The War Room

MANUFACTURING DISSENT IN TORONTO

I regret that I have not been able to post as much in the past few weeks. Assignments that involve much writing have taken over.

Nevertheless, I thought I should bring this to your attention.

Manufacturing Dissent, the documentary by progressive Toronto film-makers Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk is playing Toronto this week at the newly renovated classic Royal Cinema one screen theatre on College Street. They serve real ol' fashioned butter there. None of this Becel or Golden Topping crap.

Caine and Melnyk were liberal followers of Moore who wanted to make a fan type doc about him and proceeded to get in touch with the man. Yet the more of him they experienced, the more they questioned and the more static they got from Moore and his team.

This film documents this and is very critical of Moore and the methods he uses.

The impression I get is that many Blogging Tories or conservatives in general don't really care about film, the arts or its impact on society in general. I think that is unfortunate because that is a huge part of why we lose so many battles.

If you live in Toronto, I suggest you make the effort to see this film and support these courageous progressive film-makers (did I just write that!) for their effort. I give credit where credit is due and I can tell you that when you are in the film industry, it takes a hell of a lot of courage to critique Moore at a party and these filmmakers claim to have already been blacklisted from some festivals and distributors for it.

If you want to change the culture this is how it starts. Especially given that nominal Republicans in the film industry such as Bruce Willis, Adam Sander, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Jerry Bruckheimer, Clint Eastwood, Vince Vaughn and some others seem about as agressively conservative these days as Avi Lewis during a hissy fit. I'm just sayin'.

I will certainly be going to one of the screenings this week.

posted by Nicol DuMoulin @ 8:48 AM