Wee Fe 4 0 eee S

FEATURE

Film to dramatize struggles
from labour’s pas

present

Continued from page 1

The movie — it will probably carry
the same title, Dangerous
Patriots — “is about Brenda, a Gain-
ers’ striker, who begins the strike as
someone who is not very active in her
union,” Bostwick explains. “Her char-
acter is actually a composite of a
number of women that we talked to,
including one who was quite anti-union
to start with.”

That woman was “thrown in the
strike,” by the conditions in the plant
and the concessions that owner Peter
Pocklington was demanding from
Gainers employees. And over the
course of the next several weeks, “‘she
became 100 per cent union,” Bostwick
says.

At one point, her mother com-
mented to her, “you must get this
union stuff from your grandfather” and
showed her a photo of him taken at the

- founding convention of the Canadian

Congress of Labour. Suddenly, she saw
a connection with a past that she had
never been aware of before.

And that’s the connection the film-
makers are seeking to make in the
movie, Bostwick says. “In the film,
Brenda undergoes a similar process.
She becomes aware, for the first time,
of the labour history of Canada.”

Currently slated to be played by
actress Carol Lazare — who earlier
played in the acclaimed Canadian pro-
duction Lies My Father Told
Me — the part of Brenda is probably
the only one that will be played bya
professional actor. But others in the
film are part of Canadian labour
history — past and present.

Elected to tour Canadian cities for
the United Food and Commercial
Workers solidarity tour (which actually
took place in the summer and fall of
1986), Brenda meets trade union,
unemployed and Communist Party
organizers from two generations before
hers — people such as steelworkers’
organizer George MacEachern from
Cape Breton, Bob Jackson, Bob
“Doc” Savage, Ben Swankey and
Dorothy Livesay from B.C., Bruce
Magnussen, C.S. Jackson, Oscar and
Toby Ryan from Ontario and Lea
Reback from Montreal.

The activists whose history and
experiences are woven into the fabric of
the film were drawn from across the
country, Bostwick says, “because we
wanted the film to be national in
scope — to demonstrate that the
struggles that have changed Canada’s
history took place right across the
country.

“We wanted to create a sense of the
breadth of the struggle, the influence it
had on people and the commitment
that they had to it,” she emphasizes.

As Brenda returns home, Bostwick
adds, “‘she begins to understand that
even though she may have entered the
strike merely because she wanted
higher wages, she has become part of a
much bigger thing. She begins to realize
that change doesn’t come after just six
months or a year but because people
commit themselves to it for a lifetime.”

Bostwick says that the film, in its
concept and development so far “‘is a
really exciting project.” It’s also a for-
midable undertaking.

The structure of the film itself will

present some difficulties that few film-
makers have encountered, she notes.
Drama and fact will have to merge
smoothly, for instance, when the
actress playing Brenda meets with real-
life former activists talking about their
part in labour struggles 40 years earlier.

A particularly valuable contribution
to the film project is being made by
Local 280-P of the UFCW in Edmon-
ton. But their job won’t be an easy
one — they'll be working with the
filmmakers in re-creating strike scenes
that can be spliced to actual news foot-
age from the strike.

_ So far, there are three people work-
ing full time on the project including
Bostwick and Ostroff, although both
are deferring payment of their salaries.
The third, scriptwriter Merrily Weis-
bord, has now completed a 50-page
“treatment” — an outline of the film
which also indicates the general
approach to the subject — which is
being circulated to various funding
agencies.

As producer of the film, Bostwick
can draw on experience in producing
documentaries — her first was For
Twenty Cents a Day, on the relief
camps, and she is currently working on
a video on battered women. She was
also associate producer for a six-part
National Film Board series on the
economy, The Reckoning, slated to be
shown in October on the Knowledge
Network. ;

__ Ostroff’s experience is similar, involv-
ing work on videos for the Canadian
Labour Congress as well as the Cana-
dian Union of Postal Workers and the
Letter Carriers. But for both, the scope
of this project poses new

challenges — financial, above all.

“The budget is set for $652,000,”
Bostwick says. “And of that, we’ve got
about $130,00 raised so far.”

The doors have been opening in the

A montage from the new-
sletter from the film pro-
ject. The photo is of
actress Carol Lazare.

film world, albeit slowly and tenta-
tively. Both Telefilm Canada and the
Ontario Film Development Corpora-
tion have given commitments for
funding — including an immediate
$20,00 loan from Telefilm — and other
funding is being sought.

Both those agencies base their tund-
ing on the producers establishing a
market for the film or opening a “win-
dow” on television or in movie thea-
tres. In this case, says Bostwick, the
window is likely to come with TV
Ontario — that province’s equivalent
of British Columbia’s Knowledge
Network — which has given the film-
makers a broadcast licence as well as
$2,000 in development money.

She is hoping for a bigger break-
through that may come with First Cho-
ice pay TV. The filmmakers are
negotiating with the company to com- °
mit some money from its Fund to
Underwrite New Canadian Drama and
to include the film in its Canadian pro-
gramming.

But the crucial factor is the support
of the labour movement, she says.

“The labour movement has been
incredibly supportive of the film, pro-
ject,” she emphasizes. “I think a lot of
trade unionists understand the parallel
that we’re trying to draw between what
took place in the 1930s and what is tak-
ing place now.”

The list of unions endorsing the film
has already grown to several dozen
names, including the Canadian Labour
Congress, the B.C., Alberta and Onta-
rio federations of labour and the Con-
federation of Canadian Unions. Unions
have so far donated about
$8,000 — not a small sum considering
that many union donations are in the
$50 to $100 range.

The filmmakers hope to raise about
$25,000 from the labour and progres-
sive movement and are currently can-

Workers’ Theatre

“EIGHT MEN SPEAK"

Standard Theatre

Mander December teh. 18d

vassing union locals, labour councils,
provincial federations and other organ-
izations for endorsements and financial
support.

An additional $20,000 has been bud-
geted for individual donations, a task
that will be assisted somewhat by the
agreement of Sky Works Charitable
Foundation, an Ontario-based founda-
tion, to accept donations earmarked for
the project and provide a tax receipt to
donors.

For those who contribute $100 or
more, Bostwick notes, there’s the small
incentive of a place in the film’s credits.

But more than anything, she says,
they'll be contributing to “a project
that is really unique in Canadian film
history.”

Unions and others can obtain donor
cards from the Labour Film Project,
PO Box 4936, Station E, Ottawa, K1S
5J1. Individual tax-deductible donati-
ons(over $50) can also be made out to
Sky Works Charitable Foundation and
sent to the same address.

— Sean Griffin

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