The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

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With The Corporation and its stylized critique of capitalism still spreading like a healthy virus from public to counterpublic across the globe, it is no wonder that Dodds is modelling her social marketing company after the project of distributing that particular set of ideas she and Achbar championed with their first documentary collaboration. She’s even reduced the whole mandate of the company into one sentence that speaks volumes to the discursive space of grassroots d/e practices: “Ideas to audiences. Audiences to action. Action to outcome.” (Ibid) From a promotional/marketing perspective it is glaringly clear that this is the mandate of a sector not driven by the need to make profit and return investment to shareholders. If it were, it may have a mandate that would include a line reading “Audiences to advertisers,” as the commercial sector continues to focus on the money and not the message. Instead it is driven by message, by the need to build alternative ways of experiencing and mediating our world. It is the foregrounding of community spaces over the mandate of commercial interests. However, when it comes to the commercial sector, Dodds is not at odds with the market mandate, at least not in terms of attacking it, or even devoting precious energies to reforming it. She is more interested in building alternatives, and finding ways to solve the problems of d/e she sees rooted in state funding institutions that neglect distribution in favour of production. When I ask her leading questions in our interview, un-tactfully lodging my own assumptions about the commercial theatre sector, Dodds doesn’t bite. I ask if there should be legislation toward Canadian content regulation with theatres and commercial d/e in Canada. She firmly responds: “You can’t blame the theatre owners, they own the spaces and need to maintain them.” (Ibid) Achbar seems to agree and takes it one suggestive step further: “We don’t need the theatres anymore. We create our own 108
spaces through grassroots practices. House party screenings worked great, the house party campaign. View, stop and talk, and develop plans and activate dissent.” (Personal Interview, 2007) It is a fresh approach to Canada’s problems around sharing and screening Canadian documentary cinema, and one that dovetails with citizens’ media practices outlined by Rodriguez and the creation of pluralistic democratic (counterpublic) spaces Mouffe discusses, both reviewed in the second chapter. While Achbar and Dodds both make strong statements about “skipping the theatres” as Dodds puts it, The Corporation is predominantly cited for its success at the theatres. Indeed, the film is celebrated for entering the mainstream and taking middle- road Joe and Jane Q. Public by storm. The film grossed $4.6 million worldwide, with the bulk of that amount coming from North American box office receipts (BoxofficeMojo.com, May 2007), a staggering figure for a documentary, especially a Canadian documentary. It is a fine balance then, it seems, for defining success with documentary as an agent for social change within grassroots practices. There is the success of the film for fulfilling Dodds’ mandate (Ideas to audiences. Audiences to action. Action to outcome.), as well as the success of achieving commercial success at the box office, and even making some money along the way. As Achbar has stated, the latter feeds off the former. With this balancing act in mind, it is clear that the foremost concern for Achbar and Dodds is for the grassroots movement and sharing of the film. Achbar was interested in tapping into communities sympathetic to the message in the film, while offering the text as another tool to help build counternarratives to the dominant story of successful economic globalization. (Personal Interview, 2007) Achbar wove the message and filmic 109
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The Spaces Between Grassroots Docum
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iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis wou
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CHAPTER I HOT DOCUMENTARIES IN COOL
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p.167) Yet what brings Wintonick an
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Complimenting the celebration of ex
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somewhere. Documentaries make up a
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ealm of the marginalized, and furth
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short, there is a clear and urgent
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discussion and treats them as unnat
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content” (Ibid, p.3) reminiscent
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examines and exposes these phenomen
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some years working as an activist a
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grassroots distribution and exhibit
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the discursive and physical multipl
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attention in some areas, such as te
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writes: “The strongest barrier to
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its heyday 4 . Stuart Hall, Richard
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large multinational corporations wh
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it is a complex process of negotiat
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globally harmonized by a populist c
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(counterpublics) - such is the way
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She is concerned with the counter-h
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operating with an assumption that t
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film through the public sphere.”
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commercial exhibition sites, and fu
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adicalizing opposition or counterpo
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screenings can provide opportunity
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authors have chosen to survey the g
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demonstrative examples of the acade
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conflict(s) as a core of contestati
Page 61 and 62: consumer-over-citizen modeled (Mouf
Page 63 and 64: CHAPTER III - HISTORICAL CONTEXT -
Page 65 and 66: vis the ‘work’ of politicians,
Page 67 and 68: These authors are introducing the t
Page 69 and 70: articulations that illustrate the i
Page 71 and 72: indexes is a revealing exercise, in
Page 73 and 74: the lens of inequity, where cultura
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Page 77 and 78: As mentioned, d/e has been at the h
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Page 83 and 84: spaces and practices that this thes
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Page 93 and 94: of documentary - on the oppression
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Page 97 and 98: film industry, while texts that beg
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Page 101 and 102: cinemas, where managers and program
Page 103 and 104: journalist still stationed in Haiti
Page 105 and 106: You are on Indian Land and Mike Mit
Page 107 and 108: Achbar settled down on to the grass
Page 109 and 110: the report continues, the authors a
Page 111: of grassroots I think of an organiz
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Page 119 and 120: people experience the screenings, a
Page 121 and 122: like Charlottetown, PEI. The initia
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Page 125 and 126: community members who make up the K
Page 127 and 128: That said, AMC is paying more atten
Page 129 and 130: example, Achbar relates to me that
Page 131 and 132: consumers. What I have argued in th
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Page 135 and 136: that build counterpublics with the
Page 137 and 138: Nos voisons les hommes (USA - Over
Page 139 and 140: APPENDIX B Sample Interview Questio
Page 141 and 142: I HAVE CAREFULLY STUDIED THE ABOVE
Page 143 and 144: Beetham, David. Democracy: A Beginn
Page 145 and 146: Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from C
Page 147 and 148: Magder, Ted. Canada’s Hollywood:
Page 149 and 150: Rennie, Ellie. Community Media: A G
Page 151 and 152: Yudice, George. “The Privatizatio
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The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

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