Earlier this year, MBA alumna Archita Ghosh took the helm of Montreal-based Indigenous media production company, Rezolution Pictures. We caught up with her to hear more about her journey as an entrepreneur, her career pivot from engineering to the media industry, and her vision for the future of Rezolution Pictures.
Let’s start with your background, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
Archita: Since January 2024, I have been working as the president of Rezolution Pictures which is an Indigenous media production company that's been around for 25 years in Montreal. We mostly make documentaries and drama series but are getting into animation, AI, and immersive projects. You might have heard of the TV miniseries “Little Bird” which, among other accolades, just won 13 Canadian Screen Awards this year. A lot of the work that we do is centered around Indigenous stories or Indigenous influence in our culture. Before that, I was a co-owner at an animation studio E.D. Films; we built that studio up over 10 years, and I exited last year. I have moved on to Rezolution, but E.D. FILMS continues! My background before that was in engineering.
Could you tell me a little bit about what made you decide to pursue an MBA and what it was that drew you to the program here at ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ?
Archita: It was a long time ago – over 20 years! But at the time I was working as an engineer in Mexico City for BASF, a big German chemical company. I think what was happening for me in engineering was that I was on one path. I was going in one direction within BASF, which was a good direction, but I am naturally more of a generalist than I am a specialist, so it did not completely suit me. First of all, I'm not a corporate-type person. I like having a lot of autonomy over how I'm working and who I am working with and that doesn't always happen in a corporate environment. I think I felt I was going too much in the engineering direction, or engineering management direction. Second, I think I thrive better in an environment where I can start, create and build. So those were the two things that made me think that the MBA would be a good step towards helping me divert my career path to something that fit me better—to get more generalist skills so I could do something on my own and choose not to be in the corporate environment if I didn't want to be.
Do you have a memory or course that stood out to you during your MBA?
Archita: Well, I did learn a lot. I didn't know anything about marketing, accounting, finance, etc. when I started because I was just very much in more of an engineering mindset. All the friendships and connections I made in the MBA were also super important, I find it's a very strong network as we all become more senior in our careers.
What was it like for you to co-found your animation studio, E.D. Films, and being able to bring your own vision to life for your company?
Archita: This was in 2011 or so. After my third child was a little bit older and was in daycare I thought, let me try something different. My parents are entrepreneurs so it’s something that felt natural to me and I also love new challenges all the time. I'm not at all creative or in the arts but I've always been interested in it and dabbled in it. Through E.D. Films, I felt I could contribute peripherally. Plus, I met people who were just very, very talented and they were looking for a business partner. It all kind of came together. I worked on that for 10 years and it turns out there are a lot of transferable skills, not just from engineering but the MBA as well. It was a really good place for me to be able to apply the various skills that I had acquired or learned over the previous 15 years
In your current role, how has the experience been different, stepping into a senior leadership role at a company that is already well established?
Archita: Because I did have a leadership role in building E.D. Films, the operational part has been relatively straightforward. I know how to build and run a studio; I know how to prepare Rezolution Pictures for the next step. I am taking what I've learned and putting it into Rezo. Rezo is getting a lot of accolades internationally for its many projects – most recently the documentaries “Red Fever” and “So Surreal: Behind the Masks” and it's an Indigenous company which means there's a cultural gravity too, which I did not have at my previous studio. I love the cultural part, and I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I joined Rezolution. Rezo makes incredible, important cultural films and the team is just stellar! I love what we all do together. Before I joined the Rezo team, I knew that the next role I wanted had to be a role where I could play a role in affecting change.
Since there’s such a cultural weight to the work that Rezolution is doing, how does that affect the process for finding the right people to lead projects within the company?
Archita: It is challenging for sure, but because our co-founders Ernest Webb and Catherine Bainbridge have been in the business for so long, they are respected and connected to many Native communities; the trust is there. Ernie is part of the James Bay Cree community, Chisasibi. It's very important, in fact, critical, that we can stand up to the community with all our films. The reputation, the credibility, the quality are all solid already for Rezolution, so we already have an extensive network of people with whom we have worked. The challenge is always to bring the right person into the right project. I think any production company has that, but certainly for us the challenge has critical cultural aspects to it.
What would you say you love most about the film industry in Canada as it stands? Is there anything that you would like to see more of or would like to see change?
