Canadian Cinema Series

Abstract

CANADIAN CINEMA SERIES Edited by Bart Beaty and Will Straw Toronto: University Toronto Press, 2008-ongoing. David Cronenberg's A History Violence. Bart Beaty. 2008, 138 pp Denys Arcand's Le Declin de l'empire americain and Les Invasions barbares. Andre Loiselle. 2008, 190 pp Atom Egoyan's The Adjuster. Tom McSorley. 2009, 104 pp Joyce Wieland's The Far Shore. Johanne Sloan. 2010, 134 pp Allan King's A Married Couple. Zoe Druick. 2010, 106 pp Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg. Darren Wershler. 2010, 145 pp Bruce McDonald's Hard Core Logo. Paul McEwan. 2011, 131 ppReviewed by Jennifer VanderBurghSince 2008, the Canadian Cinema series (CCS) has published seven volumes, each dedicated to the analysis a feature-length Canadian film (the exception is Andre Loiselle's book on Le Declin de l'empire americain [1986], which also deals with Les Invasions barbares [2003] and, briefly, Lage des tebebres [2007]). Between one hundred and two hundred pages, the books physically resemble slim BFI (British Film Institute) Classics, an expansive series small-format studies single films that the BFI's website describes as landmark films world cinema.CCS distinguishes itself from the BFI series by working within an explicitly national frame. CCS's motley list films also appears to deliberately resist attempts to erect a canon or cultivate classics representative Canadian cinema. This curratorial approach grants contributors lattitude to explore lesser-known works by Canadian auteurs (e.g., Egoyan's The Adjuster [1991], and Cronenberg's A History Violence [2005]) and to attend to films that until now have not been meaningfully addressed in scholarship (a volume on Meatballs [Ivan Reitman, 1979] is in the works).As a metaproject on Canadian cinema, editors Straw and Beaty propose a conversation among a range modes, genres, and aesthetic frameworks. In this iteration Canadian cinema, and without didactic justifcation, the series proposes that indeed, Wieland's The Far Shore (1976) should share a bookshelf with McDonald's Hard Core Logo (1996). According to the blurb that appears on the first two books the series, [v]olumes... illuminate the breadth the nation's film productions, including classic and popular films, documentaries, animation, and experimental films in the various languages spoken across the country. This particular mention language, an understanding that is more expansive than the French/English binary (or the French, English, Aboriginal triumverate) , is a significant intervention for conceptualizing Canadian cinema that, with the inclusion Arcand's Le Declin de l'empire americain and Les Invasions barbares, presumably extends to a broader (and contestable) understanding Canadian nationhood as well. In this series, the category Canadian cinema is inherently presumed to be a multifaceted conflation regions, cultures, politics and industries. On the back page subsequent volumes, the series is simply quantified as a numbered list titles. How to qualify the contribution the series, it seems, is (appropriately) left up to readers.Each volume's title uses the posessive pronoun the director, (e.g., Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg), which presents films as individual expressions. On the one hand, films in this series are considered to be representative their director's perspective on such topics as nationhood, genre, and cinema. At the same they are also, via the critic's voice which features prominently in these works, considered to be more broadly of their time, in that they are symptomatic the (largely transnational) industrial, social, and cultural perspectives that inevitably informed their creation. In this sense, the metaproject CCS is to engage films as portals into the problematic and the pragmatic production context that is Canadian cinema. The series' take on Canadian film is in concert with a series projects that have used metaphors looking, reflection, and observation in their titles to suggest that the gesture making a film is an assertion an individual and located point view. …