Film in Canada

Jim Leach is professor and director of the Interdisciplinary MA in Popular Culture program in the Department of Communications, Popular Culture and Film at Brock University. His main research and teaching interests include Canadian and British cinema, film theory, and cultural theory. He is the author of numerous books, including Doctor Who (2009), Understanding Movies, now in its fourth edition (with Louis Giannetti, 2008), and British Film (2004).

The book reads well from beginning to end as an evolving argument and discussion with many facets, yet it knits together without simplifying. . . Leach's discussion of direct cinema is the most useful I have found anywhere."

• Timeline Introduction: Not Just Another National Cinema Blame Hollywood Screening the Nation Identifying the Nation Part 1: Imagining Canada 1: The National-Realist Tradition Documenting the Nation 1964 Revisited: The Sense of a Beginning The Persistence of Realism 2: Realism and Its Discontents Questioning Cinema Truth Too Real? A Married Couple and Les Ordres Faking It: The Canadian Mockumentary 3: Traces: Space, Place, and Identity 'Vrais films de chez nous': Post-war Quebec Feature Films Obliterated Environments: Space in Direct Cinema Fiction Films A Sense of Placelessness: The Capital Cost Allowance Act and After 4: The Canadian Fantastic Paul Almond's Fantastic Trilogy Canadian Gothic Lost and Delirious: The Films of André Forcier and Guy Maddin Part 2: Popular cinema/Art cinema 5: Are Genres American? Inflecting American Genres Deconstructing Genre Implanted Memories 6: In Search of the National Popular: Carle and Cronenberg The Sins of Gilles Carle The Challenge of David Cronenberg 7: Two Canadian Auteurs: Arcand and Egoyan Ups and Downs: Denys Arcand's History Lessons Dark Mirrors: Reflections on Atom Egoyan Postscript 8: Stupid Films and Smart Films Boys and Girls: The Quebec Stupid Film Death and Irony: Canadian Smart Films Part 3: Redefining Canadian Cinema 9: Shifting Centres and Margins The Cinema We Need? Dirty Movies and Aerial Views: Jack Darcus and William MacGillivray Jean Pierre Lefebvre and the Quebec Imaginary 10: Engendering the Nation Sex in a Cold Climate Dream Lives: The Rise of Women's Cinema in Canada The Real and the Visionary: Léa Pool and Patricia Rozema Thom Fitzgerald's Alien Bodies 11: Possible Worlds: Diasporic Cinema in Canada Where Is Home? Diasporic Filmmakers in English Canada Quebec: Métissage and the Politics of Identity New Worlds/Old Stories 12: The Real and the Imaginary: Canadian Film and the Postmodern Condition Staging the Global and the Local: Bruce Sweeney and Robert Lepage Film in Canada in the Twenty-First century: Congorama and Away from Her Appendix A: Timeline: Canadian Films Appendix B: 'Lights, Camera, Action' Study Questions Notes Bibliography Filmography