Saturday, May 03, 2008
NFB Filmmaker in Residence Program
Here's a little blurb from the coolest workshop I attended at Doc U, the documentary school of the Hot Docs film festival.
Two things that came up of Kat Cyzech’s workshop were that filmmakers ought to deeply change their relationship with their « subjects », and that they ought to consider “many vs. any” media. Films aren’t to be made “about”, but rather “with” people; that’s the very motto the Filmmaker in Residence program at the NFB has been operating on since its inception. The Filmmaker in Residence manifesto states that the ideas and goals are to come from the partner, not from the filmmaker, whose role is to put it into documentary form through participation, not mere observation. In this worldview, filmmaking has to learn to become interdisciplinary and participatory. This can be done through breaking free of theatrical limitations and the traditional way of distribution docs through conventional broadcasters, by using various new media forms instead and exploring with uploaded user generated content. As Kat, who has a background in photo-journalism, book publishing, newspapers, radio and anthropology and recently wrote a book called Video for Change, mentioned, the “Internet is a big documentary in process”, documenting the world we live in.
Kat went on to describe various projects of the very grassroots Filmmaker in Residence program, which was based on Challenge for Change, an initiative that first bridged documentary making and community development, by publicizing the struggles of a fishing village in Newfoundland and gave the people of Fogo Island access to financing to start a successful fishing cooperative. Kat screened part of the Bicycle movie, a vector used to advocate a grassroots drugs and aid distribution system championed by James Orbinski’s organization, Dignitas. She also spoke of I was here, a documentary using a “photo voice” methodology to carry forwards the voices of the 300 women giving birth with no fix address in Toronto each year. Photos were taken by the group themselves, and were instrumental in shaping Mayor Miller’s new policies on homelessness and poverty in the city. Along the same line of thought, Street Health helped documenting the health status of Toronto’s homeless through training peer-researchers that would capture audio interviews and photo portraits, once again demonstrating the role of documentary as a tool for political change.
Art and documentary work facilitate social change. Kat advised Doc U students to get versed in graphic design, photography and writing, and says : don’t wait, be interactive and give back now!
More information on : www.nfb.ca/filmmakerinresidence (beware: some people spend up to 3h on the interactive site). You can also check Kat out on the delicious social bookmarking site.
Two things that came up of Kat Cyzech’s workshop were that filmmakers ought to deeply change their relationship with their « subjects », and that they ought to consider “many vs. any” media. Films aren’t to be made “about”, but rather “with” people; that’s the very motto the Filmmaker in Residence program at the NFB has been operating on since its inception. The Filmmaker in Residence manifesto states that the ideas and goals are to come from the partner, not from the filmmaker, whose role is to put it into documentary form through participation, not mere observation. In this worldview, filmmaking has to learn to become interdisciplinary and participatory. This can be done through breaking free of theatrical limitations and the traditional way of distribution docs through conventional broadcasters, by using various new media forms instead and exploring with uploaded user generated content. As Kat, who has a background in photo-journalism, book publishing, newspapers, radio and anthropology and recently wrote a book called Video for Change, mentioned, the “Internet is a big documentary in process”, documenting the world we live in.
Kat went on to describe various projects of the very grassroots Filmmaker in Residence program, which was based on Challenge for Change, an initiative that first bridged documentary making and community development, by publicizing the struggles of a fishing village in Newfoundland and gave the people of Fogo Island access to financing to start a successful fishing cooperative. Kat screened part of the Bicycle movie, a vector used to advocate a grassroots drugs and aid distribution system championed by James Orbinski’s organization, Dignitas. She also spoke of I was here, a documentary using a “photo voice” methodology to carry forwards the voices of the 300 women giving birth with no fix address in Toronto each year. Photos were taken by the group themselves, and were instrumental in shaping Mayor Miller’s new policies on homelessness and poverty in the city. Along the same line of thought, Street Health helped documenting the health status of Toronto’s homeless through training peer-researchers that would capture audio interviews and photo portraits, once again demonstrating the role of documentary as a tool for political change.
Art and documentary work facilitate social change. Kat advised Doc U students to get versed in graphic design, photography and writing, and says : don’t wait, be interactive and give back now!
More information on : www.nfb.ca/filmmakerinresidence (beware: some people spend up to 3h on the interactive site). You can also check Kat out on the delicious social bookmarking site.
