Monday thru Thursday-THEN Sat. &Sun., 7pm.
463 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5T 2S9. (416-603-6643). Films At Reg Hartt’s, 463 Bathurst
Below College Across From The Beer Store. 416-603-6643.
Sunday, October 3, 10, 17, 24.
7pm: JANE JACOBS. ON FILM (3 hours).
From the IDEAS THAT MATTER CONFERENCE (1997) Jane
Jacobs in conversation with Ann Medina, Michael Valpy and Peter Gzowski.
I imagine very few people got a fan letter from Jane Jacobs. I am one of
them.
She first came to my programs, with her family, in 1968 when they arrived in
Toronto. Closing my eyes I can still see the moment I met them.
Revenue Canada said that the program I am running is not a business. That
means I cannot deduct the expenses I incur running it. They are right. It is not
a business.
Elizabeth Glibbery of Municipal Licensing & Standards for The City Of
Toronto says it is a business and it is illegal.
So I decided not to charge a fee.
That makes it legal.
Well, almost.
You see it is illegal to invite the public into our homes in this city (for
any purpose).
So you can't come unless you are my friend.
As it happens, half of this city already is my friend. The other half is
about to be.
My space has room, at most, for twenty people. The chairs are large and very
comfortable. The sound system is among the best in the city.
Not only that I am equipped to play 8mm, super 8mm, 16mm, vhs and digital
cinema.
On top of that I have fitted this place with a 3D system second to none in
the country..
Mrs. Jacobs was my friend.
"My mother idolized you," one of her sons told me the other day.
"Well, I idolized her," I replied.
Elizabeth Glibberyof The Citty of Toronto is probably a nice person. I
bear her no malice. But she also embodies in her person everything that Mrs.
Jacobs spoke out against in her books from THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN
CITIES to her last DARK AGE AHEAD.
"The best part of what you offer is what you have to say," Mrs.
Jacobs told me one day over a beer in her house.
"Coming from you that is better than receiving an Academy Award," I told
her.
"I would not say that," she replied.
"I would. I know the caliber of the people who vote on those things," I
said.
"Rise, rise, rise and rise again until lambs become lions," is the message of
the new film of ROBIN HOOD.
Yes, and while we rise, rise, rise and rise again pay no attention to those
who think it crazy.
At one of my screenings a near riot broke out when I told the audience there
was always blood from police violence during the protest marches against the war
in Vietnam.
"No there wasn't. We never saw it on television," people screamed at me.
Mrs. Jacobs was there. She stood up. "He is telling you the truth. I was
there," she said.
Yes, she was there.
All of her life she was there.
She was on the front lines in the avant garde where the blood flows not in
the rear guard where the shots fall short.
Mrs. Jacobs was a New York woman.
She knew the importance of standing up, getting knocked down and standing up
again.
There has always been a shortage of people who know that.
Revenue Canada looks at the admissions I charged as helping to cover the cost
of the programs.
One of the people sent by the city, John Sopocleous, saw them the same
way.
David Williams, an officer who came after him, saw them purely as an illegal
activity.
I found long ago that when people pay money for something they put more value
on it.
When people pick up a copy of THE TORONTO STAR, THEGLOBE AND MAIL, THE
TORONTO SUN or THE NATIONAL POST they take it home with them. It is theirs. They
paid for it.
When they pick up a copy of one of the city's overabundance of free papers
they glance at it and leave it behind. It has no value for most (and I disagree
with most on this. I always bring them home.).
I bought full page ads in several of them. I discovered they have almost no
value. They increase my cost and decrease my ability to run my program.
This program is designed not for the many but the few.
When I began the program here I was freed from having to put bums on
seats.
I decided to program films and events that I knew were worthwhile but which I
also knew very few wanted to see.
My Cineforum was cited in THE LONELY PLANET guide as a place to see when in
Toronto.
A lot of people over the years have said a lot of good things about my
work.
The important thuing is from tonight, Sunday, October 3 to Sunday October 24
at 7pm you can have the experience of seeing and hearing a housewife and a
mother whose ideas changed the world for the better.
In this moment when so many feel being a housewife and a mother is not of
value it is important to assert the importance of those two vocations (which are
reallly one).
You may well be the only person here.
