About 

SAMANTHA PONTING is a disabled Toronto (T’karonto) filmmaker, community organizer, and recording artist. She is the Associate Producer of the short films “The Elusive Purpurea Valpavis” and “3pm Thursdays” (Lucky Dime Films). 

She is currently collaborating with the Oakwood Vaughan Tenant Union on a documentary film that explores the coercive strategies of landlords to push out tenants. The film charts the development of the tenant union as an effective avenue for protecting tenants and confronting landlords, who will stop at nothing to grow their riches. 

As an active member of the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network (MISN), she organizes to build solidarity with communities impacted by mining. She recently served as a video editor for MISN’s 10-episode video series entitled A Treaty Peoples’ Briefing, which calls on Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault to respect treaty rights and obligations in Ontario’s Ring of Fire.  She has worked in communications for labour unions as a photographer, videographer, graphic designer, and magazine editor.

A lifelong independent journalist, Samantha has written on such subjects as migrant rights, civil liberties and Islamophobia, labour struggles, healthcare, and Canadian corporate accountability for a variety of Canadian independent media outlets. She has served on two editorial boards. Her interest in documentary filmmaking was sparked by a formative trip she took as a freelance journalist in 2019 to Central America to investigate the labour practices of Canadian garment companies operating overseas.

Passionate about research, Samantha co-led a research project investigating workplace racism in BC’s healthcare sector, and in 2020 authored a groundbreaking 78-page report on the subject, which received praise from the BC Ministry of Health’s lead for Indigenous Health. Her writing on border security and migration can be found in the book compilation Urban (In)Security: Policing the Neoliberal Crisis, published by Red Quill Books.