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3.7 The Fogo Process

The transition from a traditional documentary production process to a more open and inclusive approach to filmmaking came about as a direct result of the collaborative experiment that became known as the Fogo Process. One of its founders, Donald Snowden, had arrived in Newfoundland in 1964 to conduct a study for the Canadian Government on the failure of co-operatives in Newfoundland. In 1965 he was invited to join Memorial University’s Extension Service, as Director. The Extension Service had been set up in 1959 to enable fieldworkers to conduct outreach work in rural areas, to promote and provide access to non-formal forms of adult and distance education, and to become participants in community development. Snowden had developed a keen interest in Fogo Island, and believed that it might represent an ideal site for a producer co-operative. Fogo Island, just off the northeast coast of Newfoundland, contained 10 communities and about 5,000 people in 1967, but these people were being urged to move to the ‘growth centres’.

Between 1954 and 1975, 253 Newfoundland communities were ‘evacuated’ (the government’s term) throughout the province. The Smallwood Government had two main aims with its resettlement. Firstly, it aimed to ensure that all residents of the province had access to a reasonable level of government services, communications, and electricity. The provision of health care, education, transport, post offices and other services could be delivered at a considerable lower per unit cost to larger populations. Secondly, the resettlement programmes testified to Premier Joseph Smallwood’s single-minded intention to industrialize and diversify the Province’s economy, and to modernize the fishery.

In many ways Fogo Island represented a microcosm of rural Newfoundland at this time: illiteracy was widespread; communications were poor or non-existent; there was little municipal government, few local services, and a great inequality between merchants (or clergy) and residents. By 1966, 60 percent of the Fogo islanders were on welfare benefits, and the major fish merchant had left the island due to the decline in ‘landings’. It was around this time that the prospect of the entire resettlement of the island was proposed, and in response the Fogo Island Improvement Committee was formed in 1964. It was this committee which brought the Extension Service and later the National Film Board to the island, and it later went on to become a Rural Development Association (Emke 1998).

It was fortuitous that Colin Low, a talented filmmaker from Unit B of the NFB, had already expressed interest in making a Challenge for Change documentary in Newfoundland. He met with Snowden, and the two men decided to pool the resources of the Extension Service and Snowden’s team from Challenge for Change. They chose Fogo Island due to Snowden’s knowledge of the place, but also because Fred Earle was at that time living on the island. A Fogo Islander himself, Earle was working with the Extension Service and had a good rapport with the islanders.¹²⁴ As Director of the Extension Service, Snowden had become increasingly frustrated by the tendency to see poverty only through urban eyes. In particular, a report from the Economic Council of Canada in 1965 defined poverty as an income of less than $4000, did not acknowledge rural poverty, and measured growth in terms of marketed output. In other words, the report did not take into account situations where cash was not the major currency – the ‘truck system’ still predominated in many parts of Newfoundland, in which fish merchants supplied fishermen with goods and equipment rather than cash. Also, Snowden believed that rural poverty was an index of isolation from centres of power and decision-making, with rural populations suffering from a lack of information and of political organization (problems that Ted Russell had highlighted in The Chronicles of Uncle Mose).

The Extension Service – and therefore the Fogo Process - was informed by a progressive approach to development, which entailed emphasis on social factors, objectives and values such as the formation of local institutions, community empowerment, local pride and cultural survival (Emke 1998). Instead of producing a single documentary on the theme of rural poverty, Low and his unit produced 28 films (or ‘modules’), each of which focussed on some aspect of life on Fogo Island, with the islanders featured discussing, at length, a range of concerns and interests. For example, there were films on the fishery, the location of a high school, on producer co-operatives, ship building, the role of women, local government, merchants, resettlement and so on (Williamson 1991).

There were also individual films featuring storytelling, singing, and local events and festivities. Editing was kept to a minimum, and intercutting between people on a topical or editorial basis was eliminated altogether. Low and the film unit decided not to synthesize interviews into a single, tightly structured film – what he termed a ‘horizontal’ editing structure (that also characterises the majority of radio’s actuality features). It was felt that the traditional ‘horizontal’ structure was not so appropriate for using communications to achieve advocacy or social change, as any individual’s story tended to be sublimated or swallowed up by larger narrative dictates, which might not accord with what the interviewee had envisaged (Crocker 2008: 66-67). Instead they produced what Low termed ‘vertical’ or ‘modular’ films, which focussed on discrete elements such as a community event (Jim Decker’s Party), or an interview about a single issue (Billy Wells Talks about the Island or Tom Best on Co-operatives) (all 1967). Cumulatively, the films presented a holistic view of life on Fogo Island as perceived by the islanders themselves.

After the 16mm black and white films had been edited into rough cuts in Montreal, they were sent back to Fogo Island and shown to people at a series of community screenings. This evidently came about simply because Low wanted to show the Islanders some of the footage as they had not seen film of themselves before (Emke 1998). This was again fortuitous, as this developed into a practice that came to be a hallmark and essential component of the Fogo Process whereby, at each screening, the Extension worker or National Film Board representative would lead a discussion on a development issue, using the film ‘rushes’ as a catalyst for debate. Low and Snowden quickly learned to leaven the mood created by the more sombre films with uplifting or affirmative films such as Children of Fogo (1967) (Crocker 2008: 66). Often the films were screenings for other island communities and Low would record their reactions and discussions, thus creating a series of metaobservational or ‘feedback’ documents (Marchessault 1995: 135).

Thus what was central to the process was not the filmmaking, but the way the films were used to initiate discussions and inspire new developments. The films allowed people to see themselves from a fresh and more objective perspective, which mirrored their strengths, skills and knowledge as well as their faults. By viewing the films they could be exposed to the dissenting views of fellow islanders without direct confrontation, through the mediation of a local initiative over which they could claim ownership. This facilitated self-expression and co-operation, and revealed to the Fogo Islanders the extent to which they had been divided against each other as communities competing for resources. The films acted as a spur towards consensus building.

The inter-community communication which resulted from filming and screening in a variety of locations represented a new form of learning which Snowden later termed ‘horizontal learning’ or ‘peer teaching’ (Snowden 1984), which was entirely in keeping with the philosophy of the Extension Service. We should remember, however, that the Fogo Process represented an experiment in collaboration and community empowerment, rather than the application of a pre-planned, discrete and refined ‘methodology’. It is important to remember not only that filmmaking and screenings were linked to a sustained programme of development efforts by the university and government (Williamson 1991), but also that Fogo Islanders had made both the initial and decisive remedial efforts to improve their quality of life. Colin Low, the project leader of the filmmaking ‘strand’ was anxious to stress this:

Nevertheless, the films were screened for Cabinet Ministers who reacted favourably and constructively to them. Some Cabinet Ministers also responded to the Fogo Islanders on film. As a result, the Government was persuaded that there were development alternatives for Fogo Island, and that resettlement was not the only answer. By the 1970s an island-wide producer’s co-operative had been developed on Fogo, which handled and processed large catches, enabling the fishermen to keep their profits on the island. Able-bodied relief decreased by sixty percent, some roads were paved, and the government directed their efforts to helping people to stay. As the Evening Telegram reported on March 12^th 1971,

As Snowden later asserted, “Films did not do these things: people did them” (quoted in Anon. 1972). The Fogo Process was a catalyst for social contact within a community that might not otherwise have survived the abrupt transplantation entailed by resettlement. Fogo Island was a community that (like Russell’s archetypal ‘Pigeon Inlet’) needed to draw upon a collective sense of identity in reacting against centralising, modernizing forces (Crocker 2008: 68).¹²⁶

Notes