firm’s headquarters. A McGill contingency also attended the protest.

The university has historically procured at least $19 million in GardaWorld contracts for campus security services. McGill currently continues to hire security officers from GardaWorld, with job listings as recent as February 4, 2026. Student organizers joined the march with a banner stating: “Garda Off Our Campus.”

McGill students departed from the McGill campus and joined other demonstrators at Place Vertu. The organizers, who have asked the Daily to remain anonymous, elected to create this contingent to encourage students to travel to the protest despite being 55 minutes away by public transit. They sought to highlight McGill’s involvement with GardaWorld in a written statement to the Daily: “McGill contracts GardaWorld to police its students. Students have observed an increased presence of GardaWorld security in the semesters that followed the Gaza Solidarity encampment.”

The McGill organizers further stated that, “McGill has been extremely willing to pay large amounts of money to “securitize” its campus … Considering that a good portion of this money must have gone to their partnership with Garda[World], the students have a responsibility to demand an end to our University’s complicity in ICE’s terrorism, which we know is facilitated by GardaWorld.”

When asked about their personal feelings about having GardaWorld’s security officers on campus grounds, the organizers said that, “we are outraged. It is extremely unsettling to think that the same security guards who follow around students and encroach on their right to protest” work for the same organization that helps “ICE dehumanize and terrorize people in Alligator Alcatraz.”

When asked about why McGill students should mobilize, student organizers responded, “Students should be in charge of what occurs on their own campus.” The contingency outlined future steps that McGill students can take, should they also feel outraged by the GardaWorld contract: “We need to mobilize to show admin that we do not agree with the securitization of our own campuses. We refuse for our tuition to go towards security that we don’t want … our money going towards a company which funds ICE.”

Before leaving from Place Vertu, Celeste Trianon, one of the protest organizers, led a series of speakers to the fore. Each condemned GardaWorld’s collaboration with ICE and their participation in detaining over 6,000 individuals at the South Florida detention centre under inhuman and unsanitary living conditions.

An organizer from Indivisible Québec said, “While ICE operates in the United States, the infrastructure that enables it does not stop at the border. GardaWorld, a corporation headquartered here in Quebec, is one of the private contractors involved in the immigration detention systems.” In 2022, Investissement Québec, a provincial investment agency, invested $300 million CAD in the firm; while nationally, the Canadian federal government has entered into significant, long-term contracts with GardaWorld, including a deal brokered with Canadian Air Transport Security Authority in 2023 for $2.7 billion.

“Let us be clear: when public funds strengthen corporations tied to detention systems, when subsidies and contracts flow without scrutiny, and when profit is made from incarceration that is not neutrality. That is participation,” the speaker continued.

A Montreal local who wished to remain anonymous spoke with the Daily, stating that it was vital for Canadians to show up and protest, “especially when we are seeing this rise in right-wing conservatives who are not afraid to assemble on the other side.” She noted that attending protests such as this one is important for building community and creating active change in the world we live in.

“There’s a lot of action in the US [against ICE], which makes the world think that Canada isn’t doing anything, but we are,” she said. “Canada is also participating in protesting here — that’s why it is so important.”

So far, the protestors mentioned there have been no talks with the McGill administration regarding its affiliation with GardaWorld. The students urged that there is a chance for dialogue should there be more pressure on the University through popular support and direct action. As they put it, “They will not change unless they are cornered into doing so.”

The Daily has reached out for comment from McGill University. As of the time of writing, we are waiting for a response.

Upon arriving at the firm’s headquarters at 5 PM, the demonstrators were met with riot police and GardaWorld’s security staff. According to the Montreal Gazette, the confrontation resulted in officers spraying the crowd with pepper spray and tear gas. At least one demonstrator was arrested, reportedly throwing a piece of ice at an officer before being pinned to the ground.

The post One Thousand Protest McGill-Contracted Security Firm Operating at ICE Detention Facility appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In my senior year, when I decided to quit rowing to allow myself some flexibility, I still found myself searching for some time to breathe. Even the summer before my first year of university was jam-packed. While I wanted to work as much as possible to pay the exorbitant rent for my tiny room in McConnell, I also felt the urge to spend every minute seeing my friends and family before I left to go to school two thousand miles away. I had long lists of things to buy, a room to clean, and suitcases to pack.

My first days at McGill were a shock. My parents stayed for a few days to help me shop and
move in, but soon returned home. Despite barely understanding what Frosh was, I had bought my ticket and picked up my bracelet. I had three days until it began, and I was alone.

While the freshman orientation team had organized one or two activities, these were typically in the morning and left me with free afternoons. Of course, I took advantage: my brand-new friends and I explored thrift shops in Little Portugal, hiked Mount Royal, and ran errands for our new homes. However, these experiences were tinged with something foreign: I could do whatever I wanted, with an empty to-do list. My free time felt endless, and it started to scare me a little.

When classes began, I was swept up in the new schedule, trying to build connections with my friends and continuing to explore the new city. However, when the temperature started to drop in the late fall of first year, I began to feel that I was missing out on some intangible part of the first-year experience that I would never get back. I missed the community and purpose that extracurriculars gave me in high school. I spent most of my time now sitting and chatting with friends instead of working on busywork handouts. Meanwhile, back in high school, the eight-hour school days had given me a structure to follow.

