Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community
1983 · 57m · Canada
Directed by Jennifer Hodge, Roger McTair
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Residents of Toronto's Jane-Finch corridor in the early 1980s confront the neighbourhood's reputation while working toward a stronger community.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 57-minute community documentary from 1983 sounds like the opposite of subversive—except Hodge and McTair refuse the savior narrative entirely, letting residents speak themselves into dignity without the usual indie-doc manipulation; that restraint is actually radical.
This sits squarely in the lineage of engaged documentary practice—the Grierson tradition meets participatory cinema—where formal choices (who frames the interview, whose voice anchors the edit) become ethical positions; a bracingly considered work that understands community portraiture as a curatorial act.
The decision to let the Jane-Finch residents control the narrative rhythm—not cutting away from silences, not overlaying their words with atmospheric score—is what makes this work on a shoestring; one choice about trust transforms a modest community project into something that feels alive.