English-Canadian Film (Winter 2007)

Jan. 7: Nobody Wave Goodbye

• Screening: Nobody Wave Goodbye (1964)

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