Download or read book The Films of Denys Arcand written by Jim Leach and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-17 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Denys Arcand is best known outside Canada for three films that were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Foreign-Language Film: The Decline of the American Empire (1986), Jesus of Montreal (1989), and The Barbarian Invasions (2003), the last of which won the Award. Yet Arcand has been making films since the early 1960s. When he started making films, Quebec was rapidly transforming from a relatively homogeneous community, united by its Catholic faith and French language and culture, into a more fragmented modern society. The Films of Denys Arcand sheds light on how Arcand addressed the impact of these changes from the 1960s, when the long-drawn-out debate on Quebec's possible separation from the rest of Canada began, to the present, in which the traditional cultural heritage has been further fragmented by the increasing presence of diasporic communities. His career and films offer an ideal case study for exploring the contradictions and tensions that have shaped Quebec cinema and culture in a period of increasing globalization and technological change.
Download or read book The Cinema of Canada written by Jerry White and published by Wallflower Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Containing 24 essays, each on a different film, this work provides a fascinating historical account of the development of film and documentary traditions across the diverse national and regional communities in Canada.
Download or read book Immanent Frames written by John Caruana and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For some time now, thinkers across the humanities and social sciences have increasingly called into question the once-dominant view of the relationship between modernity and secularism, prompting some to speak of a "postsecular turn." Until now, film studies has largely been silent about this development, even though cinema itself has been a major vehicle for such reflection. This fact became inescapable in 2011 when Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and Lars von Trier's Melancholia were released within days of each other. While these two audacious and controversial films present seemingly opposite perspectives—the former a thoughtful meditation on faith, the latter a portrayal of nontriumphalist atheism—together they raise critical questions about transcendence and immanence in modern life. These films are, however, only the most conspicuous of a growing body of works that call forth similar and related questions—what this collection aptly calls "postsecular cinema." Taking the nearly simultaneous release of The Tree of Life and Melancholia as its starting point and framing device, this pioneering collection sets out to establish the idea of postsecular cinema as a distinct body of films and a viable critical category. Adopting a film-philosophy approach, one group of essays examines Malick's and von Trier's films, while another looks at works by Chantal Akerman, Denys Arcand, the Dardenne brothers, and John Michael McDonagh, among others. The volume closes with two important interviews with Luc Dardenne and Jean-Luc Nancy that invite us to reflect more deeply on some of the central concerns of postsecular cinema.
Download or read book Film and the City written by George Melnyk and published by Athabasca University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Canadians are city dwellers, a fact often unacknowledged by twentieth-century Canadian films, with their preference for themes of wilderness survival or rural life. Modernist Canadian films tend to support what film scholar Jim Leach calls “the nationalist-realist project,” a documentary style that emphasizes the exoticism and mythos of the land. Over the past several decades, however, the hegemony of Anglo-centrism has been challenged by francophone and First Nations perspectives and the character of cities altered by a continued influx of immigrants and the development of cities as economic and technological centers. No longer primarily defined through the lens of rural nostalgia, Canadian urban identity is instead polyphonic, diverse, constructed through multiple discourses and mediums, an exchange rather than a strict orientation. Taking on the urban as setting and subject, filmmakers are ideally poised to create and reflect multiple versions of a single city. Examining fourteen Canadian films produced from 1989 to 2007, including Denys Arcand’s Jésus de Montréal (1989), Jean-Claude Lauzon’s Léolo (1992), Mina Shum’s Double Happiness (1994), Clément Virgo’s Rude (1995), and Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg (2007), Film and the City is the first comprehensive study of Canadian film and “urbanity”—the totality of urban culture and life. Drawing on film and urban studies and building upon issues of identity formation in Canadian studies, Melnyk considers how filmmakers, films, and urban audiences experience, represent, and interpret urban spatiality, visuality, and orality. In this way, Film and the City argues that Canadian narrative film of the postmodern period has aided in articulating a new national identity.
Download or read book The Cinema of Rithy Panh written by Leslie Barnes and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-16 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in 1964, Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh grew up in the midst of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal reign of terror, which claimed the lives of many of his relatives. After escaping to France, where he attended film school, he returned to his homeland in the late 1980s and began work on the documentaries and fiction films that have made him Cambodia’s most celebrated living director. The fourteen essays in The Cinema of Rithy Panh explore the filmmaker’s unique aesthetic sensibility, examining the dynamic and sensuous images through which he suggests that “everything has a soul.” They consider how Panh represents Cambodia’s traumatic past, combining forms of individual and collective remembrance, and the implications of this past for Cambodia’s transition into a global present. Covering documentary and feature films, including his literary adaptations of Marguerite Duras and Kenzaburō Ōe, they examine how Panh’s attention to local context leads to a deep understanding of such major themes in global cinema as justice, imperialism, diaspora, gender, and labor. Offering fresh takes on masterworks like The Missing Picture and S-21 while also shining a light on the director’s lesser-known films, The Cinema of Rithy Panh will give readers a new appreciation for the boundless creativity and ethical sensitivity of one of Southeast Asia’s cinematic visionaries.
