English-Canadian Film (Winter 2007)

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Jan. 7: Nobody Wave Goodbye

Jan. 14: Goin' Down the Road

  • Screening: Goin' Down the Road (1970)
  • comparison to Nobody Wave Goodbye
  • fulfilling the dream - small town to big city
  • Margaret Atwood's Survival - dramatization of failure
  • overacting/underacting - docudrama
  • John Hoffman - American failure spectacular and glamorized vs. Canadian failure 'grubby' and pathetic
  • Christine Ramsay - plurality - postmodern reading - identification - gender/region/class - marginalization
  • marginalized are not losers but rather sublime outsiders
  • victims and losers in Canadian losers - noble nature of losers
  • Screening: Pierre Berton interview with Shebib



Jan. 21: Dreamland

  • Feldman Article
    • Uselessness of written word in Canadian films - Nobody Wave Goodbye and Going Down the Road examples
    • Feeling of emptiness in Shabib films - conveyed without the use of words
    • Shabib characters often battered into silence
    • Experimental works also suggest silence holds 'real power' in Canadian film
    • What's not there is 'more horrifying' than what is there - absence
    • Abigail's party - example of absence
  • City of Gold
  • Short Brittain bio + filmography
    • Memorandum (1965)
postscreening discussion
  • distribution problems - then and now
  • quotas
  • carry-on movies - product of quota system
  • Canadian influence in Hollywood and vice-versa
  • Lonely Boy (1962)
  • Unit B
    • Acknowledgement of ambiguity - acknowledgement of the camera
  • dark nature of the film
  • Barry Keith Grant text about the film
    • darkness of film - at home everywhere/nowhere
    • 'we had a nosejob' - Anka belongs to everybody/not himself - Freedomland scene
  • Troy Donahue - godfather - Coppola - Hollywood + mafia connection
  • comparison to Dreamland



Jan. 28: Winter Kept Us Warm

  • McCarthyism
    • Communism
    • Anti-Semitism
    • Homophobia
  • Kenneth Anger's Fireworks - made just before Anger's departure for Europe
  • Homophobia in Hollywood during the McCarthy era
    • keeping up appearances
  • Beat poets
    • Jack Kerouac
    • Allen Ginsberg
  • Claude Jutra, Michel Tremblay's works in Quebec
  • Robin Wood's 'The Return of the Repressed' - horror movies allow people to talk of repressive themes - horror movie often dismissed or marginalized
  • Gay and Lesbian filmmakers statistically more frequent in Canada
  • The Weinstein's involvement with and promotion of independent films
    • Canadian benefit of newfound interest in low budget Sundance films
  • Winter Kept Us Warm
    • Critical reception - Variety magazine review
    • influence on Cronenberg - quote from Cronenberg on Cronenberg on Winter Kept Us Warm - 'very sweet film'


Feb. 4: The Apprentice (1971)

  • Susan Sarandon – Joe – pre-Apprentice success
  • Larry Kent
    • concern about job loss
    • anticonformism
    • Bitter Ash's reception + Success at McGill U
    • High – censorship in Quebec
  • CFTC - Telefilm
    • distribution + promotion of films
    • power in the hands of producers – taxcredit incentive
postscreening
  • Larry Kent lecture
  • English vs. French version
  • appearance of the priest – French priest in French version – pressure to have english priest
  • Susan Sarandon’s casting vs. Diane Keaton
  • Starting up at UBC – Bitter Rash
  • Directing french actors – non-Quebec native – challenges
  • hope for Canadian films – 2007 and beyond