>>PREVIEW
LIFE AND TIMES: ENCOUNTERS WITH MOSES
Monday, June 26 at 8 p.m.
CBC Television
It’s June of 1969, the last broadcast of a CBC Sunday night current affairs program known as The Way it Is. The current and former hosts of the program – many of them casually smoking on camera – sit and discuss the relevance of the series and their contributions to it. The panel includes several esteemed broadcast journalists, including such former CBC mainstays as Patrick Watson and Barbara Frum.
A young Moses Znaimer, who would go on to create CityTV, MuchMusic and Bravo, sits among his then much more accomplished broadcast peers. In the time of a two-channel Canadian TV universe, he boldly predicts a future where many specialty stations will exist, with each devoted to a single type of programming or theme. The 1969 home audience must have thought him nuts. "An all-news station? Who is going to watch that?"
Looking back, this prediction solidifies Moses Znaimer’s well-deserved status as a true Canadian television visionary. His prophetic The Way it Is appearance is just one of many remarkable biographical ingredients included in Encounters with Moses, the debut presentation in the new season of CBC’s Life and Times series, directed and produced by Mike Sheerin (who also helmed the documentaries The Secret Mulroney Tapes and The Biographer’s Voice: The Life and Times of Peter C. Newman).
With Encounters with Moses, Sheerin continues his tradition of taking an unconventional approach to bio-doc filmmaking. The movie doesn’t reveal in point by point fashion all of Znaimer’s significant broadcast achievements. Instead, it attempts to reveal his character through quotes from colleagues and contemporaries, archival footage and interview segments with the man himself.
"I like to have a unique storytelling style with the different docs I make," says Sheerin. "I don’t like that sort of cookie-cutter approach that’s taken to some biography documentaries. Life and Times is generally very good – they take risks with their storytelling."
Sheerin further reveals his belief that, "With the story of Moses, a man who revolutionized the way we watch and make television, you have to take a unique approach or you’re going to do a disservice to him."
Part of that approach was having Znaimer, who is now in his mid-60s, sit down with Sheerin to watch videotape excerpts from his professional past. Generally, the Toronto-based broadcast guru responds to the clips and the director’s questions candidly, almost jovially. This all changes when the conversation turns to the subject of Znaimer’s departure from the top rung of Citytv-CHUM television management, back in January of 2003. The big question was, "Did he quit, or was he fired from running a broadcast empire he was instrumental in building?"
In Encounters, Znaimer remains reluctant to offer up the details. "As I think it’s shown in the doc," Sheerin says, "I believe there’s a bit of a wall there, from my vantage point anyhow. I am sure he would think he was being completely honest and forthcoming."
It is here, in Sheerin’s persistent and mostly unsuccessful attempts to get answers from Znaimer regarding his split with Citytv, that Encounters reaches its most intriguing and subtly revealing level. With his curt verbal responses, evasive body language and annoyed facial expressions, Znaimer tells us much regarding his inherent pride and vulnerability. |
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