You will find a dossier on unschooling in the development stages at the National Film Board of Canada's CitizenShift web site. This short film features an interview with Kate Cayley, and eloquent spokesperson for the practice of unschooling. Kate is a Toronto-based writer, theatre director and teacher.
DIVA of course helped video and edit the interviews and short videos which will be uploaded soon to Citizenshift, with our Radio Free School family.
Enjoy, and take part!
Critical Mass bike rides, since 1998 in Hamilton, through the camera lens of mobile videographers (on bikes) - get the street-side view of the monthly bike ride in this short video that made it into the Art Gallery of Hamilton's PHOTOPHOBIA annual juried exhibition of short video in 2003. (DIVA's second entry in photophobia, the other being War Games in the Park.)
How You See It, Critical Mass is a collection of footage taken over a period of several CM rides in town, including the Pedal for Peace, which strangely (or not) drew a police presence.
Critical Mass is still going on in town, the last Friday of the month at Hess and George Streets, at 5:30pm.
No more oil, no more wars, let's all take our bikes out more!
Noam Chomsky in a small group discussion on the subject of Anarchism at McMaster University.
There were several local self identified anarchists in the group, and a bunch of people who were there for interest sake.
There are other segments of this discussion that I might put on the site at a later date, but this short video gets a nice general sense of anarchism, stripped of any excess theory, the kind of anarchism that an anarchist might feel comfortable with (in contrast to overwrought ideological groups with everything figured out on paper).
Our very first video, back in '99, before we learned to spell independent, apparently, and before DIVA Dave came fully out in the credits (he credited himself as David Wayne, rather than use his last name, Fordham.)
This is pre-digitalcamera DIVA, and Murray Lumley, who shot much of the video when we were doing recon at the air show, had a shaky hand that forced DIVA DAVE to use gravol(tm) to get through the editing!
Drugs nothwithstanding, we activists were extremely pleased with the end result, and the beginning of a years-long collaboration born out of neighbourliness and an interest in issues and working with video. DIVA DAVE, we couldn't have done it without you!
Long story short: five arrested went to trial, only to see the charges "quashed" on a technicality - next year, bigger demonstrations featuring a "Festival of Life" and 22 arrests for non-violent civil-disobedience (some of the arrests by coincidence, almost replicated the '99 arrests, with prayer vigils in front of the same plane - A-10 - but with criminal charges rather than provincial trespass tickets that were handed out in '99)
One more year of actions and the air show (re-dubbed the War Show for its overt militarism) folded.
We learned a hell of a lot in those three years, and it is great that we had access to video equipment to make a visual record.
Unlike many of DIVA's early videos, this one (Car Free Day 2001) was scripted, and not a direct result of covering an "action."
We used it to try and push Car Free Day, then (in 2001), still new to the milieu of sustainable transportation in the city.
We showed it to city hall that year, and now, in 2007, the city is starting to get the idea that Car Free is something worth supporting. The city's new mayor is proposing a car free area in the city core!
The film probably had little impact in 2001, but it is instructive if only as a record of the time it takes to move something worthwhile forward.
Critical Mass is still going, we are still having parking meter parties, and people and organizations have stepped up to work for improved transportation options to get us beyond car-ownership (TLC, TUG, RTH for example) and DIVA is still there to cover the grassroots actions that the local mainstream media ignore.
When we show our early videos, this one is always a crowd pleaser. And the guy stopping traffic in the movie (Tony Lombardo) has never seen this. So I keep promising him when I run into him that I will put it on You Tube. Fait accompli!
Tony and his crew have gone on to create a name for themselves in the imponderables.
Tony's always been a guy with a creative and comic flair and a willingness to apply it to "activist" issues, as evidenced here.
This is also an example of work created for video by the shadowy and talented "DIVA DAVE" AKA David Fordham, who edited all our first videos. I haven't seen Dave for a while now: we used to live side by side in, well, Dundas, thus the DIVA designation.
One final comment: Since this movie (made in 2000) we've learned to spell "Independent"...
