Compared to community radio, TV content was more expensive, technical, and challenging to produce. It also required a distribution system that didn’t exist in many remote and northern communities, in part because the dispersed and small population communities lacked roads.
However, new technologies like portable, low-cost video production equipment and access to community cable stations made it easier for people to produce their own TV shows. This work was supported by programs like the National Film Board’s Challenge for Change, which used video to explore social concerns and promote development. Community members shot, edited, and presented their own stories. These programs included several documentaries by Indigenous peoples, such as These are my People, a history of the Mohawk people of Akwesasne.
Video: Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada — book trailer
(Feb. 19, 2010. Trailer for a book edited by Thomas Waugh, Michael Brendan Baker, and Ezra Winton. Featuring clips from activist documentaries produced by the NFB in the 1960s and 1970s.)
Video: These are my People (National Film Board)
Another example of a pioneering Indigenous film and digital media production company is Isuma, which is based in Igloolik, Nunavut. Isuma has completed over 40 Inuttitut-language films, and its staff ….
ADD MATERIAL ABOUT ISUMA — community story and book chapter