Publications/Writing

April 2009 • “Canadian Cultural Policy in the Age of Media Abundance: Old Challenges, New Technologies” | Chapter co-authored with Ira Wagman, in Mediascapes: New Patterns in Canadian Communications | Nelson College Indigenous

December 2009 • “If a Revolution Is Screened and No One Is There to See It, Does It Make a Sound?
Grassroots Distribution from Challenge for Change to Cinema Politica” | Co-authored with Jason Garrison | In Challenge for Change/Société nouvelle: The Collection (tentative) | Queen’s McGill University Press

December 2009 • Challenge for Change/Société nouvelle: The Collection (tentative) | Queen’s McGill University Press | Editor with Thomas Waugh and Michael Brendan Baker

2009 (forthcoming) • Book Review of Filming Politics: Communism and the Portrayal of the Working Class at the National Film Board of Canada, 1939-46 by Malek Khouri | Canadian Journal of Communication | Winter 2008

2007 • Book Review of Projecting Canada: Government Policy and Documentary Film at the National Film Board by Zöe Druick | Nouvelles <<vues>> sur le cinéma québecois | Winter 2007 | Link to journal site

2007 • “A Documentary Decade” | POV Magazine | Issue 66, Winter 2007 | Link to pdf file

2007 • “John Grierson: Trailblazer of Documentary Film” | Book Review in the Canadian Journal of Communications | Vol 32, No 1 | Link

2006 • “CinemaNet Europe: A Digital Doc Armada” | POV Magazine | Issue 64, Winter 2006, pp. 24-27

2006 • “Canadian Dis-Content: Examining CANCON’s Role in our Film Industry” | The Dominion (online version) | April 3, 2006 | Link


CONFERENCE TALKS, PANELS, AND OTHER WRITINGS

2007 • “The Spaces Between: Documentary Distribution and Exhibition as Counterpublics” | M.A. Media Studies Thesis | Completed August 2007, Unpublished | Download PDF (152 pages) - MA Thesis Final | Abstract below

Abstract:
Documentary cinema has emerged as an important focus for research into popular culture, marginalized narratives, and democratic media. However, academic work on the genre has been narrowly focused on audience consumption habits, aesthetic or textual analyses of individual works, and cultural analyses of the intersection of documentary and mainstream commercial cinema sites and practices. This thesis is an attempt to bridge a research gap by interrogating extra-textual elements around the grassroots distribution and exhibition of documentary cinema in Canada. By linking the concepts of cultural hegemony, counterpublics and agonostic pluralism with community-oriented practices around documentary distribution and exhibition, this thesis urges a closer look at the spaces between box office numbers, high profile documentaries, and megaplexes. First hand interviews with filmmakers, promoters, exhibitors and distributors – from director Mark Achbar (The Corporation) to the manager of Montreal’s AMC Forum – tease out the relationship between documentary cinema and counterpublics in Canada.

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2009 (November 7) • “Challenge for Change” | Presentation with Tom Waugh at the Gimme Some Truth Documentary Conference | Winnipeg, Manitoba

2008 (July 20-25) • “Touring with Wal-Town: Screening Documentary off the Beaten Path” | Paper presentation in the Audience Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research at its Digital Divides Conference | Stockholm, Sweden

2008 (June 12) • “Activist and Solidarity Documentary in Canada since 2001: Taking Stock” | Panel Co-Chaired by Thomas Waugh, Concordia University and Ezra Winton, Carleton University | At the 2008 FSAC Congress | UBC, Vancouver, British Columbia

2008 (June 12) • “Touring with Wal-Town: Screening Documentary off the Beaten Path” | Paper presentation as part of the 2008 FSAC Congress | UBC, Vancouver, British Columbia

2008 (March 14) • “Mother, Daughter, Martyr, Killer: Recent Documentary Representations of ‘the Female Suicide Bomber’” | Paper presentation as part of the Memory as Medium: Experience, Exchange, Representation - Communication Graduate Conference | Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario

2007 (May 28) • “You are on Indian Land: Foregrounding Distribution and Exhibition” | Challenge for Change/Société nouvelle 40th Anniversary Panel | Paper presentation as part of the Social Science and Humanities Congress (as part of the FSAC Congress) | University of Saskatoon, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

2006 (October 17) • “Multiplexes for Multicultures: Hollywood, Cinemahouses and Canada’s Urban Mosaic” | presented at the 2006 FSAC Congress, The City: A Festival of Knowledge | York University, Toronto, Ontario

2006 (Octobery 10) • “Docs get Digital: New pipes for old dreams” | presentation at the Documentary Organization of Canada-Quebec Distribution Conference Think Tank | Montreal, Quebec

2006 (August 9) • “Networking Global Realities: Documentary Film and New Emerging Information Networks” | presented at the Visible Evidence XIII Conference | Sao Paulo, Brazil