Concerning its commercial cinema, Canada has been defined by a struggle against Hollywood\u2019s monopolistic control over North America\u2019s entertainment industry (Handling et al.). Undoubtedly, Hollywood\u2019s stranglehold on Canada, which is still \u201cconsidered part of the [US] studios\u2019 domestic market,\u201d (Vlessing) persists today. Indeed, much of the Canadian production network is geared towards serving US interests. As Kelly Nestruck points out, \u201cgenerous government subsidies [and] a low Canadian dollar means that American film producers frequently [shoot] north of the [border] as a way to cut costs,\u201d with Hollywood \u201coutsourc[ing] no fewer than 1500 film and television productions\u201d to Canada from 1996 to 2006 (Epstein). Writing in 2015, Simon Houpt observed that \u201cthe [domestic] market share of English-language Canadian [films] hovers [between] 1 per cent to 1.5 per cent […] of total ticket sales,\u201d translating into an annual box-office gross of only $16.3m Canadian ($12.4m US).<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Canada\u2019s contemporary, non-narrative experimental film scene tells a different story. The Canadian avant-garde constitutes a world-leading example of how artists’ groups, cultural institutions and government initiatives might come together to create a sturdy and sustainable framework for the production and dissemination of non-commercial film. Vancouver-based media artist and founding member of the Iris Film Collective Alex Mackenzie has noted the central role public and government funding bodies have played in enabling the \u201cvitality of the Canadian scene,\u201d and how a network of \u201cartist-run film labs and co-operatives [have facilitated] cross-pollination, […] screening opportunities\u201d and a solid foundation lacking in Canada\u2019s commercial sphere.<\/p>\n
Celebrating the breadth of Canada\u2019s funding structure, Canada Council for the Arts\u2019s Senior Strategic Advisor, Claude Schryer states that independent artists can \u201cseek support from the federal and provincial level as well as from many cities\u201d, such as the Toronto Arts Council or the Ontario Arts Council. An essential aspect of Canada\u2019s funding network, the Canada Council contributed $40.5m in grants to 2,305 individual artists and $158.3m to 1,898 arts organisations in 2017-2018 alone, with this figure set to double by 2021 (\u201cAnnual Report\u201d). Their current agenda, as CEO Simon Brault suggests, is the promotion of \u201cconciliation [and] justice […] at a time of deep cultural division,\u201d and tackling key issues of \u201csystemic racism and oppression [by] committ[ing] 25 per cent of its funds to […] previously unfunded entities\u201d (Brault qtd. in Sandals). Indeed, out of its 4,203 grants awarded in 2017-2018, 1,287 went to first-time recipients (\u201cAnnual Report\u201d).<\/p>\n
Regarding the films themselves, much of the experimental film work being produced in Canada tackles the ecological and more-than-human ethical issues looming large in our current era of environmental crises, with Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, co-founder of Toronto\u2019s Loop Collective, and Stephen Broomer, Kelly Egan, Ty Tekatch, Erika Loic, and Da\u00efchi Sa\u00efto, co-founders of Montreal\u2019s Double Negative Collective, being key figures. Not only are the films contemporary in a temporal sense, then, but they address the urgent challenges of a warming world. Mackenzie states his work interrogates the division between nature and culture, whilst the agency of the non-human world is a concern in the films of Dan Browne, a member of the Loop Collective, whose practice is grounded in marshalling \u201ctransformation[s] of perception that might establish […] more integrated relationships [between humans and] the world\u201d (Browne qtd. in Hinojosa). Indeed, in Browne\u2019s memento mori <\/em>(2012), images of trees and water, and a creaturely soundtrack comprising bird calls and whale song adopt a new set of meanings within the context of Browne\u2019s \u201canxieties regarding the destruction of our planetary ecosystems,\u201d with memento mori <\/em>intended as \u201can archive of aspects of our world that is slipping away, preserved [herein] as an echo\u201d (Browne qtd. in Rostron).