The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

of documentary – on the oppression of First Nations, and their communities’ response
and resistance. Mitchell can’t overstate the importance of those community screenings
and discussions and says that “if we didn’t have a film medium to bridge communication
it could have led to violent confrontation…” (Ibid) As well, the grassroots activities
around the film have inspired decades of dialogue and debate. Mitchell comments: “Even
today people still talk about it … The issue doesn’t die, it gets discussed still…” (Ibid)
The same can be said of the incredible program that You are on Indian Land was born out
of.
Challenge for Change approached the percolating social issues of the sixties
including disaffected youth, urbanization, unemployment, poverty, discrimination and
health, with an alternative government program designed to radically alter the more
traditional or formalized relationship between filmmaker, policy maker and community
member respectively. The role of filmmaker became that of participant in the
communities, in the issues that she or he sought to document, as well as an involvement
in the dissemination of what it was that was being articulated through documentary
cinema and through each project itself. The idea of circulation was central to the ideals
and goals of the program, and while figures show not enough money was dedicated to
distribution per say, the grassroots practices around using documentary films as advocate,
catalyst or educator were central to every memo, meeting, document, discussion and
debate relating to those involved in the program.
This lends support to the proposition that the problem of Canada’s film industry
and especially Canada’s world-renowned documentary cinema, isn’t a lack of content,
policy, opinion, attention, research, or discursive space: it is a lack of a coherent position
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