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