This volume, co-edited by Lee Carruthers and Charles Tepperman and published by McGill-Queen's University Press, features several essays written by A/CA members about Canadian films, filmmakers, and film contexts since the year 2000.
Canadian Cinema in the New Millennium is available directly from the publisher's website - use 30% discount code MQSP until 30 June 2023.
Book Overview
At the turn of the millennium Canadian cinema appeared to have reached an apex of aesthetic and commercial transformation. Domestic filmmaking has since declined in visibility: the sense of celebrity once associated with independent directors has diminished, projects garner less critical attention, and concepts that made late-twentieth-century Canadian film legible have been reconsidered or displaced.
Canadian Cinema in the New Millennium examines this dramatic transformation and revitalizes our engagement with Canadian cinema in the contemporary moment, presenting focused case studies of films and filmmakers and contextual studies of Canadian film policy, labour, and film festivals. Contributors trace key developments since 2000, including the renouveau or Quebec New Wave, Indigenous filmmaking, i-docs, and diasporic experimental filmmaking. Reflecting the way film in Canada mediates multiple cultures, forging new affinities among anglophone, francophone, and Indigenous-language examples, this book engages familiar figures, such as Denis Villeneuve, Xavier Dolan, Sarah Polley, and Guy Maddin, in the same breath as small-budget independent films, documentaries, and experimental works that have emerged in the Canadian scene.
Fuelled by close attention to the films themselves and a desire to develop new scholarly approaches, Canadian Cinema in the New Millennium models a renewed commitment to keeping the conversation about Canadian cinema vibrant and alive.
Table of Contents
PART ONE: FEATURE FILMS AND FILMMAKERS
1 Speaking across Borders: Xavier Dolan and the Transnationalism of Contemporary Auteur Cinema in Quebec 25
Ian Robinson
2 An Equivocal Auteur: Gauging Style and Substance in the Films of Denis Villeneuve 42
Lee Carruthers
3 A “Momentary Melancholy”: Female Desire and the Promise of Happiness in the Cinema of Sarah Polley 67
Tanya Horeck
4 Indigenous Women’s Cinema in Quebec: The Works and Words of Mohawk Filmmaker Sonia Bonspille Boileau 87
Karine Bertrand
5 Le cinéma à l’estomac: Denis Côté and the New Wave of Quebec Cinema (2004-19) 104
Jean-Pierre Sirois-Trahan
6 Fluid Privilege: Reading “Canadian” Water in Wet Bum (2014) and Sleeping Giant (2015) 120
Jennifer VanderBurgh
7 Toronto’s New DIY Filmmakers 134
David Davidson
8 Northern Frights: Canadian Horror in the Twenty-First Century 150
Murray Leeder
PART TWO: DOCUMENTARY AND EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKING
9 Beauty Day and the Crises of Self-Directed Work 169
Mike Meneghetti
10 Mythologizing Manitoba: The Negated Truth of My Winnipeg 186
Miriam Siegel and Charlie Keil
11 Indigenizing the Archive: Souvenir and the NFB 203
Gillian Roberts
12 I-doc and My-doc: Bear 71 and Highrise as Canadian Documentaries 217
Seth Feldman
13 Diasporic Sights: Trauma and Representation in Recent Canadian Poetic Cinema 234
Dan Browne
14 dominique t. skoltz and New States of Cinematic Matter 256
Melanie Wilmink
PART THREE: CANADIAN FILM CONTEXTS, FESTIVALS, AND INDUSTRIES
15 A Taxing Culture: Reconsidering the Service Production 275
Charles R. Acland
16 Collective Action! Unions in the Canadian Film and Television Industry 298
Amanda Coles
17 Making Room: International Co-productions and Canadian National Cinema 321
Peter Lester
18 Troubling Toronto Queer Festivals: Transgressions in and of Queer Counterpublics 340
Aimée Mitchell
19 From Showcase to Lightbox: Programming the National on the Festival Circuit 370
Diane Burgess