One night a man walked in for a presentation. He was what you might be.
"You are getting a private screening," I told him.
"Do you mind?"
"No. That is why I like doing things here. No one gives me grief when only
one person shows up," I said to him.
"You have been doing great work for the art and cullture of this country for
a long time," he replied.
"Some see it that way. Most do not. What do you do?"
He gave me his card. On it I read, "The Honourable John Roberts, P.C."
He had served as Minister of Communications and Minister of The Environment
for this country. I found out he had been coming to my programs since I started
them at Rochdale College.
Yes, most do not see a value in what I do.
My emails to the media have met with almost no response.
Joe Fiorito wrote an excellent piece in THE TORONTO STAR. It caused no one to
say, "Wait a minute. What's going on?"
My generation was among the last to know the importance of standing up,
getting knocked down and standing up again.
The kids today have been brainwashed from pre-school not to fight. That is
not a good thing for tomorrow.
"I had wonderful teachers in the first and second grades who taught me
everything I know. After that, I'm afraid, the teachers were nice, but they were
dopes...I have a lack of ideology, and not because I have an
animus against
any particular ideology; it's just that they don't make sense to me...they get
in the way of thinking. I don't see what use they are...University and
uniformity, as ideals, have subtly influenced how
people thought about
education, politics, economics, government, everything...We are misled by
universities and other intellectual nstitutions to believe that there are
separate fields of knowledge. But it's clear there are no separate fields of
knowledge. It is a seamless web," says Mrs. Jacobs in one of the films in this
program.
Like I said, though, you cannot come and see this program unless you are my
friend.
After Mrs. Jacobs passed away a lovely story appeared in the press from a
mother who had been living through hell with an infant and a six year old filled
with sibling rivalry. One night she took them out after midnight to a park down
the street from where she was living..
The six year old was at his worst.
An older woman walked over, sat down beside her, took over the six year old
and gave her the time she needed for the infant.
"That is the woman who helped me,:" she said pointing to a woman across the
street she said to her husband a few days later..
"That is Jane Jacobs," he said.
That was Jane Jacobs.
She was a friend to everyone.
When she saw a need she stepped up to fill it.
Friends don't need to be asked to help.
When they see that help is needed they provide it.
Rise, rise, rise and rise again until lambs become lions.
"You have the wrong attitude. You will starve in two weeks if you leave this
school today," my high school principal told me.
Had I not left that moment I would have starved.
And I would never have had Jane Jacobs as a friend, a mentor and a fan.
I can not imagine Hugh Hefner ever looking at Jane Jacobs and saying, "Now
there is a woman I want to know."
For all of his material success he is the poorest man I know and the author
of the greatest poverty.
"Don't you want to meet famous actors," a reporter asked when I said I skip
TIFF.
"Why would they want to meet me," I replied.
Actors are famous for what? Standing on chalk marks delivering lines someone
wrote for them.
When the going gets tough a stunt person steps in.
There is nothing heroic about actors.
There is something heroic about the ordinary person who has no one to step in
for them when the going gets rough.
These unsung men and women who rise, rise, rise and rise again every day to
take mean jobs to feed their children are the true heroes.
Jane Jacobs knew that because when she first rose up and rose agaian and
again and again she was just a housewife.
Who listens to them?
Well, it turned out a great many did and do listen to this woman who was a
wife and a mother first and everything else second.
We need more like her.
We already have too many Elizabeth Glibberys.
I look forward to seeing you tonight.
If you loved her as much as I did this will be a reunion of lovers.
You may bring your own food and drink. Pretend you are in a civilized
country. Bring a bottle of wine to share in a toast to this wonderful woman who
was a mother not only to her family but to this world we live in.
I am doing what my friend Jane Jacobs did. I am welcoming strangers into my
life.
With her as a mentor can we do less?
--Reg Hartt, Crazy-Wisdom-Yogin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs
http://www.ideasthatmatter.com/
http://www.ideasthatmatter.com/people/index.phtml
http://www.robertfulford.com/jacobs.html
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/861001--fiorito-we-gotta-have-hartt
http://torontoist.com/2010/08/the_cineforum_is_dead_long_live_the_cineforum.php
http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=174449
http://reghartt.ca/cineforum/
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now.....as voted by our infamous
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