The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

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has looked at the ways in which Challenge for Change distributed and exhibited the works produced during its tenure – indicative of a larger discursive problem space identified earlier in this thesis. Challenge for Change is also part of a larger socio-political and cultural phenomenon many have referred to as the “media democracy movement,” (Hackett 2000; Kidd 2003) and the spaces the initiative created (and given new books, conferences and groups, I would argue, continues to create) are invaluable as academics and activists alike continue to struggle for similar goals in connection with advancing democratic ideals through media research, production, dissemination and participation. <strong>Grassroots</strong> distribution and exhibition of documentary cinema in Canada is one such space. This aspect of CFC has been less researched and perhaps evidence of these practices around the program is more nuanced in the available historical documents, but is nevertheless central to the tenets, the goals, and the practices of the CFC project. Challenge for Change is an illuminating historical moment to revisit: from first hand accounts to reportage to government documentation, writing on the program does not exclude extra-production practices around the documentary filmmaking and dissemination that was the central tenet of CFC, but instead incorporates and even highlights such practices without overtly naming them distribution and exhibition. In 1991, Dorothy Todd Hénaut compiled several pages of reflection on her involvement in the program entitled “Video Stories form the Dawn of Time.” This document is an excellent example of thick description of the Challenge for Change program and includes details on distribution and exhibition. Hénaut chooses several of the initiative’s film projects and describes how the films were constructed and produced, how they were used 84
in communities for citizen’s action meetings around important issues, how the films were used to provoke and ease dialogue between groups, and how they were used to advance a community’s struggle by articulating the struggle through film and discussion to other external groups such as government officials, corporate management or a neighbouring community. Films were indeed transported around the country, shown at band halls on reserves, union halls, special clubs, schools, churches, parks, private homes, and other community locations. Woven throughout the success stories of working with the poor, disenfranchised, the marginalized, and others, there is the connection to the larger ideas around mass media, participation and democracy. Hénault writes that “Mass media [is] still closed to citizens,” and that “Ordinary citizens have a great deal of difficulty in getting their opinions expressed in the information media.” (Hénault 1991) By identifying this problem of access, she taps into the root of the Challenge for Change experiment, and it is no coincidence that Access was the name given to the program’s newsletter. Access implies opening up production and process, and including a diverse range of individuals in not just the process of making a documentary film, but in how that film is shared, screened, and used as well. Indeed, the program is even credited with launching the conceptual framework for “public access” in media. (Higgins, 1999, p.625) Writing about the launch of the Challenge for Change project for an Australian publication in 1968, Barbara Taylor reports: “It was an exciting year. Three projects were launched to explore the possibilities of giving citizens great direct access to media.” (Taylor, 1973) It is during the sixties that discourse around mass media, access and participation began to gain momentum and dovetail with existing social movements and 85
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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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content” (Ibid, p.3) reminiscent
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examines and exposes these phenomen
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some years working as an activist a
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grassroots distribution and exhibit
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the discursive and physical multipl
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attention in some areas, such as te
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writes: “The strongest barrier to
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its heyday 4 . Stuart Hall, Richard
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large multinational corporations wh
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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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