EzraWinton.com | Media arts and politics

Whew!! It’s been a craaaaaaaazy month. Today I finally put the finishing touches on the first draft of my Second Comprehensive Exam Essay for my PhD and sent it off to my fearless supervisor, Ira. It ended up weighing in at 55 pages double spaced, a grand total of 13,000 words. Whether all the words add up to anything intellectually stimulating or not is another story, but I’ve definitely cornered the market on quantity this time around. The paper is on audiences, and much of it was a literature review where I was kind of staking out the terrain. I’m now convinced that I need to include a big section of my PhD thesis on audiences, so as an exercise in moving toward my end goal of finishing this PhD, I’d say it has worked quite well. Ira will get back to me in a week or so with feedback and I’m sincerely hoping he likes it and I can do some edits and submit to my committee. Once I’m done the Second Comps process, I’ll be focusing on my thesis - first the proposal, then the proposal defence, then the big one…

In the last month I also wrote a pretty big article for POV Magazine’s special education issue, which will hit newsstands at the end of January or beginning of February. Pick up a copy and check it out - I argue the case for documentary cinema as a form of critical, alternative education.

The book I spent the last three years working on with Tom Waugh and Mike Baker is finally coming off the presses next week as well. We should be getting our own hard cover copies and soft cover copies in about two weeks time. In the mean time you can actually pre-order the book, Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada, from amazon.ca for super cheap ($21). It’s also for sale on the publisher’s site, McGill-Queen’s University Press.

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Well I’ve been silent on this site long enough: we’re home! We’ve been back in Montreal for almost three weeks and it’s been three weeks of scrambling to catch up on our insane lives that we put on hold while in Europe. We’ve mostly been working on Cinema Politica, a big enough chore in itself.

For those who haven’t heard the great news, we got funding approval for a second year in a row from the Canada Council for the Arts. That’s not the end of the story though, the Council called us this week to let us know some of the feedback from the committee who oversaw our application. They say it’s extremely rare that when the committee is given the task of highlighting the “negatives” and “positives” of the project, that they do not put one single point down in the negative column. The committee had incredible things to say about Cinema Politica, not the least of which is that we should be a model for other groups applying and that the Council should continue to fund us annually.

This, as you can imagine, was the best news we’ve heard in a long, long time. It comes after years of hard work and it gives us that extra umph we need to keep CP alive and kicking! We’re at 50+ locals in Canada and at least 40 of them appear to be active. There’s also the handful in Europe and Asia and Australia. Svetla is working around the clock on running the network (along with a TA job and a union-drive job) and I’ve been doing my usual job of programming new titles, negotiating for rights, and getting our incorporation papers in order.

But we have funding for another year!! The trick now is to not let CP consume us at every level. We’ve both fell behind in our academic work, and tonight I went for the first time in a long time and studied. We run CP out of our home and we’ve realized that we need to get out to do school work. So I went to the National Library tonight and got three hours of reading in. I’ll need to pump that up to six, then eight per day if I’m going to finish my PhD in the next 20 months, but it was a good start.

That’s it for now, we’re swamped as usual. Svetla’s grandma is here for a month from Bulgaria and the woman is a reading machine!! She reads and read and reads!! Talk about inspiring for a PhD and Master’s student…

The Challenge for Change book, all 700+ pages of it, has gone to the publishers for a copy edit. That means that beast has been laid to rest for now, until we get it back from MQUP at which point we’ll have to go through the copy edit comments, incorporate them (or justify not incorporating them), come up with an index, and wax and polish. The book will likely come out in February 2010, although I’m still hoping for a Xmas release. That will be my first major academic publishing credit and I can hardly wait…

In the mean time, however, I have reason to celebrate: the new third edition of “Mediascapes: New Patterns in Canadian Communication,” (pictured above, held by a sun burnt me) edited by Leslie Shade, has been released by Nelson. This dandy undergraduate textbook for media and communication students is awesome. Leslie has done a bang-up job polishing this new edition into a gem of a pedagogical tool. With many new contributions and a shuffling of the structure of the book, the new version beats the old by leaps and bounds. Add to that a cover designed by my friend and colleague Mél Hogan, and I’m stoked to have a chapter in there! I co-authored a chapter on Canadian cultural policy with Ira Wagman, and I owe him (and Leslie) mucho thanks for this amazing opportunity. To contribute to a textbook while still a student is a great honour, one I won’t forget any time soon.

