The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

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alternative initiatives responding to the multifaceted problems of Canada’s d/e mediascape that will be mentioned later in this chapter, Film Circuit is well-funded, has a sustained, paid staff, and works within the ‘big business’ rubric of commercial d/e. Yet Haynes, when asked, is absolute in his conviction that it is indeed a grassroots project. In his words: Are we grassroots? Completely. Because there is no business money behind the Circuit. We went to commercial exhibitors because we had no money for infrastructure. We’re grassroots because we deploy many grassroots strategies – many volunteers, pamphlets that advertise screenings, etc.…Go to any one of a Film Circuit screenings anywhere in the country and it feels like a grassroots experience. (Personal Interview, 2007, p.4) There are a few interlocking claims to disentangle here. Haynes says there is no business money behind the Circuit, but obviously, with sponsors like Bell and Warner Brothers, its presence cannot be eradicated by one comment. Haynes is adamant in his description of Film Circuit as a grassroots project because of the “methods” deployed, which is the commonly stated signifier for many groups that consider themselves grassroots in the field of independent cinema and especially documentary, yet even large multinationals and governments have been known to use “grassroots methods” to deliver specific messages to respective audiences. The part of the above statement that is crucial to the question of “Are you grassroots” for my research is in Haynes’s comment on the feeling of a grassroots experience. Reminiscent of Williams’s “structure of feeling” around a cultural phenomena, it is the spaces that are created by this initiative that really make it grassroots, or community-oriented, despite the fact that screenings take place at commercial (predominantly CineplexOdeon-owned) sites. Indeed, it is the way in which 114
people experience the screenings, and how they make associations with a commercial or community oriented experience. As volunteer organizers at Film Circuit sites usually speak before and after screenings (Ibid) as well as inviting guests to speak, as well as the fact that most Film Circuit groups are connected with grassroots organizations with their own constituencies that are harnessed to put bums on seats, it is not surprising the screenings feel “grassroots.” As this and other examples illustrate, the spaces, processes, experiences and articulations of the cultural activities around d/e point to a fluidity and heterogeneity as discussed by way of Williams and others in Chapter II. Williams’s critique of cultural analysis that commodifies and neatly packages experiences into “finished products” (Williams, 1977, p.128) opens the way for imagining and theorizing the structure of feeling around d/e, one that, much like the typology of genres, is much more complicated and unpredictable than may appear. For instance, organizers of Montreal’s First Peoples’ Festival – a film festival highlighting works by and about aboriginal peoples – may consider Film Circuit’s films “mainstream” due to the titles exhibited such as Bon Cop, Bad Cop and Capote, and the fact that Film Circuit screens in commercial, for-profit cinemahouses, including megaplexes. Alternately, Film Circuit organizers defend the “grassroots” label by pointing to the non-mainstream nature of their films, such as The Journals of Knud Rasmussen and Sharkwater, as well as how the screenings are organized, by local groups, not business interests. As discussed in Chapter II, the fluidity of these spaces and practices allow for a mediascape on the one hand saturated by multinational fantasy entertainment brokers who help form a larger, global Gramscian block; but as well, the existence of counterpublics proliferate, where groups construct 115
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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
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consumer-over-citizen modeled (Mouf
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CHAPTER III - HISTORICAL CONTEXT -
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vis the ‘work’ of politicians,
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Page 77 and 78: As mentioned, d/e has been at the h
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Page 121 and 122: like Charlottetown, PEI. The initia
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Page 127 and 128: That said, AMC is paying more atten
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Page 139 and 140: APPENDIX B Sample Interview Questio
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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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