EzraWinton.com | Media arts and politics

Svetla’s friend’s seaside camping neighbours in Bulgaria called me “Hugh” secretly because they couldn’t pronounce my name and I apparently reminded them of Hugh Grant. Well recent news has got me convinced that they should have been calling me “Grant” in keeping with the likeness but also by reflecting this summer’s spat of excellent news.

I’m back in Montreal now and yesterday I checked the PO Box for Cinema Politica and found what has ominously lain there twice before: a large white and cream envelope from the Canada Council for the Arts, news writ large of our bid for a grant for the Cinema Politica project. As the previous two times the news contained the word “regret” in the first sentence and was therefore not the news I had wished for, I felt my heart palpitate and held my breath while I scanned the envelope looking for clues in it’s near incandescent body. And what was that! I caught a glimmer of the word “pleased” - the affirmative clue to “regret’s” negative!! I feverishly opened the envelope to read the news: “We are pleased to inform you that your application to the Media Arts Project Grants - Dissemination Projects…was successful.” Yes! Retribution! Finally, Cinema Politica has been recognized by funding authorities (and arts peers) as worthy of the holy grail of arts funding in Canada! Yes!!! So as you can see, this news combined with the SSHRC news a couple of weeks back has me thinking the neighbours might not have been too misdirected in connecting me with the grant aspect of Hugh Grant.

And so turns a new chapter in our lives: with the end of summer and beginning of the glorious burning Quebec Autumn, comes a new leaf, a beginning in a long series of beginnings. Stress will be lowered, health will be lifted, intellects will be injected and our projects will be infected with the renewal spirit. It’s going to be a good year (I follow the academic calendar, so my year is September to August). Woopee!

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.

OK, I’m going to try and not make this bitter, despite how utterly bitter and negative I feel at the moment. I just received word from the Canada Council that they have indeed denied support for Cinema Politica, for a second time in a row. This time, I painstakingly applied to a different envelope - a new section at the Council that had less competition - with the hopes that that would increase our odds.

Nope.

Cinema Politica is massive and shows only signs of expansion. There are 30 locals with ten waiting in the wings to join the network of free political film exhibition sites across the country. Since our focus is documentary and Canadian independent works, and since our focus is on youth (most CP locals are located on Canadian campuses) and building new audiences for independent cinema in the country, we thought that we had a pretty damn fine chance at some funding. Everyone has been telling us at least. If only the people who have sat on the last two review committees saw it that way.

With this rejection letter, I am left with two possible conclusions regarding this country’s most important arts funding agency:

1. Cinema Politica does not fit in the Council’s mandate because documentary is not seen as an art by so many in the arts community and has historically faced discrimination;
2. Cinema Politica was not an attractive project to fund for the ten (two committees of five) independent artists who reviewed all the applicants because they a) do not value documentary as a media art, b) think the project is doing fine - based on our swanky website and expansive scope across the country - and is not in need of cash (which is so far from the truth it hurts), or c) are artists who have no understanding of the crucial need to fund initiatives in this country that aim to disseminate (READ: distribution!) independent cinema to new, young audiences at alternative exhibition sites.

Alas, with this incredibly depressing news, we may be forced to terminate the project. We desperately need to hire someone to run the sprawling network, to send films across the country, to secure screening rights, to offer support to new startups in the network, etc, etc.

This cannot happen with the network being so big. So, while the Canada Council is not in the business of supporting Cinema Politica, maybe you are? Drop me a line if know where we can find cash or would like to support our work. I’m going for a long, cold walk.

I’m back. Ira Wagman, my new professor for “Entertainment Studies,” has advised us all to try to write for at least one hour per day. I’m going to take him up on it, and when I’m not blogging for Art Threat or writing papers and presentations and articles, I’ll use the writing time to post here.

I spent the weekend sorting out Cinema Politica stuff - the network has gone crazy, too many locals for me to handle and now people in Manchester and Berlin want to join. This is why I applied to the Canada Council for funding. We desperately need it.

Other than that, I went rollerskating with Tyrell and worked at not breaking any bones. Baked some delicious sundried tomato, thyme and walnut spelt bread. Now I’ve got to write a presentation for my class. More interesting posts are sure to follow.

