Michel Regnier's 'Films-Outil'

Challenge for Change/Société nouvelle Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada 1967–1980 Edited by THOMAS WAUGH | MICHAEL BRENDAN AKER | EZRA WINTON McGill-Queen’s University Press ■ Montreal & Kingston ■ London ■ Ithaca © McGill-Queen’s University Press 2010 isbn 978-0-7735-3662-3 (cloth) isbn 978-0-7735-3663-0 (paper) Legal deposit first quarter 2010 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Contents Illustrations | ix Acknowledgments | xi Foreword: Putting Ideas into the World: A Conversation with Naomi Klein about Starting Conversations with Film ezra winton | xv 1 Introduction: Forty Years Later … a Space for Challenge for Change/Société nouvelle michael brendan baker, thomas waugh, and ezra winton | 3 PA R T 1 H I S T O R I C A L S PA C E S : I N T H E H E AT O F T H E A C T I O N 2 Grierson and Challenge for Change (1984) colin low | 16 3 In the Hands of Citizens: A Video Report (1969) dorothy todd hénaut and bonnie sherr klein | 24 4 Saint-Jérôme: The Experience of a Filmmaker as Social Animator (1968) fernand dansereau | 34 5 A Voice for Canadian Indians: An Indian Film Crew (1968) noel starblanket | 38 6 Fiction Film as Social Animator (1971–72) Interview with Léonard Forest by dorothy todd hénaut | 41 7 Working with Film: Experiences with a Group of Films about Working Mothers (1975) kathleen shannon, elizabeth prinn, doris mae oulton, and irene angelico | 52 8 Memo to Michelle about Decentralizing the Means of Production (1972) john grierson | 61 vi ■ CONTENTS 9 Can We Evaluate Challenge for Change? (1972) dan driscoll | 66 PA R T 2 C O M M U N I T Y S PA C E S : F I L M I N G AT T H E M A R G I N S 10 Media for the People: The Canadian Experiments with Film and Video in Community Development (1992) peter k. wiesner | 73 11 Cities for Change: The Housing Challenge gerda johanna cammaer | 103 12 The En tant que femmes Series, the Film Souris, tu m’inquiètes!, and the Imaging of Women’s Consciousness in 1970s Quebec marie-ève fortin | 117 13 Le mouton noir: Vidéographe and the Legacy of Société nouvelle scott m ac kenzie | 136 14 The Things I Cannot Change: A Revisionary Reading brenda longfellow | 149 PA R T 3 S C R E E N S PA C E S : S P O T L I G H T O N T H E F I L M AND FILMMAKERS 15 “You Are on Indian Land”: Interview with George Stoney (1980) alan rosenthal | 169 16 Cree Hunters of Mistassini (1974): Challenge for Change and Aboriginal Rights michelle stewart | 180 17 “Nation Time” at Kwacha House: The Transitional Modalities of Encounter at Kwacha House – Halifax kass banning | 190 18 The Films of Maurice Bulbulian: Science and Conscience thomas waugh | 201 19 The Curious Case of Wilf: Popular Music in Canadian Documentary michael brendan baker | 210 20 Portapak as Performance: VTR St-Jacques and VTR Rosedale brian rusted | 218 CONTENTS 21 Bonnie Klein, Saul Alinsky, and the American Experience stephen michael charbonneau | 234 22 Michel Régnier’s “Films-Outil” liz czach | 242 23 Léonard Forest and Acadia jeanne deslandes | 251 24 Filmmaker as History: The Interventionist Films of Martin Duckworth michael lithgow | 259 25 Les filles du Roy jerry white | 269 26 In Praise of Anomaly: Le bonhomme and Rose’s House kalli paakspuu | 277 27 Getting Close and Staying Far: Pierre Lasry and the Solo Moms jason lindop | 285 28 Paper Wheat: Alternative Theatre Meets Alternative Filmmaking chris meir | 295 29 “Would I Ever Like to Work”: The “Working Mothers” Films and the Construction of Community rina fraticelli | 303 30 O, Canada! George Stoney’s Challenge (1999) deirdre boyle | 314 PA R T 4 D I S C U R S I V E S PA C E S : T H E O R I Z I N G C H A L L E N G E F O R CHANGE/SOCIÉTÉ NOUVELLE 31 Société nouvelle: The Challenge to Change in the Alternative Public Sphere (1996) scott m ac kenzie | 325 32 Meeting at the Poverty Line: Government Policy, Social Work, and Media Activism in the Challenge for Change Program zoë druick | 337 33 Amateur Video and the Challenge for Change (1995) janine marchessault | 354 34 Video: The Politics of Culture and Community (1996) ron burnett | 366 ■ vii viii ■ CONTENTS 35 Winds and Things: Towards a Reassessment of the Challenge for Change/Société nouvelle Legacy marit kathryn corneil | 389 36 “If a Revolution Is Screened and No One Is There to See It, Does It Make a Sound?” The Politics of Distribution and Counterpublics ezra winton and jason garrison | 404 PA R T 5 C O