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As part of our ongoing series of blogs on the National
One film that is included on the playlist is VTR St Jacques by Bonnie Sherr Klein, 1969, which was at the time a radical experiment in using a new, more accessible media technology.
At a distance it may seem that the political opinions of
However, upon closer examination it becomes evident that the diversity of political opinions we see today, existed then as well. What have changed are the mediums through which people can express their opinions and the degree to which they have been democratized. In the 2000s, it is relatively easy for a person in
In the spring of 1968, a community group called the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens Committee) took shape in St-Jacques, one of downtown Montréal’s impoverished areas. People from the neighbourhood pin-pointed inadequate health care as a primary concern, and upon receiving no help from civic or provincial authorities, they managed to open up a citizen-run community health clinic. The group also had in mind the goal to empower the people from the neighbourhood, many of whom, due to poverty (and lack of employment opportunities), were struggling to meet their basic human needs.
Such remarkable community organizing caught the eye of the National
It is at this juncture that we witness an instance where “video simply exploded onto the scene” (Rusted, “Portapak as Performance: VTR St-Jacques and VTR Rosedale,” 228). The two organizations quickly joined hands, and developed a Video tape recording (VTR) group who, via funding from the NFB, made use of the recently released 1968 hand-held Sony Portapak camera-recorders. The fact that these camcorders were reasonably-priced, portable, and easy to use meant that individuals and small institutions could engage with video technology in ways never before seen (ibid).
At the time that the VTR group started, the Citizens Committee, and others from the neighbourhood were experiencing a lack of accountability and access to communications media. For example, articles or programs about the Citizen’s Committee that had appeared in the local media had almost invariably been distorted portrayals, and “the press seem[ed] incapable or unwilling to comprehend the nature or aims of the committee” (Hénaut & Klein, 32). Further, ordinary citizens were having “a good deal of difficulty in getting their opinions expressed in the information media” (ibid).
Through the use of new media technology, the St-Jacques VTR group combated the undemocratic nature of the mass media. The group consisted of two NFB members, and six members from the Citizen’s Committee. With Portapaks in hand, the group took to the streets and video-interviewed people in the neighbourhood. They then played these films back to the community at the beginning of their public meetings – getting the voice of ‘the people’ to ‘the people,’ in ways unmediated by authorities:
The public meetings were held in school halls or church basements. We placed six 23-inch monitors around the room, with about twenty chairs in a half-circle in front of each. …
When the thirty-minute video presentation was over, each group moved its chairs into a circ1e and plunged into a discussion. Having seen people like themselves on the familiar tv screen, discussing their problems with utter frankness, they lost much of the reticence and timidity people generally have in a group of strangers. They simply said, “I guess this is the place where I can talk freely,” and they then talked at length of shared problems and possible collective solutions.” (29)
The interviewing project had the effect of creating a stronger sense of community and solidarity among the folks of the neighbourhood. Where people had felt isolated, they were given the empowering opportunity to share their problems. The effect to which people in the community felt empowered through this initiative becomes evident in watching the interviews; many people passionately engaged with the VTR interviewers, and expressed their political opinions through a medium that they had previously not had access to. The fact that it was other citizens like themselves conducting the interviews gave people more confidence in the VTR group. The VTR St Jacques group used a new media technology to strengthen the Citizen’s Committee movement. While the video-recorders didn’t make or break the success of the committee (33), they “made good things better and helped people to grow.”
In the group’s Video Report of Summer 1969, they state – in words we may consider somewhat prescient of the twenty-first century’s proliferation of media: “[w]e hope that video does not become a mystique. ‘Communications,’ with all its glamour and mystification, can become an end in itself rather than a means towards better human lives. Some may want to use it to divert people from their social goals. It could become one more way of avoiding real social change.” (32). This warning, made forty years ago, has particular weight today. More and more it seems that people are communicating just for the sake of communicating. The expansion and growth of communication technologies appears infinite. The challenge for change seems to no longer be about disseminating new media technologies in order to democratize communications, but to find creative and responsible ways to use them for meaningful contact and discussion. We encourage you to look back to the NFB’s early use of accessible media to advance social justice causes and consider how their techniques could perhaps be better employed to inform, rather than distract, in an age of instantaneity.
I always love a good documentary, specially to do with media and activists. From the youtbe clip i saw looks very interesting.