The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

artist-driven and dedicates itself to distributing films which operate not simply outside of
the mainstream, but which are innovative and diverse in their origins and expressions.”
(Ibid)
Other documentary and independent cinema advocates and activists coalesced
into various formations throughout the seventies, much of the action culminating in the
filmmaking hub of Toronto. Cinema Canada was started in 1972 as a magazine to
promote and support Canadian independent film and filmmakers. While the magazine
folded in 1988, the people involved with the project stayed involved in advocacy,
together with filmmakers and those at the Canadian Independent Film Caucus, created in
1983 to “lobby the newly created Telefilm Canada on behalf of independent, point-of-
view documentary filmmakers.” (Wise, 2004) In 1972 Cinema Canada contributor
Sandra Gathercole launched “one of the first major shots in the battles fought [for docs
and independent film]” (Personal Interview, Cox, 2007) in 1972 on July 4 th , with a brief
to Minister Pelletier, signed by 1001 prominent Canadian filmmakers, and on behalf of
the Toronto Film Coop, the CFMDC and the umbrella organization, Council of Canadian
Filmmakers (for which Gathercole was chairperson for several years). The climate of
confrontation with both American cinema industry and the Canadian State against these
activists and advocates during this period is perhaps summed up in Gathercole’s polemic:
“Canadian movie houses were built to show American movies and have remained a
territorial monopoly for American distributors.” (Gathercole, 1978) In the same Cinema
Canada article she describes the Canadian government’s record for negotiations with the
Americans as a “joke.” (Ibid)
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