N C L U S I O N : C O N T E M P O R A R Y R E I N C A R N AT I O N S 37 Filmmaker-in-Residence: The Digital Grandchild of Challenge for Change Interview with Liz Miller by katerina cizek | 427 38 Thirty Years and Twenty Thousand Miles Away … vijaya mulay | 443 Challenge for Change/Société nouvelle: The Complete Filmography | 453 Comprehensive Bibliography | 513 Contributors | 539 Index | 000 22 Michel Régnier’s “Films-Outil” liz czach In neither the histories of the National Film Board (nfb) nor those of the Challenge for Change/Société nouvelle (cfc/sn) program does film director Michel Régnier figure prominently. His absence is particularly troubling considering he was the most prolific director working on either the French- or the English-language side of cfc/sn. Credited with twenty-five films during his association with the program, Régnier directed two large-scale projects: Urbanose, a series of fifteen black-and-white, half-hour films exploring urban development issues in Montreal; and Urba 2000, a series of ten hour-length, colour films addressing urban issues in various cities across the globe.1 Why then, despite his prodigious output, has Régnier remained a marginal figure? This omission may be partially attributed to the fact that his more radical and polemical films of the Urbanose series were never translated into English. Furthermore, the impact of the Urbanose films might be muted when viewed individual, rather than in the context of the more sustained arguments that the series as whole systematically puts forward. Yet, while these are no doubt contributing factors, perhaps a more pertinent reason for Régnier’s marginalization is that his sn films diverge from the process-oriented, cameras-in-the hands-of-the-people filmmaking that has come to define the program (Marchessault, chapter 33, this volume). Régnier’s films do not follow the principles of self-representation as a form of participatory democracy that dominates the history of cfc/sn.2 This is not to suggest that the Urbanose or Urba 2000 series don’t respond to the program’s mandate or are apolitical; on the contrary, the films merely highlight that the cfc/sn filmmakers did not have a singular approach to their task of advocating for change via filmmaking. Régnier, like his cfc/sn contempo1 Régnier considers Urbanose to have been a thirteen-film series, counting the two-part films Concordia (1972) and Où va la ville (1972) as single films; my own preference is to consider them separately. Two of the Urba 2000 films – Basingstoke – Runcorn: British New Towns (1974) and Grenoble – La Villeneuve: The City Conceived Anew (1974) – were feature length. 2 For example, Colin Low’s series on Fogo Island. Michel R égnier’s “Films-Outil” /Cza ch ■ raries, was committed to making films that were socially useful, and he saw film as a tool in making change possible – a belief that is evident in his method of filmmaking, an approach he termed films-outil.3 Born in France in 1934, Régnier worked as a photo-journalist in France and the Ivory Coast before arriving in Canada in 1957. He quickly found work at the National Film Board, and after several years of working as an assistant on over a dozen documentaries, he left to freelance. Régnier directed films for both the nfb and Radio-Canada and returned to the nfb in 1967. He stayed on as a director for seven years, first working with the Groupe de recherches sociales and then with the sn program (nfb-Portraits, http://www.nfb.ca/portraits/michel_regnier/en). After his departure from the nfb, Régnier continued directing political documentaries for the next thirty years. While the cfc/sn filmmakers shared many goals, “it is a mistake,” as Scott Mackenzie has pointed out, “to look at them as interchangeable” (Mackenzie, chapter 31, this volume, p. XXX). While the impetus for the cfc program is constantly traced back to the poor reception of Tanya Ballantyne Tree’s The Things I Cannot Change (1967) (see Longfellow, chapter 14, this volume), the formative influences on the French-language directors at the nfb must be attributed in large part to sn’s predecessor, the Group de recherches sociales (grs). The cinéma direct films of director Raymond Garceau, an agronomist who made documentaries on Quebec rural life, influenced this group of filmmakers – Michel Régnier, Maurice Bulbulian, and Fernand Dansereau. Garceau’s films, and other cinéma direct films such as Les