Video Politic
Art and Artists, Nov. 1974, v. 9, no. 8, pp. 20-23
The author discusses Challenge for Change, a joint program between the National Film Board and various departments of the Canadian government which was established to encourage the production of films and videos capable of affecting social change. The program is structured by filmmaker Colin Law's documentary ethic of the "information loop". As opposed to a unilateral system that documents a culture, these films are meant to give voice to its subjects, to include them as active collaborators. The article suggests that video, being portable and inexpensive, as well as being an "intermediate" media allowing for an instantaneous and bilateral flow, is a medium with the propensity for political action allowing marginalized groups to reclaim the means of production and to become active creators rather than passive consumers of culture.
ITEM 1974.010 – available for viewing in the Research Centre
Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited
Labyrinth – Colin Low
The Things I Cannot Change – Tanya Ballantine
The 80 Goes to Sparta – Bill Davies
The Ballad of Crowfoot – Willie Dunn
Occupation – Bill Reid
Up Against the System – Terence Macartney-Filgate
A Young Social Worker Speaks her Mind – Terence Macartney-Filgate
There are Others Worse off than Us – Yves Dion
The World of One in Five – James Carney
Nell and Fred – Richard Todd
That Gang of Hoodlums? – Robert Nichol
The Point: Community Legal Clinic – Grant Kennedy
Citizens' Medicine – Bonnie Sherr Klein
God Help the Man Who Would Part with his Land – George C. Stoney
Little Burgundy – Bonnie Sherr Klein
Little Burgundy – Maurice Bulbulian
Cell 16 – Martin Duckworth
Introduction to Labrador – George C. Stoney
Introduction to Labrador – Harvey Best
VTR St-Jacques – Bonnie Sherr Klein