The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

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“geographic bloc” emanating from “command centers” of multinationals south of the border. To summarize, grassroots documentary d/e spaces and practices have little representation in communication research, while there is ample theory on cultural hegemony (and responsive measures to cultural hegemony) in the literature. What is needed is an urgent discussion of sites of resistance and alternative practices that are counter to the commercial sector - in short, discursive and physical spaces where the power inequity of cinema distribution and exhibition practices in Canada are being challenged and shifted. Gramsci and others who have springboarded from his thinking, offer excellent departure points for an examination of community-oriented d/e practices within a Williams rubric of social experience. While the works just outlined describe hegemony, the next section theorizes counter-hegemony and counterpublic aspects. Counterpublics and Counter-hegemony The notion of countering dominant thinking or communication with different and diverse forms and meanings of cultural expression has been used as long as there has been oppression and resistance. Edward Said would call narratives that challenged dominant or hegemonic narratives “counterpoints,” (Said, quoted in Marrouchi, 1998), and Bhabha has written extensively on counternarratives. He argues: “Counternarratives of the nation that continually evoke and erase its totalizing boundaries – both actual and conceptual – disturb those ideological maneuvers through which ‘imagined communities’ are given essentialist identities.” (Bhabha, 1990, quoted in Zimmermann, 2000, p.15). Communicating alternative narratives (counternarratives) in alternative spaces 36
(counterpublics) - such is the way of grassroots documentary d/e practices - leads to another compound, “counter-hegemony.” Ellie Rennie, in her book, Community Media: A Global Introduction, introduces the term: Radical media is better understood via theories of counterhegemony (disruptions to dominant power) and counter-public spheres (a term to describe the myriad and diverse spaces where discussion and dissent occur) as well as new social movement theory, rather than as simply oppositional. (2006, p.19) Rennie has addressed a method to resist hegemony by recognizing alternative media’s ability to flourish in society’s spaces that are (re)claimed on an ongoing basis by a myriad of media groups and projects, including those that seek to challenge power imbalances through grassroots distribution and exhibition of documentary cinema. These practices and spaces run “counter” to those of dominant, or hegemonic, media and cinema currents described earlier in this chapter, and ultimately serve to challenge, dislodge and redistribute power. Of necessity, these challenges happen away from sites of hegemony (such as the megaplex) and in community-oriented sites (such as schools, homes, cafés, parks) where power is more easily negotiated/shared among various members of the community. Nancy Fraser writes: “If power is instantiated in mundane social practices and relations, then efforts to dismantle or transform the regime must address those practices and relations.” (1981, p. 280) Jürgen Habermas’s seminal work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962) is crucial to any discussion of publics and counterpublics; it is arguably “indispensable to critical social theory and to democratic political practice.” (Fraser, 1992, p.3) Habermas’s notion of the public sphere is, of course, highly problematic and with its own historically confined set of limitations, but it is also, as Fraser has noted, 37
Page 1 and 2: The Spaces Between Grassroots Docum
Page 3 and 4: iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis wou
Page 5 and 6: CHAPTER I HOT DOCUMENTARIES IN COOL
Page 7 and 8: p.167) Yet what brings Wintonick an
Page 9 and 10: Complimenting the celebration of ex
Page 11 and 12: somewhere. Documentaries make up a
Page 13 and 14: ealm of the marginalized, and furth
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Page 17 and 18: discussion and treats them as unnat
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Page 21 and 22: examines and exposes these phenomen
Page 23 and 24: some years working as an activist a
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Page 27 and 28: the discursive and physical multipl
Page 29 and 30: attention in some areas, such as te
Page 31 and 32: writes: “The strongest barrier to
Page 33 and 34: its heyday 4 . Stuart Hall, Richard
Page 35 and 36: large multinational corporations wh
Page 37 and 38: it is a complex process of negotiat
Page 39: globally harmonized by a populist c
Page 43 and 44: She is concerned with the counter-h
Page 45 and 46: operating with an assumption that t
Page 47 and 48: film through the public sphere.”
Page 49 and 50: commercial exhibition sites, and fu
Page 51 and 52: adicalizing opposition or counterpo
Page 53 and 54: screenings can provide opportunity
Page 55 and 56: authors have chosen to survey the g
Page 57 and 58: demonstrative examples of the acade
Page 59 and 60: 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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for CFC works was remarkably relaxe
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of documentary - on the oppression
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scholar concerned with progressive
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film industry, while texts that beg
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Montreal-based non-profit übercult
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cinemas, where managers and program
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journalist still stationed in Haiti
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You are on Indian Land and Mike Mit
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Achbar settled down on to the grass
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the report continues, the authors a
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of grassroots I think of an organiz
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spaces through grassroots practices
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Haynes quickly realized there was a
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documentaries in Canada. Haynes add
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people experience the screenings, a
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like Charlottetown, PEI. The initia
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Canadian, and is doing it by way of
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community members who make up the K
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That said, AMC is paying more atten
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example, Achbar relates to me that
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consumers. What I have argued in th
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dominant veneers in culture, so tha
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that build counterpublics with the
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Nos voisons les hommes (USA - Over
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APPENDIX B Sample Interview Questio
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I HAVE CAREFULLY STUDIED THE ABOVE
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Beetham, David. Democracy: A Beginn
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Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from C
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Magder, Ted. Canada’s Hollywood:
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Rennie, Ellie. Community Media: A G
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Yudice, George. “The Privatizatio
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