<\/p>\n Regarding Mackenzie\u2019s work, a number of these concerns crystallize in agar-agar<\/em> (2017). In this film, Mackenzie captures images of a failed personal experiment in creating a vegan film emulsion using agar-agar, a jelly-like compound obtained from algae, instead of animal gelatin, the standard bonding agent used in film stock. Formally, agar-agar<\/em> underscores the violent power dynamic that exists between humans and non-humans even before film representation has taken place, and which has framed analog cinema as part of a way of thinking in which the non-human animal functions as a resource instead of a being in possession of the basic right not to be harmed. The film consists of closeup shots of the original celluloid film strip, presenting an alien terrain of scarred landscapes formed by the clumping silver nitrate and extreme elemental exchange. Here, agar-agar<\/em> points to the constituent cellular relations that make one\u2019s physical existence possible, thinking through a material lens to blur the boundaries between human and non-human bodies. Like Browne, Mackenzie utilizes film form to shift perception, with agar-agar <\/em>introducing the viewer to a realm of being that is otherwise invisible, though present nonetheless.<\/p>\n Similarly, Aaron Zeghers, founder of the Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, frequently explores the violent dynamic that marks the relationship between humans and non-humans. In Living on the Edge<\/em> (2013), for example, Zeghers intercuts photographs of animals in a zoo, taxidermy mounts, and pictures of animals represented in print. Here, Zeghers points to the non-human animal\u2019s liminal, interstitial existence, as well as the violence that is done to it in a variety of overlapping contexts. Indeed, the film\u2019s title marks the non-human animal\u2019s definitive vulnerability, and its physical occupation of threshold zones, such as the zoo, or the quasi-carceral space of the human home (as a pet). Formally, Living on the Edge<\/em> works between static frame-by-frame cinematography and a frenetic, kinetic editing style, underscoring the mutable, mercurial structure of the non-human animal\u2019s nature. Like Mackenzie, Zeghers\u2019s film raises its inquiries along the axis of both form and content, drawing on an experimental vernacular to explore vital questions concerning the non-human animal\u2019s worldly status.<\/p>\n Institutionally, the beating heart of the contemporary Canadian avant-garde are the long-standing artist-run centres and artist-led collectives, a majority of which work together to promote broad, easy access to the exhibition of work. Organisations such as Trinity Square Video, Vtape, Vid\u00e9ographe, and the 52-year-old Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Center underpin a stable distribution system that serves to preserve and disseminate artists\u2019 film, media and video nationally and internationally. Vtape, founded in 1980 to \u201cgive greater visibility to video at a time when [support] was flagging,\u201d (Vanderstoop) presently dispenses over 5,000 tapes, and the Distribution Centre distributes over 3,700 films, for example. Importantly, the Distribution Centre also functions as a publishing house, whilst Vtape disseminates a broad range of critical material through its open-access Research Centre, promoting a lively, informed appreciation of avant-garde work, old and new.<\/p>\n Additionally, a steady stream of resource sharing, human and otherwise, exists between these discrete institutions. Vtape co-founded the Centre for Aboriginal Media, the parent organisation of the imagineNative Film + Media Arts Festival, which is Canada\u2019s largest showcase of Indigenous screen content, in 1999, indicating the intercultural and inter-institutional exchange central to the contemporary Canadian avant-garde. Indeed, a significant section of the Canadian avant-garde deals with diasporic experiences, and themes of interculturality. Alisi Telengut\u2019s hand-painted film on the Kalmyk people, Nutag – Homeland <\/em>(2016), which was part-funded by the National Film Board of Canada and is distributed by Vid\u00e9ographe, marks this approach, as does Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof\u2019s Echo <\/em>(2008) and Ajla Odobasic\u2019s Morning <\/em>(2011), both of which have been screened by the Loop Collective and the Iris Film Collective; Cecelia Araneda\u2019s What Comes Between <\/em>(2009), Leslie Supnet\u2019s In Still Time <\/em>(2015), Solomon Nagler\u2019s perhaps\/We <\/em>(2003), Isiah Medina\u2019s 88:88 <\/em>(2015), Isaac Goes and Masha Tupitsyn\u2019s Journal (6.6.16 – 1.10.17) <\/em>(2017) and Madi Piller\u2019s Untitled, 1925 Part 2 <\/em>(2016) also work through these important themes.