In other news, we just finished with our Five Year Cinema Politica Anniversary party - an amazing event that the super-human Svetla organized while coordinating the network, working part time, going to student tribunals and senate meetings, running in and winning the GSA election, and writing a paper for Leslie. Man, we need a vacation! Now, it’s time to get this Canada Council grant application finished, plus my two papers for the upcoming congress conference at the end of May…oh and that pesky Framing Harper Art Threat contest…

Oh, and if you’d like to help sales, you can read about the book here and even buy it!

I’ve finally discovered the disparities and quiet moments of joy in putting together a book. For over a year I’ve been working as a co-editor with Thomas Waugh and Michael Brendan Baker on a 700 page gorilla named “Challenge for Change/Société: The Collection” for McGill-Queens University Press. It’s an anthology of about 40 articles engaging with the radical experiment in participatory media the NFB launched in 1967. It’s been an insane, tremendous amount of work. I’m not known for my attention to detail, and I certainly won’t be after this book is done, but I’ve given it my all-best and tonight marks another lengthy and arduous stretch of labour-for-love with the book. There’s been administrative tasks (dealing with dozens of contributors), proof-reading and editing, designing the structure of the thing, meeting with stakeholders, writing my own chapter (with Jason Garrison), and the general chaos of organizing so many words, references, names, etc, into a cohesive and tidy chunk of pulp.

And it’s not over, oh it’s not even close. We’ve had peer assessments done and they were overwhelmingly positive (whew!). We’ve now just finished implementing their suggested changes. But next up, is another proof-read then back to MQUP for their proofing, then back to us, then we construct a massive index, then…

The goal is to publish next Xmas. I can already see me holding the four pound thing, beaming like a new father, likely with an extra beam from the five wines I’ll have just polished off as part of my post-editing decompression. Yes, academic books are mucho work, with no pay. But man, I’ve realized that just having this task, this ongoing engagement with scholars and their literature and a historical media moment, it’s all kept me alive intellectually. I’m feeling reinvigorated and ready to take on my second comprehensive PhD exams this summer! Yes!

The subtle sounds of spring are quietly entering the streets of Montreal: birds chirping, ice melting under sun beams, the chatter of many people hitting the pavement. But alas, it is not quite sprung. It is still dreadfully cold here and save for the warm rays coming through winter glass, the trappings of winter remains tightly bound round my body, mind and soul. It is that time of the year again, the last cragging gasps of the long, cold, white and gray Quebec winter and I am so ready to change the scenery. A sluggish work ethic has set in and made home in my head, my arms and legs. Even my tongue is too tired to contort into shapes that keep my personality a little more interesting than a fern in a corner store. It is the long drawn-out gray days of a long stint of work. I’ve been studying now steadily, without much break, for five years. Before that four years with summer breaks. I’ve completed my course work in my PhD at Carleton and I am so exhausted from the cycle of reading and writing that I’m questioning the very foundation I’ve been building for myself as a future professional scholar - a hard working steady-as-it-goes member of the academy.

And then there is Cinema Politica. The project that has consumed Svetla and I like a lifeforce that needs our lives, all of our lives, to function and flourish. Our social and scholarly lives have become so indellibly intertwined with this sprawling beast that it is inseparable from most of everything we do. This is due in large part to the way the project has taken off like wild fire this semester. There are now 40 active locals in Canada and a handful scattered around the globe. All require time, energy, attention. Some need much more of our time than others, but in all, the network has grown to a project that would—in a normal scenario—require at least one full time staff and one part time, to say nothing of a small battery of volunteers. This is why we need to get more funding and move Cinema Politica out of our home and into an office and hire someone part time, or scale back the scope so that we can concentrate on our other work.

