Thus, [t]he impetus for the program was the belief that film and video were useful tools for initiating social change and eliminating poverty, [7] and so they became an organising tool. For many people on the local level, especially in the poorer parts of the city and the countryside it was immensely difficult for them to get their voice heard by even the local council, let alone state bureaucrats and politicians. So the idea promoted by CFC was that originally film and, when it became available, portable video could be used to give these people their voice. As Colin Low (then a CFC director) wrote in 1972:

“The means of communication - real two-way communication - must be made accessible to ordinary people for dialogue in meaningful local debate. In this way, we could generate a much more vigorous problem-solving capacity based upon local initiative and creativity.” [8]

George Stoney, then an Executive Producer at CFC, notes in his article “The Mirror Machine” written for Sight and Sound in 1972. [9]

“I first met half-inch videotape at the National Film Board of Canada in 1968, when I left the U.S. for a two-year stint as guest Executive Producer for Challenge for Change, a programme designed to use film as a catalyst in various social programmes to improve the lot of Indians, poor fishermen, mothers on welfare. John Kemeny, the programme's founder, and Colin Low, a brilliant film-maker and social philosopher long at the Board, had already done enough by the time I was on the scene to prove that, with care and patience and the right choice of film-makers plus the expenditure of a great deal of money, film could and did have a considerable effect 'as an agent for social change'. What was needed, obviously, was a faster, cheaper means to do the job if the technique was to be applied on a broad scale. Most important, we had to find some way for the people to take more of a hand in the film-making themselves.

“The two women who persuaded us to launch our first community videotape project were no ordinary film-makers. Dorothy Henaut and Bonnie Klein brought to the task a philosophy about democratic participation that shaped every aspect of the work, from the way to run training classes to the way editorial decisions are made. It is largely their concept, their way of working, which guides social animators, teachers and community leaders generally who are now applying Challenge for Change techniques across Canada. The advantages of videotape for immediate playback to small groups were soon obvious to even the most resistant filmmaker at NFB.”

Importantly, in the Canadian program it was expected that a person with experience in community organising would already be working with a particular local community, so that through that contact they should have already formed a fairly organic relationship with them. The overall function of the CFC projects would then be to give the people concerned some power over their own choices and lives. The community organiser’s role was to find out what the people’s needs actually were, what kind of political environment they were operating in and how they might make some sort of input to or gain some sort of control over those political processes. [10] Having done that it was felt that it might then be possible to avail the community of the opportunity to document their particular problems and grievances using film or video, and thereby develop a more effective level of interaction among them, and between them and the government. But there was more to it than that: the film/video making projects were intended to be [an integral] part of an ongoing process. [11] The film-makers and/or the community organiser were not intended to come to the community/location/region without staying there long enough to see the project through to its completion, at least in terms of getting the film seen by local or appropriate politicians, and then to assist the community to implement any results that came from the video-making activity.

At first introducing film or portable video into a community served to get people talking. Nearly everybody would be familiar with film through the movies, and television through local broadcast media, but in many ways many of them may never have heard anything from their neighbours about what issues and social problems their community might be facing. While there was already some experience with film, video became the most useful format because of its fast turnaround. Also it was easy for the citizens to learn how to use, whereas film was generally far more complicated (until the arrival of Super 8). But video had one great difficulty at the early stage: it was immensely difficult to edit into a coherent programme/documentary.

With video you could record someone talking and then you could immediately play it back to them so that they could edit and add to what they had said. Once people had had their chance to air their opinions and ideas those recordings could be edited or compiled and screened back to the community so that they might all know what the thoughts and suggestions were and, subsequently, further edit and add to the program. Thus consensus, and the opportunity to modify it, was made possible. Ultimately this produces layers of feedback in an evolving conversation operating within the immediate community that might then be projected into the wider community or shown to those bureaucrats and politicians concerned directly with the issues being addressed. As George Stoney, the director of Challenge for Change in 1968, said in a later interview

“[I]t was a social contract between the people who were in charge of a government program, an agency or a social service and the people who were the recipients of that program or service, designed to find out how they felt about what was being done and what they would like to see changed. [However] in my experience it [was] limited to places where the people who are in power are willing to listen and respond. You see: if you tell me what you think, it is my obligation as the intermediary to go to the authorities, get them to look at it, and respond. If I can’t persuade either party to live up to their part of the contract, it won’t work.

“Now, the advantage we had at the [Canadian National] Film Board is that we worked through a highly respected government agency, cooperating with eight leading government departments, so we could pretty well guarantee some kind of response. People have misunderstood the Challenge for Change approach because they don t understand that a response is part of the bargain.” [12]

Again, the operating principle is feedback. CFC was intended to be an organising tool, designed to promote self-management within a community. But the important thing about the project was that the people in the relevant government agencies were required to respond. The communication had to be two-way, although it was by no means always possible to guarantee a response. While direct involvement with the community by the film-makers in that community was an important aspect, it also required a direct engagement with the target; be they politicians, academics or developers.

Meanwhile in other pats of the world, mostly Anglophone, other models for activist video were developing. In the US, along with the Video Freex, there was a move towards community cable television fostered by the Federal Communication Committee (FCC) and in Britain video fell into the hands of squatters and radical political activists, some of whom managed to talk their way into some small involvement with the BBC and the Home Office (the British Ministry of the Interior).

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