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Browne Christene
Christene Adina Browne was born in 1965 on the island of St. Kitts in the West Indies and came to Toronto at the age of 4 with her family. They resided in one of Canada's oldest and largest low-income communities, Regent Park. Growing up in poverty provided Browne with a strong sense of determination and awareness.
At 15 she brought her first camera with money earned by working at a fast food restaurant. Later on she got involved with a community run video workshop, which was set up to look at the many issues in her impoverished community. Here, Browne learned the art of cooperative documentaries. After two years of film studies at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute and one year as an assistant in a small film compagny, Browne embarked on her first independent film project: Brothers in Music, a film about the jazz scene in Canada.
At around the same time, Browne's proposal for a 5-minute film, No Choice, about the abortion issue and how it relaties to women living in poverty, was chosen as apart of the Five Feminist Minutes film program sponsored by the National Fim Board of Canada's Studio D.
Since that time Browne has completed a documentary piece about Canadian blues singer Jodie Drake for the CBC program Adrienne Clarkson Presents entitled "Jodie Drake: Blues in my Bread."
Browne directed Them That's Not (1993), the fourth film in the NFB's Feminization of Poverty series, Her production company, Syncopated Productions Inc., is also developing it's first feature film, about young girls experience on an exchange program in Quebec.
Browne lives in Toronto with her photographer and community worker husband, David Zapparoli and their children.
