I’m fortunate enough to have been invited to speak about my current research and other projects at a few institutions in Quebec and Ontario this Fall (2018). It’s always so rewarding to visit communities and engage in discussions with people who are invested in the same topics and issues one
Continue readingAuthor: Ezra Winton
ezra winton: The Launch of Documentary Futurism
On September 13th, 2018, the world will receive 15 speculative gifts. On that forward-looking day Cinema Politica launches our newest project in Montreal, Documentary Futurism. Way back in 2016 we pitched a wild idea to the Canada Council for the Arts for their New Chapter initiative (meant to mark the
Continue readingezra winton: Call for Chapters: Book on Indigenous representation in Canada’s Media Arts
Image above: Dana Claxton’s The Mustang Suite, image courtesy: http://alternatorcentre.com/explore_art/archives/exhibition/exhibitions_2008/edges_of_diversity/dana_claxton_the_mustang_suite/ CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS Insiders/Outsiders: The Cultural Politics and Ethics of Indigenous Representation and Participation in Canada’s Media Arts Edited by Ezra Winton and Dana Claxton Abstracts due: May 31st, 2017 Submissions sent to: insidersoutsidersbook AT gmail DOT com While
Continue readingArt Threat: How Do you Spell Colonialism? A Review of Hot Docs’s 2017 Opening Film Bee Nation
The article below also appears at POV Magazine, which is providing comprehensive coverage of the Hot Docs festival, including an alternative take on the film reviewed below (by Judy Wolf). The notion that an Indigenous spelling bee competition could serve as the cohesive force to unite disparate First Nations children
Continue readingezra winton: Links for 2017-02-22 [del.icio.us]
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Continue readingezra winton: Against empathy?
This short animation from The Atlantic highlights some of Professor Paul Bloom’s thoughts on why empathy—at least a kind of status quo mainstream empathy—isn’t really a good thing at all. The short should really be called “Against warm glow altruism,” as Bloom is focused on building off of Peter Singer’s concept of effective altruism and this isn’t really an argument against empathy per se. The animation is a little rudimentary, but it still serves as a provocation to the burgeoning industry of liberal documentary and its attendant army of NGOs,…read more
Continue readingezra winton: 20 Questions for Film Curators
This past winter I taught a graduate seminar course at Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema (Concordia University) entitled “Curatorial Labour and the Politics of Programming.” It was a fantastic and meaningful experience and I was fortunate enough to have 13 really great students, all of whom suffered along with me as I attempted to make sense of my overly-ambitious and brand new syllabus. A few weeks in me and the students came up with a list of questions that someone curating or programming film might want or ought to ask themselves….read more
Continue readingezra winton: Links for 2016-04-29 [del.icio.us]
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ezra winton: Fighting Fascism by way of Understanding the Fascists
One of the common criticisms of advocacy films like Bully that I’ve heard and share is that the filmmakers narrowly focus on victims without ever exploring those who perpetrate. These films help along the equivocal knee-jerk reaction to oppression when we have a two-dimensional villain to point to: kids today! But why do kids bully and what are their lives like? Answering, or at least interrogating, these questions would move us in a direction to better understand the complexities of bullying and would likely elicit a more nuanced, thoughtful reaction…read more
Continue readingezra winton: Streaming Truth to Power: CPVOD Launches!
The last 48 hours have been quite the whirlwind of activity at Cinema Politica HQ here in Montreal. We’ve been planning a launch date for our newest expansion of the political cinema terrain: Cinema Politica Video-On-Deman (or #CPVOD as we like to call it for short). Anna, our fearless Network Coordinator (she works with all the CP locals, or chapters, worldwide) came up with the brilliant turn-of-phase above, Streaming Truth to Power. Marie-Noelle has been multi-tasking design and translation to such an effect that I’m sure I saw custom-designed (and…read more
Continue readingezra winton: Padre – Inspired Political Animation
I love this short Argentine animation film Padre, and I think you will too. If the film piques your interest into animation production, then check out the wonderful making-of short the filmmakers have so generously provided here (https://vimeo.com/886…
Continue readingezra winton: Curating the North: Documentary Screening Ethics and Inuit Representation in (Festival) Cinema
This article was originally published at ArtThreat.net on December 17, 2015. Documentary festivals are certainly not immune to scandal and controversy, and this year’s RIDM, which took place in Montreal in November 2015, was no exception. Following on the heels of the festival’s public screenings of Dominic Gagnon’s film Of the North, Inuit artists like Tanya Tagaq and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril took to social media to express their dismay, anger and frustration over the inclusion of an ethically problematic film in the festival’s program. The resulting fallout revealed a deep chasm…read more
Continue readingArt Threat: Curating the North: Documentary Screening Ethics and Inuit Representation in (Festival) Cinema
Documentary festivals are certainly not immune to scandal and controversy, and this year’s RIDM, which took place in Montreal in November 2015, was no exception. Following on the heels of the festival’s public screenings of Dominic Gagnon’s film Of the North, Inuit artists like Tanya Tagaq and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril took to social media to express […]
Continue readingArt Threat: Hot Docs 22: CanCon and BrandCon
North America’s largest and most sweeping doc-deluge, the Canadian International Hot Docs Festival, is once again in full swing, and the moment wouldn’t be complete, for me at least, without some form of commentary that assesses this institutional giant as it marks another year. In that spirit and as with
Continue readingezra winton: Hot Docs 22: CanCon and BrandCon
North America’s largest and most sweeping doc-deluge, the Canadian International Hot Docs Festival, is once again in full swing, and the moment wouldn’t be complete, for me at least, without some form of commentary that assesses this institutional giant as it marks another year. In that spirit and as with past “taking stock” previews (2014 is here, 2013 is here and 2012 is here) of Hot Docs, I humbly present my take on this year’s fest, divided into three Sergio Leone-inspired sections: what’s promising, what’s looking like a fixer-upper, and…read more
Continue readingArt Threat: Petition to Save Film Heritage in Former Yugoslavia
An appeal from the international community of film scholars, cinephiles and archivists: Dear Colleagues, Avala Film, the former Yugoslavia’s oldest film studio – which was at the heart of Mila Turajlic’s 2010 internationally acclaimed documentary CINEMA KOMUNISTO – is to be sold by the Serbian government for the value of
Continue readingArt Threat: A Changing Chinatown
Julia Kwan’s NFB-produced Everything Will Be (Canada, 2014) examines the gentrification of Vancouver’s Chinatown as an uneasy balance of preservation, assimilation, and creative re-purposing. A flurry of condo development encroaches on the neighbourhood’s familiar faces, such as the witty nonagenarian newsvendor and the members of the senior’s singing club. Meanwhile,
Continue readingArt Threat: Performing Aloha in Queer Times
In 2001, filmmakers Kathryn Xian and Brent Anbe broke new ground with their documentary Ke Kulana He Mahu: Remembering a Sense of Place. The film, which documents the lives, struggles, and aspirations of several queer and trans Kanaka Maoli (Indigenous Hawaiians), also made an important and, at the time, novel
Continue readingezra winton: Still Talking about Challenge for Change
Challenge for Change/Société nouvelle was a program launched by the National Film Board of Canada in the late sixties that facilitated the production of around 200 social documentaries known for their inclusion of subjects in the production process and their uncompromising critiques of government programs. In 2010 I co-edited a
Continue readingezra winton: Best Canadian Essays 2014
A couple of weeks ago I had the honour and privilege to be invited as a guest to a book launch in Toronto for a yearly anthology published by Tightrope Books called Best Canadian Essays. My POV Magazine essay, Upping the Anti: Documentary, Capitalism and Liberal Consensus in an Age
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