The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

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– he brings up the infamous line of business that is seldom used to describe community- oriented d/e initiatives: The bottom line is it is a business and you are trying to look at your bottom line. You can’t hide the fact that big blockbusters are what will draw people in, but I don’t think it is right. Quality films seem to slip through the cracks…I actually prefer the quality products over the ones that are succeeding on massive marketing and hype, but we’re running a business, and if the big blockbusters are drawing in the crowds, then we have to go with programming them. There have been exceptions, like Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Corporation, where we had big crowds showing up less because of mass marketing and more because a ‘buzz’ had been generated about the film….(Ibid, p.3) Commercially-oriented sites of d/e retain an allegiance to the mythic “bottom line” while community-oriented sites gauge success on a variety of participatory, educational, cultural and socio-political indicators that tend to be more fluid and indefinable than the “rules” and boundaries of economics. LeRoy and the AMC in Montreal present an interesting case, where a manager admits preference for films that are not the Hollywood/megaplex fare (and mentions in the interview at one point that he himself goes to Cinema du Parc regularly to satisfy his independent and foreign content needs), and describes tensions between management edicts passed down from the disconnected head office in Kansas City and the knowledge he possesses concerning the local communities the AMC operates in. Mention of “the bottom line” seems to be a prerequisite inclusion in LeRoy’s discourse on the commercial industry, in order to ground the conversation in the “realities” of running a business, regardless of its operations. He reiterates, later: “From a business standpoint there is a bottom line, we have to maintain profitability.” (Ibid, p.3) Then adds what appears to be the flip-side, the articulation of the tension: “Canadian theatres have a responsibility to promote local talent and products, but exhibitors currently do not.” (Ibid) 122
That said, AMC is paying more attention, at least, to their local constituency than Canadian-owned Cineplex, “the largest Canadian exhibitor of motion pictures.” (Onex.com) Indeed, a company headquartered in Kansas City is carving a niche for itself in Montreal, somewhere between art house, community screening centre and megaplex. As well, Toronto-based Onex Corp, who owns Cineplex, screens mostly American big studio blockbusters, bringing in $740 million in revenue for the year 2006. (Ibid) The Corporation’s director and principle marketer eschew mainstream theatres as a focus for “success” for a social documentary, yet the film earns more than any other Canadian documentary of all time ($3.5 Million) 18 and up until very recently was listed by Boxofficemojo.com in the top 20 best selling documentaries for North America (it now sits at number 22, thanks in part to Sicko and An Inconvenient Truth. 19 Further, Film Circuit is modeled in the grassroots tradition and prides itself in such description, yet the initiative strives to bring independent cinema to audiences in small communities, often by way of chain theatres. These are indeed complicated scenarios in volatile environments of community, commerce and cinema. The examples illustrated in this chapter should help to show how fluid and mutlti-dimensional the cultural spaces and practices around documentary d/e are in Canada. In the concluding chapter, I now reflect upon the possibilities, tensions, and intersections discussed throughout the thesis. 18 cbc.ca/arts/film/mogul.html 19 boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart 123
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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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These authors are introducing the t
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articulations that illustrate the i
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indexes is a revealing exercise, in
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the lens of inequity, where cultura
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The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

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