Me Mom & Morgentaler • Deja Voodoo • Mado Lamotte • Ellen Gabriel • Francine Pelletier • Ivan • Michael Pintard and amuna baraka-clarke • Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick • Pascale Bussières • Steve Galluccio • Michel Tremblay • James DiSalvio • Nicole Brossard • Édouard Lock • Mack Mackenzie • David Fennario • John Kastner • GrimSkunk • Cecil Seaskull • Gros Michel • Ian Stephens • Great Antonio • Harry Mayerovitch • Robin Spry • François Gourd • The Gruesomes • Tiga • Five poor neighbourhoods

Power of the
anti-press

Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick look back at the impact of their landmark 1992 documentary Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

by MATTHEW HAYS

Noam Chomsky has long been the academic darling of the Left, a man whose theories on media manipulation and international politics are required reading for activists and rabble-rousers.

And two Montreal filmmakers, Peter Wintonick and Mark Achbar, were both struck by the same idea at the same time: to make a feature-length documentary analyzing and examining the theories around government, media and the manipulation of public opinion that Chomsky had so lucidly discussed in his books and lectures. The result, the NFB co-production Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, became a massive international sensation when it was released in 1992, netting numerous awards on the film festival circuit and becoming what was then the highest-grossing Canadian feature doc to date. It also inspired a Mirror cover story (written by Peter Bracegirdle) on Oct. 15, ushering in the film’s Montreal debut (at the Festival du nouveau cinéma) and its theatrical run, which lasted for months—no small feat for a low-budget Canadian movie.

“I remember that our screenings sold out for weeks in Montreal,” recalls Achbar. “That was really heartening. We had put so much into that movie.”

News blues

What made Manufacturing Consent so distinctive was the way in which the filmmakers employed Chomsky’s own questioning of media authority into their style. Wintonick and Achbar often showed Chomsky through the prism of the media, on giant TV screens or on fuzzy video monitors, continually reminding their audience the film itself was a carefully constructed media message. The technique certainly drew loud critical praise, and was a hit with audiences as well—even the film’s 167-minute length did not deter the crowds.

What audiences also got was a sense of Chomsky the person, who seemed entirely unpretentious and approachable on film. The image presented was refreshing and perhaps a bit surprising, given The New York Times declaration that Chomsky was “arguably the most important intellectual alive.”

“One can never really predict success for a movie,” says Wintonick. “Only Hollywood publicists and spin doctors do that, and they usually fail miserably at it. But we knew that Chomsky had a huge following and that there were many young people around the world who his critique would resonate with. We also knew that many people intrinsically distrust the lies the mainstream media tell us and were ready to hear Chomsky’s theories, that they would touch a sceptical nerve.”

Achbar agrees, saying there was no way he or anyone could have predicted the juggernaut that Manufacturing Consent would become. “What’s rather depressing, looking back at the film today, is just how relevant it remains. There is more corporate ownership of the media now. I do see the Internet as a welcome thing though. That was just coming into play as the movie came out, and the Internet has meant that more voices can be heard.”

The Corporation takeover

Since the success of their film, both have remained active in documentary filmmaking. Wintonick directed Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment (1999), a feature that includes interviews with many trailblazing documentary filmmakers, including Frederick Wiseman, Albert Maysles and Wolf Koenig, and co-directed Seeing is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News (2002), a doc about activists who use video cameras to expose human rights abuses. And Achbar, who is now Vancouver based, actually had a hand in ending Manufacturing Consent’s record as the highest-grossing Canadian documentary in history. In 2004 he co-wrote and co-directed The Corporation, another progressive feature documentary (one that also inspired a Mirror cover) that has since out-grossed Manufacturing Consent at the box office.

And one of the quirkiest things about Manufacturing Consent remains true to this day: Chomsky has never seen the film. In an interview published in the 2002 book Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, the media guru acknowledges the reach the film had. “I get tons of letters about it,” he remarks. But he adds that he’s “ambivalent” about the film, suggesting that, while involving the viewer, it does not offer enough tips on how the audience can actually become active and help to make change themselves.

“I don’t think it’s anything Mark and Peter did wrong,” Chomsky says. “I know that they were very aware of this problem and tried very hard to overcome it. But somehow it’s just inherent in the medium, I don’t think the medium allows an escape from this—or if it does, I don’t think that anybody’s yet found it.”