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“Divest from the Royal Bank of Canada, close your accounts, tell RBC to stop funding the tar sands project.” This was the advice filmmaker Shannon Walsh gave an audience in Toronto after a screening in 2009 of her documentary on the Alberta tar sands project, H2OIL.
Someone in the audience, noticeably moved by the film’s critical exploration of Alberta’s cash-cow and the planet’s eco-nightmare, had asked Walsh the dreaded question, “OK but what is something we can do right now?” Where many filmmakers would read out the laundry list of tepid actions like writing letters and signing petitions, Walsh gave everyone something concrete and tangible to focus on.
Whether the film has made an impact on RBC’s supportive connections to the tar sands is doubtful, but that might be more of a problem of visibility than apathy — Canadian films are notoriously underserved in the North-of-Hollywood distribution and exhibition matrix. Nevertheless, many had no idea that RBC was so intimately connected to what has been described as the largest and worst industrial project in human history.
The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for Canada’s premiere (and therefore very visible) literary arts, politics, and culture magazine The Walrus.
The Department of Canadian Heritage announced yesterday that it would not renew funding for Montreal’s Etat d’Urgence, now in its 12th year, one of the largest festivals for the homeless in North America. The announcement comes less than two weeks before the festival begins prompting organizers to accuse Canadian Heritage of a politically motivated attack on Quebec culture.
ATSA co-founder Annie Roy compares the recent cuts to last summer’s decision by Canadian Heritage to cut funding to Festival FrancoFolie, one of the largest French music festivals in the world. She suspects the minority Conservative government of growing hostility to Quebec arts. Says Roy, “Heritage Canada cut our funding from $43,000 to zero, and we don’t know why because our funding has increased over the 12 years we have organized the event. I think it’s ideological.”
In an effort to curb the rising tide of establishment anger at Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, more than 150 journalists from around the world have signed a public letter of support. Stating that Assange is being criticized for making public information “that should never have been withheld from the public” in the first place, the letter praises Wikileaks for providing “an outstanding contribution to transparency and accountability on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, subjects where transparency and accountability has been severely restricted by government secrecy and media control”.
Many of the journalists are prominent investigative reporters working in Europe, Latin America, Russia, Australia, and the Middle East. A full list of the signatories can be seen on the Global Investigative Journalism Network website.
The full text of their letter is reprinted below.
Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing organization Wikileaks, is being angrily criticized and threatened for his part in huge leaks of military documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (the “War Diaries ”). He is being accused of irresponsibly releasing confidential military information, of endangering lives of people named in the leaked military reports and even of espionage. Some media organizations have joined in this criticism.
Ok so, this isn’t exactly political, but I’m into it. Today is, apparently, Drop Everything and Read Day in British Columbia! At 11am put down whatever you’re doing, pick up a book or magazine or a newspaper and do some reading. Hopefully you’re here at Art Threat, reading one of the interesting things from our great writers!
In Secrets of Success, a Radiolab episode from this past July, Jad and Robert interview Malcolm Gladwell (of the Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers fame) who claims that “if one child learns to read at four, and one child learns to read at two and a half, so what? why does it matter? Are the things that are being read between two and four of such incalculable importance … reading is reading, once you can read, you’re done. It’s not like there’s an infinite scale, and someone can read better and better.”
The Seattle Police Department has opened an internal investigation into the shooting death of aboriginal artist John T Williams, aged 50, a woodcarver from the Nuu-Chah-Nulth First Nations on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
On August 30, Williams was shot four times while crossing a downtown street in Seattle. According to reports in the Seattle Times, a local police officer saw Williams with a knife from his patrol car. Audio recording from the police vehicle evidences the officer ordering Williams to drop the knife three times before firing four rounds. A recent autopsy confirmed that all four rounds entered Williams’ body from the side indicating that Williams was not facing the officer when he was shot. He was pronounced dead where he fell.
A bit of shock-agit-prop media was recently released by the 10:10 climate change campaign folks in the UK, only to be withdrawn later and replaced with apologies from organizers. The ad, embedded above, features various citizens being exploded in gushes of blood after failing to commit to the 10% reduction measures the campaign promotes. Warning: before watching or reading further, please put on a pair of safety goggles.
The battle to become the next mayor of Canada’s largest city heads to the the Art Gallery of Ontario tonight for a cultural showdown. The Toronto Mayoral Arts Debate kicks off at 6pm and will feature all the leading candidates.
A common thread throughout the electoral campaign is disagreement on what the city can afford as it recovers from recession — a question being asked in communities across North America. For many politicians, the arts fall near the bottom of the priority list, well below financing football stadiums and fighter jets.