<\/p>\n Certainly, Canada\u2019s artist-led collectives provide a host of crucial functions that significantly contribute to the avant garde\u2019s vitality. Crucially, Wapinoki Mobile, co-founded by the National Film Board of Canada, is a traveling studio that provides First Nations, M\u00e9tis and Inuit youths with access to industry-grade film equipment, thereby facilitating the production and dissemination of Indigenous media in Canada and abroad, whilst Vancouver\u2019s Iris Film Collective hosts regular, public-facing film workshops and screenings, \u201ccreat[ing], exhibit[ing], and tour[ing] works […] with the [primary] goal of increasing the visibility and accessibility of experimental media art\u201d (Mackenzie). Similarly, the Winnipeg Film Group, directed by Greg Klymkiw, provides support to independent practitioners by loaning equipment at accessible rates and providing numerous opportunities for exhibition; other important cooperatives are LIFT (Toronto), Cineworks (Vancouver), AFCOOP (Halifax), and Mainfilm (Montreal). Likewise, Toronto\u2019s Loop Collective programs and produces works for presentation in numerous contexts and communities; comprised of 12 artists, their works are regularly screened in Toronto, where they have firm connections with local institutions. Films by Loop affiliates are also well received internationally; Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof\u2019s work has been shown in Seoul and France, for example, whilst Stephen Broomer\u2019s has been exhibited in Brazil, the US, Cuba, Spain, and elsewhere.<\/p>\n On the work of his peers, Browne has argued for a recognition of recent films, \u201cunited in their uses of material decay to develop [an aesthetic] that resist[s] dominant modes of disembodied […] visual culture,\u201d as marking a broader, contemporary Canadian renaissance, and a new approach to film practice. For Browne, this new aesthetic parallels his desire to promote new, more sustainable relationships between the human and the non-human world. Similar to Laura Marks\u2019s The Skin of the Film <\/em>(2000), this diverse film movement is concerned with derailing a sense of mastery between viewer and viewed in a way that can help to reconfigure one\u2019s being in the world. Indeed, memento mori<\/em>, whose 28-minute run-time comprises 128,000 discrete images, or, in other words, 78 images a second (Rostron), forecloses one\u2019s ability to see or identify any single, distinct object, thereby introducing the viewer to new ways of seeing and thinking that are more compatible with a \u201cbeing in harmony with the universe\u201d (Browne qtd. in Hinojosa).<\/p>\n In the contemporary Canadian avant garde, one sees an interconnected group of artists committed to engaging with the most anxiety-provoking questions of our time, as well as a broad, supportive context that enables them to carry out this work. That said, most remarkable is the emergence of a new approach to non-narrative filmmaking whose production and exhibition, and content and form, is anchored in a search for a more radical ontology and ethics under the sign of the Anthropocene. The Canadian avant-garde offer new filmic frameworks for promoting a more empathetic relation between the human and the non-human capable of helping to address the ecological emergency of the contemporary moment.<\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n Browne, Dan. Personal correspondence. 4 Feb. 2019. Email.<\/p>\n Canada. Canada Council for the Arts. Annual Report: 2017-2018. <\/em>15 Apr. 2018. Web. 20 Feb. 2019.<\/p>\n Epstein, Edward Jay. \u201cWhy are so many movies shot in Canada?\u201d Slate<\/em>. 13 Feb. 2006. Web. 19 Feb. 2019.<\/p>\n Handling, Piers, et al. \u201cHistory of the Canadian Film Industry.\u201d The Canadian Encyclopedia. <\/em>10 Jan. 2012. Web. 18 Feb. 2019.<\/p>\n Houpt, Simon. \u201cWhat is wrong with the Canadian film industry?\u201d The Globe and Mail<\/em>. 4 Sep. 2015. Web. 18 Feb. 2019.<\/p>\n Hinojosa, Jos\u00e9 Sarmiento. \u201cDan Browne: Cinema Provides a Focus for Exploring the World and My Relation to it.\u201d Desistfilm<\/em>. 24 May 2018. Web. 26 Feb. 2019.<\/p>\n Klymkiw, Greg. Personal correspondence. 19 Feb. 2019. Email.<\/p>\n Mackenzie, Alex. Personal correspondence. 20 Feb. 2019. Email.<\/p>\n Marks, Laura. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses<\/em>. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Print.<\/p>\n Nestruck, Kelly. \u201cSet in the US, filmed in Canada, fed up in Hollywood.\u201d The Guardian<\/em>. 1 Nov. 2007. Web. 19 Feb. 2019.<\/p>\n Rostron, Edwin. \u201cDan Browne.\u201d Edge of Frame<\/em>. 15 Oct. 2016. Web. 25 Feb. 2019.<\/p>\n Sandals, Leah. \u201cCanada Council Head Promises \u201cNew Era\u201d in Arts Funding.\u201d Canadianart. <\/em>14 Nov. 2016. Web. 19 Feb. 2019.<\/p>\n Schryer, Claude. Personal correspondence. 11 Feb. 2019. Email.<\/p>\n Vanderstoop, Wanda. Personal correspondence. 20 Feb. 2019. Email.<\/p>\n Vlessing, Etan. \u201cCanada Box Office: Revenue Rises to $699M in 2015.\u201d The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>. 8 Jan. 2016. Web. 20 Feb. 2019.<\/p>\n Written by Christian Dymond (2019); Queen Mary, University of London <\/strong><\/p>\n This article may be used free of charge. Please obtain permission before redistributing. Selling without prior written consent is prohibited. In all cases this notice must remain intact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Concerning its commercial cinema, Canada has been defined by a … Continue reading