Of interest: Concordia pays off former president nearly $2 million to resign. Disgusting. And the University of Ottawa reports a $67 million surplus for last year but refuses to meet the demands of deaf students by providing hearing assistance at the Friday Cinema Politica screenings there. Ah, the corporate crunch of education…

Lastly, I’m reading a great book for my PhD class, “The Philosophy of the Image” with Michael Dorland. The book (pictured above) is called No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy, and even has it’s own blog. It’s snowing right now and that has put me in the mood to listen to Antony and the Johnsons and get my presentation done..

It’s a beautiful evening in Montreal, a light dusting of snow is muting our street and probably the city. I’ve been snowed in here for the last two weeks writing two papers to finish up my term. The first one, on cinematic representations of female suicide bombers, is done and sent to the prof. The second one, on the history of cultural industry theory, is about to envelope me. Sound exciting? At least it’s snowing…

Also, Wal-Town The Film was just broadcast twice on Canada’s third largest broadcast network, TVO (TV Ontario) and despite predictable crummy reviews from the National Post and the Globe and Mail, we’ve received some inspiring emails from people who watched the film. I’m pasting the latest one below to give an idea of the kind of support that has come in - support that keeps us going through the Canadian winter…

Dear Wal-Town:

I’ve finally seen your movie, and I was so grateful I got to see it, I even purchased a copy!

I wanted to email you and let you know that you are NOT ALONE! My family and I have not shoped at walmart for 4 years, (besides one emergency trip for a car seat, when none could be purchased elsewhere!) We get many a stares and funny looks when people find out we don’t shop there!

I want to be of some sort of active assistance. Please inform me of what I could possibly do. Because as a mother of 2 young children, working pt and a husband who works away from home, my time and money is limited. But I believe in this, and would like to be more active!

Congrats on making people think, and look at their choices! I feel supported too! Thanks for making the movie!

The Montreal Mirror printed a story today about a recent screening of a Cinema Politica film at Concordia that I helped organize. While the piece does make me sound like some raving, volatile activist freak, hats off to Patrick Ljtenyi, for printing my quote on the ILLEGAL OCCUPATION of Palestinian land by the Israeli government. It’s the first time any media has had the chutzpah to include the descriptor “illegal” in my quote. Shalom!

From the Mirror (it’s short, so instead of linking, I’m reprinting…hopefully they don’t sue me):

ConU Film Paranoia by Patrick Ljtenyi

Cinema Politica, the weekly political movie night spinning its spools at Concordia’s main theatre downtown, is drawing a beefed up security presence, especially when films on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are screened. And that’s freaking organizer Ezra Winton right out.

Last week, Winton received a letter from the administration stating that he’d have to pay some $400 to cover the costs of additional security guards for last Tuesday’s screening of Occupation 101, a documentary about ongoing unpleasantness in the not-so-Holy Land. He also couldn’t sell DVDs of the film outside the theatre, in pursuance of Concordia policy (Winton says they give the DVD out in return for donations, which his organization depends on). Outraged, he kicked up a fuss and the university eventually relented, footing the bills themselves. But even the presence of four additional guards unnerves him.

“We’ve shown over 100 movies since we started” almost five years ago, he says. “But the only movies that ever run into administrative roadblocks, in terms of security, are ones that are critical of the illegal occupation of Palestine by the Israeli government.”

Winton says other Cinema Politica groups at Dalhousie and Ottawa universities are feeling a squeeze as well. “There’s a trend to cleanse students of any political activity,” he says.

Neoliberalism:
My PhD is keeping me busy with 250+ pages of reading per week, but I’m immensely enjoying it. The program at Carleton is what I had hoped for - four of us students in a small classroom with one professor engaging deeply with the material we’ve read for a good three hours. We just finished a great book by Armand Mattelart (pictured at left) called “Mapping World Communication: War, Progress, Culture.”

Here’s my Favorite quote from this excellent historical reading of the field of communication:

As we have already noted, in the redeployment of free enterprise the consumer is keystone. He or she is at once, as “coproducer,” one of the links in the production process and, as representative of the people-as-market (peuple-marché), the key to the process of legitimation of the neoliberal conception of society. For it is not a matter of just any consumers, but rather of consumers who are sovereign in their choices in a free market. Neoliberalism, in its struggle against all forms of control (except of course its own, those of free enterprise), whether they emanate from the state or from organized civil society, reveals itself as a form of neopopulism as well. Thus it experiences the constant need to reaffirm the representativity of consumers in their role as market shares. It speaks in their names. Hostage and alibi, the consumer has, indeed, the starring role on the stage of the democratic marketplace; he or she is a a “citizen” of it. The discourse built around the consumer, a consumer free of all attachments and determinations other than his or her own will, claims such authority that it often becomes a totalizing discourse, one leaving no place for other issues than those related to consumption. Consumption is assumed to contain within itself its own explanation and raison d’etre.(Mattelart, 1994, p.234)