Ahhhh, burnout - it’s always so predictable but I never seem prepared. So these days the hours go by with me fretting over my upcoming 700 page book with Tom Waugh and Michael Brendan Baker, my TA sessions, my Second Comprehensive exam, two conference papers in May….and oh yes, that nagging unresolved question: what the hell am I going to definitively tackle—what philosophical question as Ira Wagman would say—for the next two years of my life as I research and write my PhD thesis? I’ve got an idea, but I thought I would be much much closer at this point. I just hope I figure it out before we go to Europe in June…

Short post of revelation: I successfully handed in my LAST paper for a required course ever. I wrote a 30+ paper for Ira Wagman on critical pedagogy and Communication Studies for my last required course of my PhD last week. I’ve spent a few days chilling out, and now it’s back to work. I need to get my Second Comprehensive Exam in order (a 35-40 page essay due in the spring) and begin putting together my 15 page PhD Thesis Proposal. I also have agreed to present papers on two panels in the upcoming May Congress Conference at Carleton that need to be written (one on representations of terrorism in documentary and one on teaching documentary and the politics of truth in the classroom). And of course Cinema Politica always casts its insanely all-consuming shadow over myself and Svetla….As soon as I figure out this complicated update of WordPress I shall return to normal blogging. Until then…

Just a quick shout out to all of you who apparently are kind of regularly reading this here blog and also to the handful of you who have sent me kind words. It’s nice to know that when you are speaking to the vast and indiscernable void that is cyberspace, that there are actually some real humans at the other end listening and even communicating back. Thanks!

Some updates: I’ve finished my textbook chapter with Ira Wagman for the next edition of the undergraduate communication studies textbook Mediascapes. Our chapter is called: Canadian Cultural Policy in the Age of Media Abundance: Old Challenges, New Technologies. The collaborative writing process on this one has been a great experience - the back-and-forth between myself and someone who is my senior (in experience, as a professor and published academic) was rewarding and fun. You end up learning about your writing in different ways - adjusting to blend with the other person, responding to their writing and comments, etc. All in all, I think we wrote a pretty solid chapter and I feel fortunate to have been asked to participate.

That leaves the Challenge for Change book. I have until the end of the month to do a complete final draft on my chapter that I’ve written with Jason Garrison, plus a final edit on the seven other chapters I’m responsible for, plus assemble a comprehensive bibliography for the whole book. Yes, it’s exhausting just reading that list of to-dos. But once that’s done, I just have two 35 page papers to write by xmas and I’m done with course work baby!

In Cinema Politica news, we have a start-up local in Indonesia, which is very cool. We have some annoying person or insitution hassling us and our government partners with a Freedom to Information Request. It feels quite intrusive, having someone who we’ll never learn the identity of, go through all your emails, and other correspondence with the Canada Arts Council and the NFB. We have a hunch who this might be, but only a hunch. Also, we’re going out to BC (Svetla and myself) at the end of the month for four days to meet with Michael Goodman from the Goodman Foundation to see about a possible collaboration. Wish us luck!

Now, it’s off to the bus for my weekly funtrip to Ottawa…

I’ve been in Europe for almost two weeks and have yet to find the right time to sit (with wireless) and write a post. Here it finally is (pictured above is me in front of the church I was christened in and me with the priest, my godmother Villy and Svetla’s sister Joanna, who translated the ceremony for me).

First the good news: My SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council) Doctoral Fellowship has been upgraded to a SSHRC CGS Doctoral Award, which means an increase from $60,000 over three years to $105,000 over three years. When I read the email I could barely contain the tears of total joy. It is an incredible honour to receive this award, one of the top of its kind in Canada (or the top??) and I had no idea that this kind of news could come to me this late in the summer. Woohoo!