Raquetteurs (Michel Brault and Gilles Groulx, 1958), were groundbreaking in their filmmaking technique, but also helped stimulate a growing sense of Quebec nationalism. However, the grs filmmakers would depart from Garceau’s concerns in two principal ways: one, their focus would be on the urban milieu; and two, they would adapt cinéma direct techniques, moving towards a more calculated, and less random, selection of images.4 One of the first documentaries to meld a depiction of an urban milieu with adapted cinéma direct techniques was Hubert Aquin’s À Saint-Henri le cinq septembre (1964), a day-in-the-life portrait of a working-class Montreal 3 See L’oeil et le coeur: Une passion de cinéma documentaire (Régnier 2000, 147). Régnier’s films-outil literally translates as “tool films” or “film-as-a-tool,” although “useful film” better expresses his intention (Régnier, interview with the author, 29 October 2008). Gary Evans has translated it as “functional cinema” (1991, 162). All translations from Régnier’s memoir are my own. 4 As Scott Mackenzie has noted, Quebec films of the 1960s began addressing a “complex notion of Québécois identity in transition – from rural to urban, from parochial to secular, and from apolitical to radical” (MacKenzie 2004, 12). 243 244 ■ S C R E E N S PA C E S : S P OT L I G H T O N T H E F I L M S A N D F I L M M A K E R S neighbourhood. However, the response to this film was less than the filmmakers expected. As Fernand Dansereau noted, “When the film went into distribution and was televised, it provoked an astonishingly negative reaction from the people who had been filmed” (Dansereau, chapter 4, this volume, p. 000). This catalyzed the filmmakers to reconsider their approach, and their next film, Saint-Jérôme (Dansereau, 1968), was produced with community participation and feedback. This participatory model is also apparent in Maurice Bulbulian’s La P’tite Bourgogne (1968), a film that documents citizen involvement in the redevelopment of their Montreal neighbourhood (the same area in which The Things I Cannot Change was filmed), and in Régnier’s 1968 feature documentary L’École des autres, a grs film on underprivileged children at school.5 The lessons and interests of grs were carried over to the sn films – for Régnier, the concern with the urban, and with Montreal more specifically, became a central focus. That Régnier takes Montreal as the subject matter for his sn films is of little surprise given that his passion for the city was indicated as early as 1961 with the publication of Montréal: Paris d’Amérique, a book of poems (by Régnier and others) and photographs celebrating the city. The characterization of Montreal as the Paris of North America clearly situates the city as a crossroads between Europe and North America, a position Régnier takes up again with the Urbanose project. As the films make clear, Montreal’s position as a mid-point between Europe and North America is precarious. Montreal may retain its European charm and character, or it may devolve into the kind of urban nightmare evident in failing American cities. Which of these fates awaits it? The prosperity of the postwar period, the end of the Duplessis era, and the burgeoning of Quebec separatism fuelled Montreal’s rebirth as a centre for Quebec’s modernization. In the 1960s Montreal emerged from the poverty and oppression that had characterized it for decades, and was rapidly being transformed. All across North America, cities were changing in fundamental ways with the demolition of older neighbourhoods, the expansion of highways, the construction of skyscrapers, and other monumental architectural undertakings. In Montreal, two key events defined the city’s urban development, Expo ’67 and the 1976 Olympics.6 These monumental undertakings helped focus citizen attention on the issue of redevelopment. 5 The lessons and interests of the grs dovetailed so seamlessly with the priorities of sn, that Régnier considers L’école des autres his best sn film despite its being produced under grs auspices (Régnier interview, 29 October, 2008). 