Vancouver’s Ryan Sidhoo hustles up Welcome to Fairfax docu-series on Pivot TV

As Ryan Sidhoo sees it, he’s the “poster child” for the millennial generation.

Asked if he considers himself a filmmaker, the 25-year-old Vancouver native answers that he’s a content producer.

“What is film? What is filmmaking?” Sidhoo told the Georgia Straight by phone from Los Angeles. “Everything’s digital now. You don’t even shoot on film. I think it’s about being someone who produces content, and content can live in so many different places now.”

Sidhoo doesn’t just talk the talk when it comes to distributing content on multiple media platforms.

The graduate of Lord Byng secondary school is an executive producer of Welcome to Fairfax, a docu-series that will premiere on Pivot TV in the U.S. on October 17 and be available for download on Amazon and iTunes. The first episode is being released today (October 6) for free on YouTube.

Welcome to Fairfax shines a spotlight on a bunch of young creative entrepreneurs in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles. Sidhoo calls it a “story of now” that shows people “hustling” for success.

According to Sidhoo, the idea for the show came whilst riding transit in New York City, where he was studying and working.

“These kids came on the subway, and they all looked like Jimi Hendrix. They all had tie-dye and Afros,” Sidhoo said. “The way I was brought up, I’ve always been exposed to different cultures. My dad would take me to the original Slam City Jam at the Plaza of Nations in the ’90s to go see Joey Shithead from D.O.A. I’ve always kind of been into niche subcultures because of my upbringing. So I see these kids, and I just thought it was the coolest shit that I’ve ever seen. I went, ‘This is so interesting. I want to make content about this kind of young black skate culture.’”

Sidhoo went hunting for a “crossroads of skate, hip-hop, surf, and punk rock”, and his brother told him about the Fairfax district. He drove from New York to L.A., “embedded” himself in the community, and shot lots of footage.

Back in New York, Sidhoo showed the footage to documentary filmmaker Ben Selkow, who decided to join the project. They took it to production company Matador Content, and ultimately Pivot TV—which considers millennials its target audience—ordered 10 episodes.

“It’s an honest depiction of a really cool community out in L.A., where people don’t have Plan B and they’re really trying to make it from something they’re passionate about, which is essentially the same story as me,” Sidhoo said. “I want to make really great content—just as there’s characters on the show that we follow that really want to make great T-shirts or really want to make it in skateboarding. So, for me, it was super relatable.”

Sidhoo is also the producer of Offside Overseas, billed as the first sports documentary on Instagram. Launched on September 11, the series follows his friend Ilan Cumberbirch’s journey to play professional hockey in the Netherlands.

Cumberbirch shoots footage on an iPhone and sends it to Sidhoo, who edits and posts the clips on the popular social-media platform. The documentary’s Instagram account has over 1,500 followers.

“It’s such an amazing time,” Sidhoo said. “Twenty, thirty years ago, you couldn’t just put something out that potentially could get millions of views.”

As for what’s next for Sidhoo, he remarked that he’s “hellbent on producing great content”.

“First and foremost, I want to produce content that I find is interesting and want to share with other people,” Sidhoo said. “That’s all I want to do.”