Download or read book Francophone Film written by Lieve Spaas and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering the rich film production of Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec, the Caribbean, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa, this book brings together films that might otherwise be divided by questions of race, gender, genre, period, or nation, in a valuable comparative study of a diverse corpus. Individual countries, film-makers, and films are treated separately in order to emphasize their specific identities or those which are represented in their films, and key films are examined within a well-developed historical context. Clearly written and accessible to the specialist and general reader alike, this informative book is a valuable reference source.
Download or read book Canada s Best Features written by Eugene P. Walz and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2002 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long recognized for outstanding National Film Board documentaries and innovative animated movies, Canada has recently emerged from the considerable shadow of the Hollywood elephant with a series of feature films that have captured the attention of audiences around the world. This is the first anthology to focus on Canada's feature films - those acknowledged as its very best. With essays by senior academics and leading scholars from across the country as well as some fresh new voices, Canada's Best Features offers penetrating analyses of fifteen award-winning films. Internationally acclaimed directors David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Denys Arcand, and Claude Jutra are represented here. Noteworthy films include Mon oncle Antoine, often cited as Canada's number one film of all time, such Cannes Festival favourites as Le déclin de l'empire américain and Exotica, and cult films Careful by Guy Maddin and Masala by Srinivas Krishna. The essays offer the latest word on these films and filmmakers, done from a variety of perspectives. Some of the films have never been examined in-depth before. Complete filmographies and bibliographies accompany each essay. A contextualizing introduction by Professor Gene Walz provides the necessary overview. An annotated bibliography of books on the Canadian film industry completes this impressive package.
Download or read book Stage Bound written by André Loiselle and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2003 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation "Although feature film adaptations of Canadian plays have become increasingly common in the past decade, the practice of turning drama into film began in Canada in 1942 when Hilda Hooke Smith's Here Will I Nest was brought to the screen. Over the years some adaptations have enjoyed a fair measure of success while others have fallen into oblivion, but virtually all of them have engaged with their theatrical origins, often leading to criticism that they remain too rigidly anchored to the stage. Stage-Bound, the first extensive study of Canadian and Quebecois drama, challenges this reductive interpretation. Andre Loiselle demonstrates that theatricality is central to the meaning of these films, and in the process reclaims them."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Download or read book Questions for the Movie Answer Man written by Roger Ebert and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 1997-06 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? Why don't movie actors wear seat belts? Was Fargo really based on a true story? Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert answers these and hundreds more. Using wit, insight, and dozens of other experts, he resolves some of the most common questions about the moviesand some of the most bizarre.
Download or read book The Films of Bong Joon Ho written by Nam Lee and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Candid Eyes written by Jim Leach and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documentaries have dominated Canada's film production and have been crucial to the formation of Canada's cinematic identity. This volume will be an indispensable companion for anyone seriously interested in Canadian film studies.
Download or read book Ida Lupino Director written by Therese Grisham and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dominated by men and bound by the restrictive Hays Code, postwar Hollywood offered little support for a female director who sought to make unique films on controversial subjects. But Ida Lupino bucked the system, writing and directing a string of movies that exposed the dark underside of American society, on topics such as rape, polio, unwed motherhood, bigamy, exploitative sports, and serial murder. The first in-depth study devoted to Lupino’s directorial work, this book makes a strong case for her as a trailblazing feminist auteur, a filmmaker with a clear signature style and an abiding interest in depicting the plights of postwar American women. Ida Lupino, Director not only examines her work as a cinematic auteur, but also offers a serious consideration of her diverse and long-ranging career, getting her start in Hollywood as an actress in her teens and twenties, directing her first films in her early thirties, and later working as an acclaimed director of television westerns, sitcoms, and suspense dramas. It also demonstrates how Lupino fused generic elements of film noir and the social problem film to create a distinctive directorial style that was both highly expressionistic and grittily realistic. Ida Lupino, Director thus shines a long-awaited spotlight on one of our greatest filmmakers.
Download or read book Jesus of Hollywood written by Adele Reinhartz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the advent of the cinema, Jesus has frequently appeared in our movie houses and on our television screens. Indeed, it may well be that more people worldwide know about Jesus and his life story from the movies than from any other medium. Indeed, Jesus' story has been adapted dozens of times throughout the history of commercial cinema, from the 1912 silent From the Manger to the Cross to Mel Gibson's 2004 The Passion of the Christ. No doubt there are more to come. Drawing on a broad range of movies, biblical scholar Adele Reinhartz traces the way in which Jesus of Nazareth has become Jesus of Hollywood. She argues that Jesus films both reflect and influence cultural perceptions of Jesus and the other figures in his story. She focuses on the cinematic interpretation of Jesus' relationships with the key people in his life: his family, his friends, and his foes. She examines how these films address theological issues, such as Jesus' identity as both human and divine, political issues, such as the role of the individual in society and the possibility of freedom under political oppression, social issues, such as gender roles and hierarchies, and personal issues, such as the nature of friendship and human sexuality. Reinhartz's study of Jesus' celluloid incarnations shows how Jesus movies reshape the past in the image of the present. Despite society's profound interest in Jesus as a religious and historical figure, Jesus movies are fascinating not as history but as mirrors of the concerns, anxieties, and values of our own era. As the story of Jesus continues to capture the imagination of filmmakers and moviegoers, he remains as significant a cultural figure today as he was 2000 years ago.
