Pierre Perrault and the Poetic Documentary

Pierre Perrault and the Poetic Documentary
Author: David Clandfield
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2004-10-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780968913239

One of the great exponents of the direct cinema style, Quebecois poet, essayist, and film-maker Pierre Perrault (1927-1999) began his documentary career in radio before joining the more traditional Ren’e Bonni’ere filming life in the lower St. Lawrence. In the 1960s he joined the National Film Board of Canada to shoot films in the new direct style, taking a small two-man crew into communities to reveal their beliefs and allegiances as they coped with social change. His legendary trilogy on the Ile-aux-Coudres opened with his most famous work, Pour la suite du monde (1963). Ostensibly a look at the local people’s effort to revive a traditional beluga hunt, it is actually the beginning of a lifelong inquiry into the relationship between community and national identity. This relationship emerges most clearly in the highly poetic Un pays sans bon sens! (1970), which brought Perrault into conflict with the NFB. The film was sidelined for many years. After a trip outside Quebec to Moncton to document francophone student unrest, Perrault made a second trilogy, this one in northwestern Quebec, showing the collapse of traditional farming communities relocated to the Abitibi during the Great Depression. Further explorations took Perrault to the northern interiors of Quebec, the hunting woods of Maniwaki, and to the tall ships retracing Jacques Cartier’s voyages of discovery. The triology culminated in the desolate arctic landscapes of the mysterious muskox, and two of his most haunting creations. The first major publication on Perrault in English, Pierre Perrault and the Poetic Documentary discusses not only the world that Perrault’s cinema revealed but a revolution in film-making from a great poet. Co-written and edited by David Clandfield, Principal of New College in the University of Toronto, Pierre Perrault and the Poetic Documentary also features contributions from scholar Jerry White, as well as translations of some of Perrault’s writings on film. Published by the Toronto International Film Festival. Distributed in Canada by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Distributed outside Canada by Indiana University Press.

The Radio Eye

The Radio Eye
Author: Jerry White
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2009-11-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1554582121

The Radio Eye: Cinema in the North Atlantic, 1958–1988, examines the way in which media experiments in Quebec, Newfoundland, the Faroe Islands, and the Irish-Gaelic-speaking communities of Ireland use film, video, and television to advocate for marginalized communities and often for “smaller languages.” The Radio Eye is not, however, a set of isolated case studies. Author Jerry White illustrates the degree to which these experiments are interconnected, sometimes implicitly but more often quite explicitly. Media makers in the North Atlantic during the period 1958–1988 were very aware of each other’s cultures and aspirations, and, by structuring the book in two interlocking parts, White illustrates the degree to which a common project emerged during those three decades. The book is bound together by White’s belief that these experiments are following in the idealism of Soviet silent filmmaker Dziga Vertov, who wrote about his notion of “the Radio Eye.” White also puts these experiments in the context of work by the Cuban filmmaker and theorist Julio García Espinosa and his notion of “imperfect cinema,” Jürgen Habermas and his notions of the “public sphere,” and Édourard Glissant’s ideas about “créolité” as the defining aspect of modern culture. This is a genuinely internationalist moment, and these experiments are in conversation with a wide array of thought across a number of languages.

Rain, Drizzle, Fog

Rain, Drizzle, Fog
Author: Darrell Varga
Publisher: University of Calgary Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2009
Genre: Atlantic Provinces
ISBN: 1552382486

Offers a scholarly study of film and television in Atlantic Canada. This book provides a historical overview of film and television in the region, as well as essays on specific topics such as popular TV (""The Trailer Park Boys""), early TV (""The Don Messer Show"") and the work of filmmakers such as Bill MacGillivray and Andrea Dorfman.

The Everyday

The Everyday
Author: Justin Derry
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2014-10-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1443869899

The Everyday: Experiences, Concepts and Narratives is an inter-disciplinary book problematizing the slippery notion of 'Everyday Life'. Contributing to a tradition of 20th century scholarly work focusing on 'Everyday Life', this book specifically attends to the multiple ways that the quotidian aspects of our day-to-day existence become knotted into situated narratives and concepts. In their depth and breadth, the chapters compiled here all work with an understanding of everyday life that is i...

The Cinema of Canada

The Cinema of Canada
Author: Jerry White
Publisher: Wallflower Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2006
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781904764601

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.

French XX Bibliography

French XX Bibliography
Author: William J. Thompson
Publisher: Associated University Presse
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2006-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781575911045

Provides a listing available of books, articles, and book reviews concerned with French literature since 1885. This work is a reference source in the study of modern French literature and culture. The bibliography is divided into three major divisions: general studies, author subjects (arranged alphabetically), and cinema.

John Walker's Passage

John Walker's Passage
Author: Darrell Varga
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2012-08-08
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1442664398

John Walker is one of Canada's most prolific and important documentary filmmakers and is known for his many thoughtful, personally inflected films. His masterwork, Passage, centres on Sir John Franklin's failed expedition to find the final link of the Northwest Passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Canadian Arctic. It also gives us the story of John Rae, the Scottish explorer who discovered the fate of Franklin and the final link in the passage, but was left to the margins of history. Walker's film brings to this story a layering of dramatic action and behind-the-scenes documentary footage that build tension between the story of the past and interpretations of the present. Darrell Varga provides a close analysis of Passage, situating it within Walker's rich body of work and the Canadian documentary tradition. Varga illuminates how the film can be viewed through the lens of Harold Innis's theories of communication and culture, opening up the work of this great Canadian political economist to film studies.

Great Canadian Film Directors

Great Canadian Film Directors
Author: George Melnyk
Publisher: University of Alberta
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2007-06-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0888644795

Film directors articulate creative visions that provide insights into national cultures. 18 essays highlight Canada's prominent Anglophone and Francophone filmmakers.

Projecting Canada

Projecting Canada
Author: Zoë Druick
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2007
Genre: Education
ISBN: 077357669X

Based on newly uncovered archival information and a close reading of numerous NFB films, Projecting Canada explores the NFB's involvement with British Empire communication theory and American social science. Using a critical cultural policy studies framework, Druick develops the concept of "government realism" to describe films featuring ordinary people as representative of segments of the population. She demonstrates the close connection between NFB production policies and shifting techniques developed in relation to the evolution of social science from the 1940s to the present and argues that government policy has been the overriding factor in determining the ideology of NFB films. Projecting Canada offers a compelling new perspective on both the development of the documentary form and the role of cultural policy in creating essential spaces for aesthetic production.