The Canadians
Public access began long before television, when Canadian filmmaker Robert Flaherty allowed an Inuit hunter to participate in the production decisions of what became the first documentary (ibid, 27). "Nanook of the North" was released in 1922, but it would be an inspiration to a group of Canadian filmmakers in the 1960s. The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) experimented with a project called Challenge for Change, a documentary film series that was part of Canada's "War on Poverty." According to David Gee, Secretary of the Interdepartmental Committee of the Challenge for Change program, its purpose was "to create in Canadians an awareness of the need for change in order that [people] may achieve a better quality of life. The film medium permits people not only to become aware of problems facing them in their society, but of government programs that can offer real solutions to these problems" (ibid, 23).
The first Challenge for Change documentary, "September 5 at Saint-Henri," went into distribution amidst "extremely negative" reactions on the part of its subjects, who suffered ridicule from their neighbors. One family was so affected that they considered pulling their children from the local school (ibid, 21). When the NFB assigned filmmaker Fernand Dansereau to a similar project in December 1966, he permitted each of the documentary's subjects (excluding politicians) to view the uncompleted film during production and editing and to censor objectionable material. He had not planned this process from the start, but said it happened by "accident" (ibid, 22).
In 1967, the Challenge for Change crew went to Newfoundland's Fogo Island. The decline of the fishing industry had forced 60% of the 5,000 inhabitants into poverty. They lived in ten isolated, mutually antagonistic settlements. The film crew had intended to promote social change by producing documentaries focused on specific issues (Gillespie, 24-25, Engelman, 8-10). They modified the plan because the islanders preferred short films limited to a single interview or event (Engelman, 8). The NFB's web site lists 27 Fogo Island films, ranging in length from less than seven minutes to about 28 minutes. Titles include "Discussion on Welfare," "Joe Kinsella on Education," "The Songs of Chris Cobb" and "William Wells Talks about the Island" (Series List).
The inhabitants helped select the film topics. These films had a direct impact on the Fogo Island community. For example, the people had failed to convince the provincial government to create a cooperative fish-processing plant until cabinet ministers saw the films (Engelman, 8-10).
When Sony introduced the video Porta-Pak in 1968, filmmakers Bonny Klein and Dorothy Hénaut convinced Challenge for Change to use it for community projects similar to Fogo Island. (ibid, 11-12) The NFB was at first reluctant. The new half-inch video system had its drawbacks: It could not at that time be transferred to two-inch video, it was not compatible with the 16 millimeter projectors that were standard in schools, and its low resolution confined it to a small screen. But its advantages of portability, low cost, and "simplicity of operation" opened the filmmaking process to non-filmmakers (ibid, 12).
In 1968, Hénaut and Klein went to a Montreal Slum where they trained members of the St. Jacques Citizens' Committee in video production. The committee members interviewed poor people and presented their tapes at public meetings.
From 1969 to 1970, Challenge for Change co-sponsored a video project with the University of Calgary's School of Social Welfare. In Alberta's Rosedale village, which "lacked local government, water, sewers, and gas," members of the Rosedale Citizens' Action Committee were trained "to tape interviews with residents about local problems." More than half the Rosedale residents viewed the interviews at a community center, after which they formed committees to address specific problems. This led to local efforts and negotiations with business and government resulting in a new factory "and the installation of gas and water lines" (ibid, 13).
Hénaut and Klein had expressed hopes in 1968 that community-produced video could be merged with cable TV. In 1970, Challenge for Change supplied video equipment and training to Town Talk, a civic organization in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Town Talk also obtained four hours a week on the local cable system for community programming and began cablecasting on November 9. A lack of support and charges that radicals controlled the project doomed it to failure (Engelman, 15; Gillespie, 33-34). But Hénaut said, "the lessons learned . . . are important guides for future development in the theory and practice of citizen access to media" (Gillespie, 34).
Other public access experiments soon followed. In the Lake St. John area of Quebec, "the school system assumed considerable responsibility" for community television, in which ten percent of the population became involved. Eventually, on July 16, 1971, the Canadian Radio and Television Commission required cable companies to provide public access channels (Engelman, 16).