6 For Régnier, the lack of attention to the Montreal urban problems following Expo ’67 was particularly deplorable. He notes: “This shamed us in the days following our beautiful international exposition Expo-67” (2000, 144). Michel R égnier’s “Films-Outil” /Cza ch ■ Régnier’s Urbanose and Urba 2000 series, released in 1972 and 1974 respectively and falling chronologically between these two major events, palpably address Montrealers’ anxiety over the city’s modernization. Would Montreal’s “progress” compromise the city’s viability and livability? urbanose (1972) The films in the Urbanose series were shot in eighteen weeks, from January to July 1971, with an allocation of $165,000 – a miniscule budget for the scope of the project.7 Each 27-minute film in the fifteen-part Urbanose series addresses a specific urban issue facing Montreal. The purpose of the series, notes Régnier, was “nothing other than to sound the alarm” (2000, 142). The films are thematically titled to indicate the subject matter under consideration. For example, L’automobile examines the repercussions of increasing car ownership for Montreal’s downtown urban fabric; Le labyrinthe investigates the labyrinthian complexity of municipal bureaucracy; slum landlords are exposed in Locatairs et propriétaires (Tenants and landlords); and lack of river access for ordinary citizens is discussed in Les rives (Riverbanks). Each film is numbered as part of the series, and they are structured in a similar manner. The films begin with the same musical theme, Alain Clavier’s rather bleak and somewhat ominous synthesized music. This is followed by a number of Yukari Ochiai’s black-and-white woodcuts. The woodcuts vary from film to film but always depict characteristic scenes of Montreal urban life. For example, the woodcuts at the beginning of Oú va la ville? (Where is the city heading?) represent a typical Montreal walk-up, skyscrapers, the Métro (subway), the Habitat housing complex, and an aerial view of a maze of highways. The films in the series also display a consistency in execution, engaging techniques uncharacteristic of most cfc/sn films: they employ music and narration (although minimally) and rely heavily on interviews with “experts,” a practice disparaged by most cfc/sn filmmakers who favour allowing people to represent themselves. In his memoir L’oeil et le coeur: Une passion du cinema documentaire (Eye and heart: A passion for documentary cinema), Régnier notes that his approach was heavily criticized “for having privileged experts, specialists, and builders over average citizens” (Régnier 2000, 152). Although Régnier relies on experts, such as engineers, architects, city planners, developers, and sociologists, it must be noted that 7 “To prepare, shoot, and finish thirteen telefilms for that money, including the travel of a four-member team to six countries, at that time, was a utopian dream, and for some colleagues, an aberration. I could have, following the criteria of very critical colleagues, decided to use the entire budget for a one-hour technically slick documentary” (Régnier 2000, 142). 245 246 ■ S C R E E N S PA C E S : S P OT L I G H T O N T H E F I L M S A N D F I L M M A K E R S many civil servants of 1960s Quebec had become highly politicized in conjunction with the radical swing to the left that had emerged simultaneously with a growing sense of nationalism and separatism. Régnier took the title for the Urbanose series from a poem he published in the collection Génération (1969). Urbanose (urbanosis), a neologism of Régnier’s creation, is defined as “an urban cancer, caused by the individual or combined operations of rural/urban migration, property speculation, and the primacy of private investment on the public sector, the suffocation, to some degree and form, of numerous large cities” (Régnier 2000, 141). The films in the series are structured as a debate, gathering together a variety of experts occupying a range of positions across the political spectrum. Régnier claims to have, as an organizing principle for the films, “privileged thoughtful debate over all other criteria” (2000, 142). The opinions expressed vary widely on what form Montreal urban planning should, or should not, take, and they generate a series of polemical and contrary positions regarding Montreal’s future. The films can, at times, be maddeningly ambiguous and cannot be described as essayistic, as Régnier does not seem to be taking a clear side or making a consistent argument. Nor are the films journalistic – that is, they do not claim to offer a balanced report of opposing views. They are, for lack of a better word, agitational. The films are effective in offering a series of opposing views on the status of the city’s future and challenging the viewer to take both