The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

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abysmal level of Canadian content in cinemas in Canada is the same in 2006 as it was thirty years ago in 1976? (Acheson and Maule, 1998) Why are artists, advocates and activists building similar arguments now as they were at the end of the sixties, in their bid to see more Canadian content and more documentaries in the cinema houses of the nation, when such tactics have yielded little success? Why has the problem of American domination been so clearly identified for several decades, albeit seldom foregrounded, yet has remained as unchanged as the Canadian government’s response to it? Finally, concerning the film industry, why has distribution and exhibition been treated in much the same way regionalism and labour has been – that is to say, with minor mention and never the focus of attention? What follows is a historical summary – a tracking of one area of the structure of feeling around d/e in Canada – and a segment examining the NFB initiative Challenge for Change as a historical intervention/response to problems not only identified in production content, but in the processes and actions around distribution and exhibition. Distribution and Domination Three seminal volumes of literature have been produced in the last fifteen years that offer a historical-based analysis of Canada’s struggle to build a viable, diverse, and artist- friendly film industry. Canada’s Hollywood: The Canadian State and Feature Films (Magder, 1993), So Close to the State/s: The Emergence of Canadian Feature Film Policy (Dorland, 1998), and One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema (Melnyck, 2004) do not comprise an exhaustive list but certainly represent the most cited works regarding film policy in Canada. A preliminary investigation into these texts’ table of contents and 66
indexes is a revealing exercise, indicative of the larger discursive space(s) that such works are derived from. Not one mention of distribution or exhibition appears in any of the three tables of contents. While each book undeniably addresses the problems and struggles around d/e, not one of the three authors is compelled to single out the area as part of a chapter heading, or as an entire chapter unto itself. Distribution/exhibition, while mysteriously vacant from content listings, is found in the three indexes however, and perhaps this paradoxical placement and aforementioned lack of positioning is most prevalent in Dorland’s index, where the first listing for “distribution” retrieves the following: “distribution: American domination of” and “attempted rationalization of.” (Dorland, 1998, p.192) Clearly, there is a heady position responding to an admitted hegemony in Dorland’s work, as in others, yet it is never singled out or clearly foregrounded in his text. It should be mentioned that two more recent texts have been published that discuss the problems of d/e in Canada at great length, with Charles Acland’s Screen Traffic even singling out a chapter that devotes many pages to identifying key aspects to the issues. Acland, citing other works mentioned above, identifies some of the key problem areas, including policy. He writes: “On the contrary, policymakers have been historically reluctant to force exhibitors to present Canadian films.” (Acland, 2003, p.176) Later, he reiterates the position of past critics such as Magder, when he writes: Undergirding these assessments is a conviction that Canadian distribution is essential to the invigoration of a Canadian popular cinema. The problem has been that when U.S. majors own domestic rights to distribute films, those rights encompass Canada. (Ibid, p.177) Acland does not, however, outrightly agree with such assessments, and seeks to complicate the problem away from reductive political economy critiques by positioning 67
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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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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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The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

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