Memories of Black Toronto- Bringing the city's Black History to the screen
About this Event
On November 10, 2026, the University of Toronto's School of Cities will host the public launch of the Memories of Black Toronto Project. We will debut two short films that present powerful stories from Black Toronto in the late 19th century, recreating daily life for Black residents in vivid cinematic detail through generative AI. The project is an interdisciplinary experiment, pairing rigorous archival research with emerging filmmaking technology, to bring "hidden" chapters of the city's Black history to life.
Led by Urbanist in Residence Kofi Hope, in partnership with Dr. Cheryl Thompson and her platform ArchiveBlack (Formerly known as Mapping Ontario's Black Archives), a team of researchers, architects and filmmakers spent one year developing these films. The goal was to explore how to ethically use generative video AI to present stories from Black history we have limited visual record of, in a stunning recreation of Toronto's past. Every scene was rigorously referenced to actual archival images, maps and news reports. Directed by local filmmaker Matthew Pompey with voice narration from members of the Black community, the project has asked how we can use this new technology to develop visually beautiful, historically accurate narrative stories that to-date have been too cost-prohibitive to be produced by conventional filmmaking.
Join us for an evening to take in the films, followed by music, entertainment and a wide-ranging discussion with the team on what was learned from the project and how we can build on it to make more stories from Toronto and Canada’s Black History accessible to diverse audiences.
Why This Project Exists
Memories of Black Toronto began with a simple, urgent idea: Toronto's Black history is full of stories most residents have never heard — the people, communities, and neighbourhoods that helped build this city — and generative AI offers a new way to make them vivid and immediate rather than academic and distant. Building on an emerging field of historical recreation through AI that allows for cinematic quality at a fraction of the cost of conventional filmmaking the project set out with three goals:
- Build public awareness of the hidden Black histories of Toronto
- Create a proof of concept for how an interdisciplinary team of historians, artists, filmmakers, and academics can use generative AI to bring history to life
- Develop an ethical, community-driven approach to telling accurate historical stories with AI
The Films
Two short films anchor the launch, one around the Story of Albert Jackson and second on the Origins of Black Performance in Toronto, alongside a making-of documentary that pulls back the curtain on how they were made.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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