"One of the hallmarks of [Obomsawin's] films is the way she represents the cause and the point of view of the disenfranchised and the oppressed," Richard Stamelman, executive director of the Montgomery Endowment, said in his opening remarks.
Obomsawin, who is of Waban-Aki descent, has dedicated her career to exposing injustice. Born in Lebanon, N.H., Obomsawin moved with her parents at the age of six to Odanak, a Waban-Aki reservation in Quebec, according to Stamelman. Many of Obomsawin's documentaries, such as "No Address" (1988) and "Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance" (1993), reveal the historic and contemporary discrimination against First Nation peoples.
Her film about Cornett examines a different type of injustice, telling the story of a professor who was victimized for his eccentric, though arguably effective, teaching style.
"In some ways, just the title itself indicates how Alanis Obomsawin in her movies calls into question presuppositions and biases," Stamelman said. "The difference between an honest answer and a right answer is something we may not have thought about before because we may have seen honest and right to be synonymous if not coincident."
Obomsawin's documentary is well-researched and offers a multifaceted portrayal of Cornett's life. Interviews with Cornett's students, his wife, a former Supreme Court justice and others are interspersed with Cornett's personal films, footage shot inside Cornett's classroom and still-motion sketches.
The footage enables the audience to witness Cornett's charisma and love for teaching first-hand. His courses mixed field trips and ceaseless self-reflection with classroom sessions in which there was no hierarchy of ideas or opinions.
"When you have a 21-year-old male student literally have a nervous breakdown, you think to yourself, there's got to be a better way," Cornett says about traditional exams.
To emphasize Cornett's point, Obomsawin's narration refers to a number of studies on rising student depression and anxiety.
During the question and answer session, an audience member asked Obomsawin why Cornett felt so strongly that he should belong to an academic institution that he had criticized in class. Footage in the documentary shows Cornett openly disagreeing with other professors' class structures.
"He allowed the students to have their own way of thinking," Obomsawin replied. "It was not the way the university wanted him to teach, but he was very successful. You can say he should have followed the rules of the university you can say anything you want but it doesn't change who he is and what he has done for a lot of people."
Obomsawin also described her experience as a guest lecturer in one of Cornett's classes during the question and answer session. The documentary shows Cornett asking students to write anonymous reflections on a visiting artist's performance, film or lecture, which Cornett then read aloud to the visitor. When a student wrote a derogatory statement about Native Americans in response to a screening of Obomsawin's "No Address," Cornett read the statement aloud to Obomsawin in front of the class, she said.
"It was so violent and so mean I started to cry and I couldn't stop crying," Obomsawin said. "I was glad that this happened because a lot of people in general think like that about Indian people, so it's good to talk about it and see if there are other ways that they can understand why the people are there."
The film ultimately argues that Cornett's termination was both unjust and cruel, while profiling an ongoing student campaign that has asked the silent McGill administration for an explanation. Obomsawin reached out to McGill administrators in the making of the documentary, but received no response, she said. Even Cornett's friends and fellow professors declined to be interviewed, for fear of angering the university administration, she said.
"I'm not, not going to do a film because some people don't want to say what they think in front of the camera," Obomsawin said. "We have to live, and all those people in the film have something to say, and it's important what they have to say."
John Grierson, a documentary filmmaker and founder of the National Film Board of Canada, was a major inspiration for Obomsawin, she said. To date, Obomsawin has directed 37 documentary films for the National Film Board of Canada.
"[Grierson] said that poor people or people of other nations should be able to see themselves on the screen, instead of looking at Hollywood films where beautiful actresses and actors were living in very rich conditions," Obomsawin said. "[Grierson] felt that [it was important to make] films where people could see themselves and feel that they have the right to live."