a position and action. The two-part film Concordia 1 and Concordia 2 perfectly illustrates Régnier’s unique films-outil approach. Here, Régnier could have easily included a participatory model but didn’t. Residents of the Milton-Parc area organize and form a committee to oppose a proposed redevelopment (Cité Concordia) that will see low-rise residences destroyed to be replaced with a high-rise tower. Rather than give cameras to the members of the Comité des citoyens Milton-Parc or engage them in the process of making the film, Régnier simply documents their meetings and protests. However, he counterposes this documentation with interviews he conducts with other residents from the area. He talks to people on the street and storeowners who support the development and argue that it is beautiful and will be economically beneficial. Although the Milton-Parc community protest wasn’t completely successful – part of the proposed mega-project was constructed – it did “galvanize public opinion and turned the city away from megaprojects requiring demolition and massive rebuilding in favour of projects that addressed the urgent social and urban issues of the city” (Lambert 2004, 18) Yet, rather than take a role in clear support of the protestors, Régnier opens up the terms of debate and consequently encounters, and represents, a wider spectrum of citizen opinions. The polemical structure that Régnier adopts is also clearly expressed in the two-part film Où va la ville? The film’s tone is set by the introductory Michel R égnier’s “Films-Outil” /Cza ch ■ Montreal streetscape in Concordia II (1972): a non-participatory forum for opinions on demolitions and development. Frame enlargement. narration, which rather apocalyptically questions Montreal’s future. The narrator asks whether Montreal will address the urban problems it faces or whether it will become a city without character, half dead, where the minority profits while the majority lives in squalor. The dramatic and somewhat alarmist narration suggests that Montreal might be “lost,” a sentiment that recurs in a number of the films. Repeatedly, the urban decay of Washington, New York, and Philadelphia (with the emptying out of downtown cores for the suburbs, and the ensuing devaluation and ultimate demolition of property) is held up as a cautionary tale of what might happen in Montreal. Alternatively, European cities, particularly Scandinavian ones, are positioned as models to emulate. There, we are told, they have laws that dictate what can and cannot be demolished. In an interview, two young female residents of Stockholm extemporize on why their city works. Régnier rather starkly juxtaposes cities that are working (Scandinavian examples) with those that are tragically failing (American ones). Will Montreal, positioned as both American and European, succeed or fail? If Régnier errs on the side of filming more interviews with “experts” than with ordinary citizens, this practice is made most evident in Entretien avec Henri Lefebvre (Interview with Henri Lefebvre). Released in 1972, the interview follows the publication of the French sociologist’s La révolution urbaine (1970) and precedes that of his seminal work La production de 247 248 ■ S C R E E N S PA C E S : S P OT L I G H T O N T H E F I L M S A N D F I L M M A K E R S Woodcut graphics as part of an alarmist polemical structure in Où va la ville? 1re partie (1972). Frame enlargement. l’espace (1974). Lefebvre, one of the most influential thinkers on urban space, is seated in a garden facing the camera while Régnier is, as always, offcamera asking questions. Régnier’s decision to interview Lefebvre is not surprising, as both men are attempting to rethink the question of urban space through a Marxist, or at least leftist, lens. Yet the interview is a curious juxtaposition of Régnier’s pragmatism and Lefebvre’s abstraction, or what Régnier characterizes as Lefebvre’s “idealism” (2000, 143). A structure based on expert opinion and citizen opposition is again established, but here between interviewer and interviewee, who offer contrasting positions on where to find the answers to the question of urbanization. This is highlighted when Lefebvre suggests that poets and philosophers – not architects and developers – provide the means to think through urban issues. Lefebvre proposes that Nietzche, Heidegger, and Bachelard are better suited to the task of thinking about urban space than