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Challenge for Change, edited by Thomas Waugh, Michael Brendan Baker, and Ezra Winton looks at the activist documentary program Challenge for Change/Société nouvelle, which ran from 1967 to 1980. The films produced by this program were among the first to add portable video to the tested arsenal of 16mm, and challenged audiences, subjects, and filmmakers to confront sexism, poverty, and marginalization in the hope of developing community as well as political awareness and empowerment.
Marc Glassman editor of Point of View and Montage reviews Challenge for Change:
"Low allowed Grierson the final question: "So the filmmaker is nothing but a tool, a camera operator…What about the intelligence, world experience, expensive education that could be brought to these people?"
There, in a nutshell, is the problematic series of questions for Challenge for Change. Could it genuinely make a difference in marginalized, impoverished, at-risk communities? Could it empower women to speak? (Remember, this was the '70s, the dawn of feminist discourse.) Blacks? Gays? Old people? Teenagers? The (already threatened) working class?
And what about filmmaking? Was the program a revolutionary step forward for documentary filmmakers? At last they could work in service with communities, not be outsiders, and grab footage to show to educated audiences on TV. But would filmmaking lose its status, as Grierson was suggesting? Shouldn't filmmakers have a point-of-view and pursue it? Or at least offer solutions to problems facing the world?"
Read the full review here.
Or order a copy of Challenge for Change here.
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