Big Brothers:

Last week I received a letter informing me that I have been accepted as a Big Brother. The program, which is across the world, is called Big Brothers and Sisters, and matches adults with children who are in need of companionship, friendship, and positive role models of their same sex. The initial testing was a rigorous two and a half hour interrogation by two psychologists about my past, present and future thoughts, experiences and problems. I was definitely not prepared for it, and hadn’t eaten breakfast, so by the time it was over, I was ready to collapse. I understand the thoroughness however, and I’m glad I not only survived, but I passed! So next week, I go through a bit of training and look at files of little brothers that they have chosen. Every two weeks I’ll spend four hours hanging out with a kid, which will be great for a variety of reasons, one of which is the fact that I miss my family here in Montreal.

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Concordia, how I miss thee! As I pack my bags tonight and ready myself for another trip to Ottawa for classes at Carleton, I’ve been thinking: how did things get so utterly Orwellian at Concordia? As of late, I’ve heard from student friends who were being incredibly radical by handing out flyers on campus, ones that called for “free education,” when members of Concordia’s current Student Union Executive including the easily influenced Noah Stewart and his sidekick sycophant Angelica something-or-other called security to have them removed! Damn those radicals! (the authoritarian ones that is, who rely on hired muscle rather than reason, ethics and intelligence)

I also witnessed a recent Teaching and Research Assistant Union Election overrun by herd-politics. Chauvinist engineers ran other engineers for Union Executive positions that candidates actually hadn’t even memorized (some of them having to turn around and see what title was written next to their name on the black board behind them) yet every engineering student blindly voted them in, displaying a new kind of repulsive cronyism that I thought was only reserved for the Conservative party.

Aside from student corruption and self-interest, the administration is of course up to no good, inspiring the Montreal Gazette to run and editorial asking the school to get its act together and start acting public.

And next up, a recent article in Maclean’s magazine (I finally get a good quote in the mainstream national media) details the Concordia administration’s denial problem: this time that they actually have a star chamber called the Risk Assessment Committee, which has believe you me, tried to shut down at least one Cinema Politica screening.

Ah, Concordia, when will you grow up, and realize that the University is public and is for learning, and not for social control, profit and job-rearing?

Just a quick hurrah: it seems that right now the documentary on the project I helped create - Wal-Town - is the number two most purchased/ordered NFB film in the educational division. This means that across Canada, teachers and librarians are ordering many, many copies of Wal-Town The Film. This is amazing news, both for Sergeo Kirby, the director, and for the gang of us who put the project into action. We always thought the film was an important aspect of reaching a wider audience, and now it seems we’re not only reaching that audience, but they are most-likely younger as well. Excellent news indeed…

So, help us get to Number 1 and order it today from the NFB site!!

…or alternately, you can order it from überculture and we get a small cut…

A journalist for Uptown Magazine in Winnipeg interviewed me recently about our upcoming WAL-TOWN TOUR 2007 and asked me what we wanted to accomplish with this campaign and whether we are anti Wal-Mart. I answered:

We are anti Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart was a corporation that supported it’s employee’s rights to organize, if they were accountable to the citizens in the towns they move into instead of only to their shareholders, if they had progressive environmental policies that were sustainable, if they weren’t the largest retail force on the planet that encourages disposable consumerism, if they cared about community while practicing commerce, if they were a humanitarian leader in business instead of a leader in human rights abuses across the globe, then maybe, just maybe we would be OK with a Wal-Mart or two.

If a town doesn’t have a Wal-Mart and doesn’t want one (most towns don’t want the Mart but get one anyway) then we want to help the community in their efforts to stop this American corporation from erecting another environmentally devastating, car use-encouraging, windowless concrete eyesore. If a town already has a Wal-Mart, chances are there’s a lot of people building, supporting and sustaining alternatives, and we want to talk with them, learn from them, and pass along their experience to the next community.

That’s what our tour is about in a nutshell. What tour you ask, well…

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