The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

formations (in Dorland’s case) or a certain habitus (in Acland’s case), as they borrow
from Foucault and Bourdieu, respectively.
Writing about cinema practices in Canada is complicated given the complex
tapestry of relationships one has to consider. Studying distribution and exhibition
practices is no exception, and it is essential to study a wider “area of play” as Bourdieu
would put it. (1999) As Raymond Williams’s work on “structure of feeling” reminds us,
to even begin to understand one cultural formation or articulation one needs to examine
the terrain, or field – the interconnected and malleable map of thinking and actions that
make up the context in which the object of study is ‘located.’ Locating cultural practices
is never bound by rigid sets of determinates, or even plausibility as Dorland reminds. He
argues that locating Canadian cinema has been the driving problem in studies and
academic work on the subject, and calls for works that recognize the complexity,
multiplicity, the “heterogeneity” of Canadian cinema policy and practices. (Dorland,
1998, p.XX) To this end, it is important to understand state policy, social climate, and the
politics of post-war Canada, and especially the sprawling psychic and physical ‘location’
the National Film Board of Canada has occupied in Canada's (documentary) mediascape.
The culmination of Canada’s State film production and distribution house back in May
1939, was a monumental juncture in the country’s cultural policy history. The Board has
always been a cultural institution engaged in defining Canada through documentary film,
or as the title of Zoë Druick’s new work posits, the NFB has been and is concerned with
“Projecting Canada.” (2007) As a state agency pulled between bureaucracy, the public,
artists and the (corporate, mostly American) market, it has rarely enjoyed a smooth and
81