In an attempt to re-establish a routine, I applied and applied to director and council positions, missing the mark on many. I’d go to a club meeting or two, feel like I was behind, and promptly drop it altogether. This cycle made me feel like I was never going to get back the time I had lost focusing on school and friendships in my first semester. My joyful time wasn’t what I should have been doing; I started to think I’d never get a job or join a club that I enjoyed. My classes were no longer enough to satiate my desire for community and my need to be productive – even with plenty of assignments to do at any given moment, I felt unsettled that I had so much free time outside of schoolwork. Nobody was forcing me to do my readings, and I had been blessed with a combination of 200-level classes that demanded little more than a couple of hours a week outside of class.

Thankfully, as March rolled around, I started to find activities that suited me; wrote for a couple of newspapers, rock climbed, and attended the Linguistics department’s council meetings. However, each of these activities only took up an hour or two of my week, and I still had more free time than I did in high school. At first, this upset me; everyone else still seemed busier than me, and I was stressed that I was wasting my time. LinkedIn only compounded the issue: my achievements were similar to those of my high school classmates, but in my head, theirs were worth more. Spending my evenings learning to crochet wasn’t helping my future career. Nor was FaceTime-ing my friends from home, or slowly improving on the climbing wall.

But as the days passed, each one filled with activities that brought me joy, “productive” or not, I realized a truth of university life that I had to accept. There was no reason to dwell over how I spent my time outside of class, whether it was productive/generative or not. What I was missing was the point of being a student: I was not only learning about my major, but also how to live life as an independent adult.

Even today, a semester into my second year, as an editor for the Daily and in classes that demand significantly more care and attention, I catch myself feeling inadequate if I come home early to relax on a Tuesday night instead of staying late at the library or at a meeting. I hear a voice in my brain declaring that I should be dedicating all of my time to a future career; spending the evening making an elaborate dinner and watching an episode of a show with my roommates is futile. But I’ve learned the importance of rejecting this voice. Anyone, including me, can and should rest, relax, and in doing so find the time for peace, passion, and social connection in their life. School and extra-curricular activities are incredible ways to find purpose, but they don’t need to fill every hour of your day. It is just as productive and meaningful to make a new recipe, create art, or write an article about these very thoughts that I am currently having.

The conclusion I’ve come to is this: university is the time to figure out who you are. You have the freedom to attend just one or two events a club holds to see if it’s for you, and if it isn’t, you have the freedom to move on. When it’s not midterm or finals season, or you just need a break, you have the free will to develop new hobbies and try so many new things. Use your first year to dip your toes into everything, and commit to something larger later on. Any student in their first year should know and believe: you aren’t behind. This boundless time is to figure out what brings you joy.

The post Free Time in First Year: A Gift appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Combining forces with John Abbott College, the Powwow was moved off of McGill’s downtown campus for the first time. Situated on Watson Field at McGill’s Macdonald campus, a monstrous white tent sheltered hundreds of people clustered around the center stage, enraptured by colorful regalia and thundering drums. Toddlers, teenagers, and adults alike took to the stage in small groups, competing for prize money in various traditional dances. Vendor tents dotted the field surrounding the tent, selling Indigenous artwork, jewelry, and promoting services for the Indigenous community in the greater Montreal area. The change of venue took the event out of the Tomlinson Fieldhouse and helped smooth its transition from an exhibitionary format with no prizes, towards a traditional powwow in which the dancers compete for prize money and bragging rights.

“It’s easier for the dancers and the vendors coming with equipment and setups, parking … there’s not as much construction,” comments Kim Tekakwitha Martin, Dean of Indigenous Education at John Abbott College. “But also, it’s being able to utilize this wonderful space that we have our shared campuses on.”

Martin worked alongside McGill’s Indigenous Initiatives Office to provide the opportunity for students to engage in this cultural experience on campus. Not only was it her first time being able to attend the McGill Powwow, but the new venue extended the opportunity to other John Abbott and Macdonald campus students, and various communities closer to the West Island that might have typically been too far to attend the powwow before. “It’s the 24th annual McGill Powwow but this is the first annual McGill x John Abbott Powwow … I think that it will be something that will continue because it really has been a wonderful experience.”

While the two schools sharing a campus have the occasional collaboration, such as the weekly Mac Market publicized at John Abbott, and other programs, this is a stride towards organizing larger events together.

Martin remarked that powwows typically come out of harsh times within an Indigenous community. Kahnawake, where she is from, began hosting the annual Echoes of a Proud Nation powwow after the 1990 Oka Crisis.

In Martin’s words, the event serves to celebrate Indigenous resilience: “That was to signify the community coming together, and what we had done, and that we are a proud nation.”

Al Harrington, of the Ojibwe people of northwestern Ontario, competed in the men’s 18+ traditional dance. Taken from his culture and home during the Sixties Scoop, he was unable to connect and learn his roots until he turned 18. In 2009, he began to organize his own powwows, including facilitating the annual springtime Montreal Powwow until 2020. Working to break the cycle of Indigenous disenfranchisement, Harrington runs cultural workshops in the Montreal area and has his children enrolled in a Mohawk immersion school in Kahnawake. His children have been raised speaking Mohawk, Ojibwe, English, and French. “They know their culture,” he said, with an air of determination.

The post Exploring McGill’s 24th Annual Powwow appeared first on The McGill Daily.