Robert Paterson's Weblog

Government handouts or using your network - success in Atlantic Canada?

Traditionally success in Atlantic Canada has been to get money from government. Provinces lobby the Feds and Entrepreneurs lobby the Province. But the new reality is that this system has broken down. 

So what next?

This short video of film maker Mark Sandiford I think shows the way. PEI film makers have got together not to lobby but to create a network that will enable them to make films! To use their network to give them the capital and the social resources and to go all out to use the new technology and the new work processes that can enable the small to make the big.

Here is the organization that they have created to help each other operate this network - The Island Film Factory

I think that this story works for all and not only for film makers. Here is Mark telling us why and how they did this.

 

My new book - You Don't Need a Job will explore the use of the network in a lot of detail.

Run for the Cure - Pink Ribbons - Think more please

I was one of the people who started Run for the Cure in Canada when I worked for CIBC as SVP Marketing. I now regret this. Now I believe the idea of striving for the "Cure" is wrong. What we need to do is to find out WHY WE GET CANCER. When my wife was diagnosed almost 10 years ago this question was never asked, it was all about getting straight to treatment.

Running for the Cure has become a massive BUSINESS. Treatment is a massive BUSINESS. The people involved do very well from our cancer. They hold out the CURE, but say nothing about prevention. Worse are that many are involved in products that are directly linked to you getting cancer. 

I don't believe that Breast Cancer is a lottery, nor that we are condemned by our genes. It is a product of how we live. We can do a lot to reduce our risk.

Here is what my wife wrote a while back. She finds the idea of being a "survivor" inappropriate for her and she finds the lack of discussion about prevention, the failure to decrease the numbers of new breast cancer diagnoses and the lack of publicity about alternatives, very disheartening.

 

 

Making love with your clothes on

 

The war of the sexes - The eternal Struggle

 

The Higgins POV - Followed by Eliza's

 

The Path to Success as an immigrant? Putting the PUBLIC into public TV

via explorehomeland.org

Here is a film made by Grace Holdinghaus, a graduate of our community film making class - The nineAcademy - she went into the community to ask her question and this is what she found.

As important as her film is on its own - the larger issue for me is that KETC is helping the public learn how to be film makers and is offering the also a space on it's website to have their films seen and shared.

Putting the Public into Public TV

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

Katyn - Poland and Honour - Their and Ours

I watched "Katyn" this weekend. The anniversary and the repeat of that great horror for Poles. It is on youtube with English subtitles. It is a remarkable film and it speaks to the concept of Honour.

Throughout the film characters have to make choices. Do I leave my brother officers and my oath or join my family? Do I go the the meeting and support my Chancellor in public? Do I go when my name is called for execution? Do I change my CV so that I can attend school? Do I buckle after all I have suffered? Do I memorialize my dead brother?

Those that chose honour pay. But those that choose the other also pay. Pay in currency more precious than life itself. They forfeit their souls.

This is a very well made film that uses Katyn as the moral centre for all the choices that Poles had to make in that terrible period that extended from 1940 to independence. It's story that surely also speaks to us and our own choices. Those that give in, claim that Poland will never be free and so you have to accomodate the system.

That is the greatest lie of all. How must of Mandela felt in his cell on Robin Island? The great lie is that we will never be free. It is accompanied by the sister lie that we do in fact live as free people.

We live today in Poland too, where the truth is lost to most but where the spark of it remains in a few. It's all about how we choose to see the world.

This is a special and very moving film that caused me to think hard about the many poor choices that I have made.

 

Nuit Blanche - an Epic in a few minutes - A Wow in waiting

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

More Classic WWII Aviation Films - 12 O'Clock High

As a "Brit" the Dambusters is my favorite film of the era. But even I think that 12 O'Clock High comes a close 2nd. Like Dambusters - it evokes the time so well. The opening of the film in a flash back is one of the great moments of cinema. Peck's performance one of the great performances of film. Like Richard Todd - a very special man too.

Here is a link to a definitive post about the film and its back story - the Blog - Rob's War Stories was an experiment that I tried a few years back as I thought about what would it take to create a Curated Site on a topic.

Should I go back to this idea and really dig in and make this site live?

The Dambusters Richard Todd - The Best Scene in the Film - Takeoff

via robswarstories.wordpress.com

How will the remake better this scene - note the very long tracking shot without one edit at the outset - here is also the first time in the film that the great musical theme is used - I always cry knowing how many will never return.

Todd was himself a Para and was involved in the capture and holding of Pegasus Bridge in the night of D Day. He was no stranger to setting off on a mission of great moment and peril. His sang froid is for real.

Like many who lived though great danger - he was the most unassuming man.

Here is a link to a detailed post on the film, on Todd and the time.

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

Ok enough doom and gloom - this will cheer you up! 2012!