The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

cinemas, where managers and programmers continue to focus – or are forced to focus by
corporate headquarters management - on blockbusters and large US studio releases.
Cinema Politica has grown in the traditional way grassroots projects and networks
grow, by word of mouth. There has been little marketing of the initiative, and instead
“buzz” from the tremendous success of the flagship series at Concordia has spread across
Canada and start-up locals have even popped up in the US, France, Romania and Peru.
Where commercially-oriented industry parlance speaks of marketing, grassroots d/e is all
about “buzz” or what Katherine Dodds calls “viral marketing.” (Personal Interview,
Dodds, 2007, p.2) The entire initiative is non-profit and is accessible to every member of
each community where one finds a local. Admission is free of charge, and as universities
are (so far) public institutions, everyone from the public is welcome, not just students. At
Concordia’s weekly screenings there is a committed and loyal group of homeless, and/or
low income individuals who attend screenings, which has often resulted in clashes with
university security. This kind of accessibility and inclusiveness can only be achieved in a
community-oriented project that is not located in a commercially defined and dictated
environment like a megaplex, or mainstream cinemahouse where the first hurdle is
money and the second is appearance.
As with the discussion of counterhegemony and counterpublics in chapter II,
Cinema Politica spaces are constructed around principles of diversity and dissent, power
shifting and community building. They are simultaneously “disruptions to dominant
power” (Rennie, 2006, p.19) and articulations of collective identities in the way of
community. An example of the community-orientation of the screenings can be seen with
the screenings that have occurred in Montreal around Kevin Pina’s documentaries on
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