PUBLISHED WRITING
May 2011 (forthcoming) • “Challenges for Change” | Co-authored with Thomas Waugh | In The Documentary Cinema Book | British Film Institute
February 2010 • “Documentary and Education” | POV Magazine | Issue 77, Winter 2010
February 2010 • “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: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada | Queen’s McGill University Press
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, 3rd Edition | Nelson Education
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
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
2006 • “Canadian Dis-Content: Examining CANCON’s Role in our Film Industry” | The Dominion (online version) | April 3, 2006 | Link
PUBLISHED EDITING
February 2010 • Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada | Queen’s McGill University Press | Editor with Thomas Waugh and Michael Brendan Baker | Purchase from Amazon.ca | Purchase from Publisher
CONFERENCE TALKS, PANELS, AND GUEST LECTURES
June 7, 2009 • “Battling Islam on Western Screens: Information Wars and Documentary Representations of the Other” | Presentation at the RACE Conference | McGill University | Montreal, Quebec
May 290, 2009 • “Battling Islam on Western Screens: Information Wars and Documentary Representations of the Other” | Presentation at Congress 2009 | Carleton University | Ottawa, Ontario
November 18, 2008 • “Representing Race, Religion and Gender: The Female Suicide Bomber in Documentary Cinema” | Guest Lecture | Gender and Communication (MCOM 1010) | Maria-Jose Frere, Assistant pofessor
November 7, 2008 • “You are On Indian Land: Distributing a Different Kind of ‘Indian’” | 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
2008 | “The Myth of the Thesis of Canada’s ‘Cinema of Failure’” | Guest Lecture | …
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
UNPUBLISHED (OR SELF-PUBLISHED) WORKS
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.