bureaucrats and functionaries. This suggestion stands in stark contrast to the hours of interviews that Régnier has himself conducted with urban planners, city officials, developers, and architects. While both Régnier and Lefebvre approach the question of urbanism from the left, they clearly differ in where they search for answers. Michel R égnier’s “Films-Outil” /Cza ch ■ urba 2000 (1974) In 1973 Régnier embarked on Urba 2000, taking a feature film budget of $373,000 and stretching it to produce a series of ten one-hour films. Like its predecessor series Urbanose, the intent of Urba 2000 was to stimulate debate on the state of urban living. As Régnier notes, the defined objective was to “create a series of films that did not offer ‘the solution,’ since none existed ” (2000, 148). It is within this series that New York – Twin Parks Project – TV Channel 13, Régnier’s only English-language film, appears. This Urba 2000 film begins typically enough with the exploration of a revitalization project, the Twin Parks project in the Bronx, New York. The film documents the coming together of various clergy to spearhead the project and interviews with families that have moved into the new buildings. Then the film radically shifts focus. At a community meeting of residents who oppose a seniors’ centre out of a fear of falling property values, the film switches to documenting the television crew from the educational television station wnet Channel 13 who are also present at the meeting. Interviews with television producer Penny Burnstein inform us that the wnet coverage is attempting more community-oriented models of production. Location shooting is advocated over working in the studio; local citizens are interviewed; and viewers are encouraged to call in and respond to shows. As Burnstein puts it, “You’ve got more reality on location, whereas in the studio you get experts.” She sees the show as presenting a model for how citizens could communicate with each other, moving in a direction that is “more open forum, less structure.” This is precisely the model of participatory practice that cfc/sn championed. Interestingly, Régnier’s most obvious engagement with the participatory model was to make an English-language film, under the auspices of sn, about participatory filmmaking in the United States. Thirty-five years after their release, the films of Michel Régnier are still strikingly relevant – most of the issues that threaten the viability and livability of urban centres remain the same. Long before the threat of global warming, films such as L’automobile (1972) and Centre-ville et piétons (City centre and pedestrians, 1974) presciently argued that our dependency on cars could not continue. Yet these films, produced as tools to stimulate debate, discussion, and change, were and continue to be marginalized in cfc/sn’s history. Unlike many of the nfb staff directors of his era, Régnier preferred to work quickly and cheaply, taking a budget that could easily be spent on a producing a single film over several years to create multiple films that he considered simple but effective. Reflecting on the impact of the Urbanose series, Régnier maintains “that these simple films, costing less than $12,000, have more impact than chrome-plated productions costing $200,000” (2000, 249 250 ■ S C R E E N S PA C E S : S P OT L I G H T O N T H E F I L M S A N D F I L M M A K E R S 146–7). Although he found a sympathetic audience among the public as well as the mainstream media and intellectuals, the simplicity of his films and his non-adherence to the participatory model were frequently criticized for under-representing ordinary citizens and being uncinematic. Régnier recalls that some of the harshest critiques came from his fellow directors: “[F]or some amongst my profession, I was fit to be shot.” He recollects a public screening at which his films were denounced by a filmmaking colleague as “‘the shame of the nfb because they are not cinema’” (2000, 145). If the films of Michel Régnier have been omitted from the canonical works that define the cfc/sn program, it is not for lack of relevance. Régnier’s filmmaking is as passionate and political as that of other cfc/sn directors, but his model of advocacy through his films-outil reflects an alternate strategy to the preferential participatory mode of his cfc/sn contemporaries and ultimately accounts, in large part, for his undeserved marginalization.