Strategies and Tactics
I’ll be speaking at this roundtable on April 9th in Montreal. Looking forward to it!
Halifax and Beyond
Earlier this month I had the pleasure and privilege of participating in NSCAD’s Cineflux Symposium, an academic gathering that explores the “old new” forms, modes, practices and theories of cinema. My Postdoctoral supervisor, Dr. Darrell Varga, invited me to present a paper on the politics of presence and documentary activist screening spaces, which was indeed given to a receptive audience on the last Sunday morning of the symposium. There was a slight hiccup with my arrival for my panel, as my phone was still set to Montreal time and the…read more
POV Magazine
When Marc Glassman, the editor of POV magazine, asked me to join the publication as the newest contributing editor last year I was honoured. As Canada’s only source of writing on documentary culture, politics and production, the quarterly has been my go-to on all things doc for some time. Started by the Canadian Independent Film Caucus (now the Documentary Organization of Canada) in 1993 along with the Hot Docs film festival, POV delivers articles on documentary policy, production, and distribution, as well as film reviews and interviews. I recently checked…read more
Writing a PhD thesis is like sailing (if you’ve never done either)
On December 18th, 2013, I sat in a stodgy IT classroom in Carleton University (Ottawa), surrounded by five extremely intelligent people (one via Skype) who were there to challenge, provoke, rock and ultimately assess me. It was the end of six-and-a-half years of “doing” my PhD, and there I was, my doorstopper thesis in front of me looking like a turgid treatise destined for decades of editing or neglect (take your pick), and a clutch of eager professors ready to advance like well-meaning warriors who hadn’t eaten properly for days.
Old and new political satire
These two short political satires (above) are from different eras (1986 and 2013, respectively) and tackling totally different issues (colonization/racism and sexuality/homophobia, respectively), but watching the newer of the two, Love Is All You Need totally reminded me of BabaKieuria, a classic that has been long-forgotten in the canons of political cinema.
The costs of consumption
An unforgettable documentary about the real costs of resource exploitation — a must see.
My birthday wish: Support alternative media
Today is my birthday, and my birthday wish—aside from health and happiness for my friends and especially my family—is for widespread and even sustained! support for alternative and independent media, especially from the anniversary wish-list below. Every time we buy a Globe and Mail newspaper or watch any Canadian news program on television we are tacitly, if not consciously, supporting the status quo. The status quo, at least in Canada, currently consists of a government aggressively pursuing an economic agenda that favours corporations over people and the environment, and mainstream…read more
An honest Coca-Cola advert
Without a doubt, Coca-Cola is one of the worst companies on the planet. From its murderous human rights violations stamping out unions in Latin America (especially at Colombian bottling plants) to its marketing to youngsters to its environmental record (especially concerning water), it is hands down a terrible corporation getting away with incredible harm on this planet. So it’s refreshing indeed to see Killer Coke get its comeuppance in this amazing Australian Greenpeace TV advert about Coke and plastic pollution. While it’s not surprising that Coke is blocking a new…read more
Trading songs for socks
Remember when crowd funding was a baby? It was an innocent but fierce little phenomenon that you would feed, along with a whole community, and lo and behold, a project would be raised, big and strong ready to tackle the world. Amazing things like literacy projects, art therapy, and independent documentaries were among the steadily highlighted cultural offerings on sites like Indiegogo.com. These days I look at my weekly emails (like the one to the left) from Indiegogo and I see nothing but entrepreneurs trying to raise money to sell…read more
The fish farm conspiracy
This is a great independent doc by a friend from British Columbia. It is absolutely shocking to see the lengths the provincial and federal governments are going to in order to not allow the dissemination of information about the role of BC fish farms in the destruction of wild salmon populations. According to the doc, wild salmon are being killed off in alarming numbers and independent studies show the diseases are linked to fish in West Coast farms, who are carrying viruses and pathogens from Norway. I’m particularly disturbed by…read more