In other news, I was christened in a Bulgarian Orthodox church on Monday, July 14th (the news of the SSHRC Award came, divine-like, later the same day). The ceremony was quite intense, with Svetla and her family (mom, dad, sister) as well as my new godmother Villy there to see me through it. Svetla’s sis Yoanna translated the priest’s Bulgarian as I was told to renounce the devil and live a life of faith and devotion. He drew tiny crosses on my forehead hands and feet with holy oils, dipped a green plant in holy water and drenched me in it. I had to step into the holy water three times and say “da” (yes) and afterward my godmom had to dry me off and help me into new socks and a new shirt. The whole thing seemed to last about an hour and took place in the upper most chamber of a beautiful little church in the neighbourhood Svetla grew up in. It was pretty warm despite the nice cool breeze coming in through the window and in the first 15 minutes I sweat off about 15 kilos, which is a non-Orthodox conversion equation I guess. We stood in front a giant mural of jesus standing in a river with disciples around him. In many of the photos Jesus’s iconic halo is directly above my own head. What does it all mean you may ask? It means I believe in family, in customs, in ritual, and in respect. That’s why I was christened in Bulgaria five days before getting married.

Speaking of married, we will be wed in the same beautiful church (pictured above) on July 19, a few days from now. A party is planned in the mountains near Sofia, at an all-natural brewery that doubles as a restaurant lodge. Fun fun! The running around is a little intense, Bulgarian style, but I’m coping. One day we (Svetla, mom, dad, Villy, me) drove all over Sofia searching for the perfect party spot - there were restaurants in parks, an outdoor pool (swimming kind) club, hotel spaces, and more. Thank god for me that every stop along the way I was able to have a nice cold Bulgarian beer in the heat. Beer often becomes my friend over here, when everyone around me is speaking Bulgarian and I become tall mute man from Canada.

But this time I am learning the language. I bought a few books and have been getting up in the morning relatively early and trying to teach myself the basics, and of course getting in lots of practice throughout the day. Whether it’s been a Bar-b-q overnight party at Rico’s summer house on the mountain or dancing to Brooklyn Funk Essentials at a great little jazz bar in Sofia called the Social Club, I have been indulging in destroying this nation’s beautiful language, word by word. But I’ve been making progress, and I’ve discovered the Bulgarians are even more thrilled to hear a foreigner make the tiniest linguistic attempts than the Quebecois. Still, after a late night of libations involving Rakia at Ricos, the only thing I could remember the next day was “dobro kuch-ay,” which due to the presence of a friendly Pit Bull, means “good dog.” You can’t go very far in Bulgarian society with “good dog” so needless to say, I’m trying to do a little more learning without alcohol.

That’s my update for now, but before I go, I’d like to thank Democracy Now and the Guardian for keeping me tethered to anglo-interpretations of the world outside this great city Sofia.

While suffering the blow from the Canada Arts Council (for the second time, a jury didn’t rank Cinema Politica high enough to receive funding) and going to Hot Docs to discover, um, filmmakers narrowly focused on their own projects (I can’t blame them), I am delighted to report some good news.

Last Thursday, April 17th, 2008, I received word from some faculty and profs at Carleton that I had been awarded the SSHRC (apologies for the instructive graph above – I did it for Michael) Doctoral Fellowship – meaning I’ll receive $20,000 per year from SSHRC every year for the next three years. It is truly a lifesaver as I consider naming my firstborn Visa, after my best friend of the last three years (and now my worst enemy).

But wait! Good news might just travel in twos! Around the same time, we were informed that the long, arduous journey to get Svetla status in this immigrant-unfriendly land had come to a near-end. Yes, Svetla is now a proud permanent resident of Canuckland.

So all that is left is to STUDY for these bloody PhD exams on May 16-17…

Concordia prof, activist, filmmaker and friend Liz Miller recently finished her documentary on the privatization of Highland Park’s water services in Detroit, Michigan, called The Water Front. We screened the film this past February 4th at the Concordia Cinema Politica. As the 600 or so audience members filed into the H-110 Auditorium, Liz and her assistant interviewed Svetla and myself on grassroots organizing of cinema screenings. The resulting short video actually makes it seem like we know what we’re talking about, so yes, we’re proud.