Education is "My first battle"

Documentarian Alanis Obomsawin will never forget the day she cried in Norman Cornett's religious-studies class at McGill University. Cornett, an unconventional professor whose classes were devoted to heated debates on social issues, had shown the students her 1988 film No Address, about homeless native people in Montreal, and asked them to submit their reactions anonymously. He then read several out loud, including one from a contemptuous student who rudely suggested these people on the sidewalk just get jobs. "It was a very violent statement," Obomsawin recalled in a recent interview in Toronto, where she will be receiving an outstanding achievement award at the Hot Docs festival tonight. "I just sat there listening to this and started to cry. I couldn't stop crying to save my life." She apologized to the students and there ensued a discussion about homelessness and native experience. At the end, the famed Abenaki filmmaker told the students they would be powerful people one day, and perhaps if they were sitting on the other side of the desk from a native petitioner they would now be more sympathetic. "It's very honest and it's very difficult," Obomsawin said of Cornett's teaching method, which often involved confronting guest speakers with the students' raw, anonymous reactions to film, art, music and books. "Some of the students will write things that are outrageous or very hard for the person involved to hear, but it makes for discussion ... I think it's very healthy." So, when Obomsawin was approached by National Film Board producers to make a documentary about Cornett she readily agreed. In 2007, after 15 years working at McGill as a sessional instructor but never seeking a tenured position, Cornett was told his contract was not being renewed. His outraged students organized a petition, and his case became something of a cause célèbre in Montreal.

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