Download or read book Denys Arcand s Le Declin de l empire americain and Les Invasions barbares written by Andrê Loiselle and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2008-11-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The release of Denys Arcand's Le Déclin de l'empire américain (The Decline of the American Empire) in 1986 marked a major turning point in Quebec cinema. It was the first Québécois film that enjoyed huge critical and commercial success at home and abroad. Arcand's tragicomedy about eight intellectuals gathered around a dinner table relating sexy anecdotes became the top-grossing film of all time in Quebec and was the first Canadian feature to be nominated for an Oscar in the foreign-language category. Seventeen years later, Arcand won an Academy Award for the sequel, Les Invasions barbares (The Barbarian Invasions), where the amusing insouciance of the thirty-somethings talking dirty in Le Déclin is replaced by a sense of moral responsibility and serene resignation. In this engrossing study, André Loiselle presents the first in-depth analysis of both films within the context of Quebec culture. Through close readings and concise cultural analysis of two of the most important films in the history of Quebec cinema, Loiselle demonstrates the ways in which Arcand's work represents a snapshot of the evolution of the French Canadian film industry since 1980. The companion films trace the decline of Quebec's national dream and the Québécois' attempts to cling to their identity against the forces of barbaric globalization. The second title in the new Canadian Cinema series, Denys Arcand's "Le Déclin de l'empire américain" and "Les Invasions barbares" is essential reading for cinephiles, film critics, and anyone with an interest in cultural studies and Canadian and Quebec history.
Download or read book Buffy Sainte Marie written by Andrea Warner and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Buffy Sainte-Marie is an icon and inspiration. This book is necessary—an authorized insight into the making of a legend." —Terese Marie Mailhot, author of Heart Berries A powerful, intimate look at the life of a beloved folk icon and activist. Folk hero. Songwriter icon. Living legend. Buffy Sainte-Marie is all of these things and more. In this, Sainte-Marie’s first and only authorized biography, music critic Andrea Warner draws from more than sixty hours of exclusive interviews to offer a powerful, intimate look at the life of the beloved artist and everything that she has accomplished in her seventy-seven years (and counting). Since her groundbreaking debut, 1964’s It’s My Way!, the Cree singer-songwriter has been a trailblazer and a tireless advocate for Indigenous rights and freedoms, an innovative artist, and a disruptor of the status quo. Establishing herself among the ranks of folk greats such as Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, she has released more than twenty albums, survived being blacklisted by two U.S. presidents, and received countless accolades, including the only Academy Award ever to be won by a First Nations artist. But this biography does more than celebrate Sainte-Marie’s unparalleled talent as a songwriter and entertainer; packed with insight and knowledge, it offers an unflinchingly honest, heartbreakingly real portrait of the woman herself, including the challenges she experienced on the periphery of showbiz, her healing from the trauma of childhood and intimate partner violence, her commitment to activism, and her leadership in the protest movement.
Download or read book Denys Arcand written by Réal La Rochelle and published by McArthur Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oscar Award winner Denys Arcand’s films such as The Barbarian Invasions and The Decline of the American Empire have garnered both praise and criticism over the years. In this critically acclaimed biography, which appeared first in French, Réal La Rochelle traces the portrait of an artist-intellectual, revealing the passion of a creator for his craft, as well as the setbacks Arcand has encountered. In the background is the history of Quebec, the birthplace of Arcand’s filmic oeuvre, and of course Montreal—the city where all his films have been shot.
Download or read book Take One s Essential Guide to Canadian Film written by Wyndham Wise and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2001-12-15 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Take One's Essential Guide to Canadian Film is the most exhaustive and up-to-date reference book on Canadian film and filmmakers, combining 700 reviews and biographical listings with a detailed chronology of major events in Canadian film and television history. Compiled by Wyndham Wise, the editor and publisher of Take One, Canada's most respected film magazine, with a foreword by Canadian director Patricia Rozema, this is the only reference book of its kind published in English. Each film title is listed with credits, a mini review, and significant awards. Biographical listings of directors, producers, actors, writers, animators, cinematographers, distributors, exhibitors, and independent filmmakers are accompanied by date and place of birth, date of death if applicable, a brief career overview, and a filmography. Wise celebrates Canadian achievement on both a national and an international scale, and juxtaposes the distinctly Canadian with Canada's exports to Hollywood: Maury Chaykin and Jim Carrey, John Candy and William Shatner, Mon Oncle Antoine and Porky's, Highway 61 and Meatballs, The Red Violin and The Art of War. From great early Hollywood stars like Walter Huston, Fay Wray, Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer, and Marie Dressler, to our current crop of star directors - including Patricia Rozema, Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, Denys Arcand, Peter Mettler, Guy Maddin, and Robert Lepage - Canadians have made an important but largely unrecorded contribution to the history of world cinema. Impressive for its breadth of coverage, refreshing in its opinionated informality, this comprehensive and lively look at Canadian film culture at the start of the twenty-first century admirably fills the gap.
