The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

This newest government report (conducted by Erin Research Group) is no
anomaly – it fits into a long lineage of similarly evasive reports by Federal Departments,
Standing Committees, Senate Hearings, and CRTC briefs. Since the founding of the
National Film Board (NFB) in 1939, Canada has resembled a country with a film
industry of some sort, or at the very least a country discussing the perceived presence of a
film industry. Three distinguishable levels of engagement with production, distribution
and exhibition of fiction and non-fiction cinema in the country have manifested the
decades that have followed the creation of the NFB – the most important documentary
production institution the country has known. Indeed, this thesis maps out some of their
overlapping zones, albeit amounting to an abbreviated historical account, but with the
aim of providing some context to the present-day environment that grassroots,
community-oriented distribution and exhibition practices exist in relation to a
consolidated, commercially-oriented industry. In other words, it is one route in
addressing the “problem” (i.e., lack of diversity, lack of Canadian content) of the
Canadian film industry, in order to contextualize today’s responses to it. The zones of
engagement are (1) the interlocking areas of media (independent film and documentary)
advocacy and activism, (2) policy and policy-making, and (3) commercially-oriented,
market-driven/defining industry activity. Threads stitching powerful seams that forge
these zones as well as threads that entangle and obfuscate relationships of power and
stake-claiming are replete throughout decades of literature on this subject.
While production and feature fiction film are the two dominant areas of focus
foregrounded by policy-makers, academics and other writers, there are tears in the mesh
where some have forwarded documentary and distribution/exhibition. As stated, such
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