North of Hollywood: Canadian Films in the Classroom

2,998 words - By Gregory Strong - Download Word® file

I. A Primer on Canadian Film History

        Before examining how Canadian films might be used in the classroom, I think it worthwhile to explain why there are so few English films available and why only relatively small numbers of Canadians are even aware of these films in the first place. For one thing, there has never been any national film industry remotely comparable to Hollywood's influence and capital, certainly not one in Canada. The average cost of producing and marketing a Hollywood theatrical feature was about $60 million U.S. until the filming of The Titanic, a record-breaking $650 million dollars that rocketed film budgets skyward. According to Hicks (1999, p.165), Hollywood studios like Paramount, Universal, Fox, Sony Pictures/Columbia, Warner Brothers, Disney/Touchstone, MGM/UA, and SKG Dreamworks, are not only "vast production lots with sound stages and property departments, studio sets, and location ranches for major productions, but also major investment houses.

         In outlining the history of Canadian film in The Canadian Encyclopedia, 1997 Plus, Peter Morris traces the story from the first Canadian movie (on farming in the West) shown back in 1897 to the numerous films produced in the 1920s. The distinguishing characteristic of films like Ernest Shipman's Back to God's Country (1919) or Cameron of the Royal Mounted (1921) was that they were filmed outdoors instead of in studios and the environment was central to the plot. The relatively small Canadian audience meant that any successful film had to be distributed to the American or British markets and the Canadian government subsequently failed to either boost film production or to control Canadian distribution. To this day, box office receipts of films shown in Canada are included under American domestic production.

        As Morris relates it, the current difficulties in the Canadian industry stem from a very bad post-war deal. In 1947. Canada, like most of the western world had a postwar balance of payment problem with the U.S. which had lent the Canadian government vast sums to fight the Second World War. The NFB and the CBC tried to negotiate a tax on American films shown in Canada or distribution rights for Canadian films. They failed on both accounts and the government was co-opted into signing the Canadian Co-operation Project. In return for unfettered access to the Canadian market, American film companies promised to boost Canadian tourism, among other things, by putting Canadian place names in American films. The results were predictable. For the next 20 years, there were virtually no Canadian films made.

        Morris is more upbeat about modern Canadian film history. The Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC) was created in 1967, and given an annual budget of $10 million with which to fund Canadian film-making, promotion, and film festivals. Despite this tiny amount, there was a short-lived renaissance of low-budget, distinctly Canadian films, touched off by Don Shebib's 1970 classic Going Down the Road, about two Maritimers who leave for Toronto, seeking the good life, and finding only disappointment. This film was a commercial and critical success despite its typically downbeat Canadian ending and it has recently been released on videotape. By 1983, the CFDC had an annual budget of $60 million and was so launched into a series of big co-productions with other countries. The best of these resulted in movies like the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1984), based on Mordechai Richler's novel about Jewish-Canadian boy making it in business. But many were never released or were failures, both commercially and artistically. Today, the CFDC, now known as Telefilm has a budget close to $200 million and is involved with co-productions with Canadian television networks, guaranteeing the films a broadcast, and circumventing the problem of distribution.

        To date, aside from French language films, as the American film industry has vigorously opposed any production quotas or Canadian content regulations at movie theatres. There have been some recent low-budget runaway successes such as Mina Shum's Double Happiness (1994), the bitter-sweet tale of a Chinese-Canadian girl breaking away from her family's values, or Vince Natali's disturbing Cube (1998) where six people trapped in a huge and mysterious cube, turn on one another, a special effects film produced for an astounding $750,000. will likely be very few Canadian films made in the foreseeable future.
  1. A Primer on Canadian Film History
  2. Some Canadian Film Classics
  3. Using Film with Literature
  4. Types of Role Playing Activities for Scenes
  5. Appendix

Back to the top of this page.