Rain/Drizzle/Fog: Film and Television in Atlantic Canada

Abstract

As Darrell Varga explains in his introduction, the title of the anthology Rain/Drizzle/Fog: Film and Television in Atlantic Canada comes from Rosemary House's 1998 documentary Rain, Drizzle, and Fog (NFB, 1998). Varga writes: ‘The film integrates the history and geography of St. John's, Newfoundland, with the processes of culture through which geographic space is transformed into lived place’ (p. ix). Inspired by the film's depiction of culture and community, a similar ethos informs this book which, according to Varga, attempts ‘to understand identity not as a national imaginary, but as something produced in the lived experience of place’ (p. xii). In responding to past ‘national cinema’ approaches within Canadian film studies which, it may be argued, have privileged the significance of nation and national identity at the expense of other more marginalized forms of identity and belonging, this book usefully shifts the focus to an interrogation of the concept of the regional. In doing so, it reflects the mandate of the University of Calgary Press's ‘Cinemas Off Centre Series’ (edited by Malek Khouri) which, according to the Press's catalogue, ‘highlights bodies of cinematic work that, for various reasons, have been ignored, marginalized, overlooked, and/or obscured within traditional and dominant canons of film and cinema studies’. As an introduction to the subject matter it provides a small yet stimulating glimpse into what is a rich, varied and complex terrain. It is not a comprehensive survey of film and television in Atlantic Canada, as Varga acknowledges: ‘We do not claim to account for the entire production history of the region’ (p. ix). What it does offer is an invaluable collection of thought-provoking essays (thirteen in total) that examine the production of region and its diverse meanings within different forms of screen culture in Atlantic Canada.