Archita: It is such a passionate industry! There's a lot of creativity in Canada and maybe specifically Quebec, which allows for a lot of people to be creative and live as creatives. Our funding bodies do nurture a lot of that creativity as well. That's why you can find amazing talent here, not just creatively, but technically. So much software, so many amazing directors have come from specifically Quebec, and of course Canada as well. The parts I can be a bit critical of are the flip side of the same coin. Often our market is the funders and not the actual people. We're often trying to build projects that will appeal to the various funders and match the tax credit rules and all of that so that we can get our projects funded, which means that we are sometimes serving the bigger audience, but sometimes we're not. This can be very limiting because we do have a lot to offer in Canada, culturally. Other than the Indigenous nations here, everybody else is from somewhere else. A lot of the world lives here, and we can access a lot of different parts of the world with the creativity that we have here. Part of my job is not only to internally organize Rezo for the next stage, but also to bring in different revenue streams that are more internationally focused, so that we can be more of a sustainable company for future generations of Indigenous talent and businesspeople.
Is there anything else in the media landscape, in Canada or the film industry, more generally that you hope to be able to institute change in through the work that Rezolution is doing?
Archita: We have a lot of intellectual property, 25 years' worth of cultural intellectual property—incredible things like audio recordings of elders speaking in their language, stories that need to be passed on to the next generation. There's so much deep, deep knowledge and rich stories that are happening, have happened and will happen in Native cultures that Rezo can be a part of bringing to the next generation of Indigenous creatives and leaders and communities, and also to the public. The other part is technical; we are working on helping Rezolution pictures use its past IP and bring it into different media output.
For example, we are working on a project right now using artificial intelligence to bring authentic representation of Indigenous communities to the screen. In our recent documentary feature “Red Fever”, we used artificial intelligence to produce a particular Haudenosaunee chief from the 1700s that was, as you can imagine, hard to find in stock footage and regular AI channels. Artificial intelligence is very biased in a very negative way for Native people, because it's all off the internet and there are a lot of stereotypes that live there. What we did was we used our own research-- deep cultural research-- and we used some images that we did get off the internet, but we put them together and we came up with an authentic representation of this leader from the 1700s. Our project moving forward is using our deep research and images from current Native artists. We would credit them, we'd collaborate with them, we would compensate them. We've already trained the AI and then we'd have certified or authenticated images of Indigenous people, communities, whatever it is. It is a very niche part of AI, but you can see how it's an interesting way to combat bias. We don’t want to be an afterthought.
We are also working on a 360 multiplatform that takes our documentary series “Indians and Aliens” as its core IP and gets creative and contemporary with the outputs while staying true to the stories. We are also working on animation. There is so much to look forward to at Rezolution Pictures! What has happened in the past with Indigenous stories or characters as part of a bigger project is oh, we need somebody Indigenous to check a box or two, or to give us some level of authenticity. We'll give you a little bit of money, and we'll put you in the credits and there you go, there's our Indigenous thing. It's performative and extractive. Now what we're saying is that the knowledge exists and we at Rezo want to share it but share it in a respectful way that works in the community and the bigger market. Everyone benefits.
How have you seen an increase in the willingness to bring Indigenous stories to mainstream media over the course of your career? With the success of projects like Shoresy on Crave and FX’s Reservation Dogs, it seems like there’s starting to be a shift.
Archita: I think it's definitely changing. You can see it more in the mainstream media, but the part that we need to work on, and we've always done this at Rezolution, is making sure that Indigenous creatives, producers, directors and writers are given space to be able to get credits, be paid well, to grow, and to be able to tell the stories they want to tell. This is very much in process. We want to really, develop our young Indigenous talent like Brittany Leborgne, she's an actor on Mohawk Girls and she's a producer in training. Shantae Gibson who is in charge of our marketing—social media, website, events, etc., and Ri Webb, one of many writers with whom we work. A lot of what we actively do on our own at Rezolution Pictures is development and training and ensuring the right people get credits. Credits are everything, because once you get credits, you can access funding in different ways. So, while I would say yes, there are a lot of Indigenous stories out there that are appealing and mainstream and amazing, there's still a lot of work to be done behind the camera.
To wrap things up, what is one piece of advice that you would offer to current students or recent alumni from our faculty?
Archita: Always ask the question. My kids are now entering the workforce, and I tell them to always ask the question. If a young person reaches out to me and says, “can I have 20 minutes of your time” or “can you connect me to this?” I almost always say yes, because I do want to help young people. It’s something I did not have access to as a young female professional, so I am very conscious of it. As soon as you ask the question, it can open up so many doors. It works. I still do it. I always ask in an informed, professional, positive way, of course, but I always ask.
MBA at ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ Desautels
Designed for the mid-career student who aims to move to a higher rung of leadership within an organization or the student who seeks to leverage a ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ MBA to blaze a new career path in a new country.
