Shooting From the East: Filmmaking on the Canadian Atlantic by Darrell Varga (review)

SHOOTING FROM THE EAST: FILMMAKING ON THE CANADIAN ATLANTIC By Darrell Varga Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015, 384 pp.REVIEWED BY JOHN MCCULLOUGHDarrell Vargas new book, Shooting from East, may have achieved un-thinkable: he's provided an account of Canadian film production culture so lively that it actually encourages us to watch films he writes about. Including lots of excerpts from personal interviews with filmmakers, close readings of both familiar and unfamiliar work, and some revelations from archives, book assumes a stance at once theoretically rigorous and rhetorically down-to-earth. For instance, between snippets from theorists Henri Lefebvre, Horni Bhabha and Bill Nichols, we find author referring to characters in some of films as locals, geezers and oddballs, which immediately serves to deflate much of cultural capital of high theory. Or, rather, and this is probably closer to Vargas intention, theory he's using is woven with raw material of everyday; in this book, theories about spatial relations, nationalism, racial relations, global culture and class relations provide a rich lens through which to imagine radical possibilities of cinema.Many of films and related activities and events that are featured in Shooting from The East are meant to serve as examples of cinema as political praxis, one that challenges centrist bias and privilege of Canadian cinema and suffocating effects of global commercial cinema most often associated with Hollywood. There's a wealth of proof of viability of this radical cinema politics, Varga argues, if one considers richness and integrity of best of Adantic filmmaking culture-from art films made in region to film co-ops that sustain a diverse range of filmmaking practices. But, this requires a change of perspective and, throughout book, Varga explains how meaning of cinema depends on who determines centre, and where that centre is located. In spirit of Canadian scholars going back as far as Grant and Innis, but using language of contemporary theory, Varga asserts that, viewed from a critical spatial perspective, the discourse of power is written on space of nation (323). The dominance of Central Canada- Ottawa-Montreal-Toronto corridor-throughout nation's filmmaking history has positioned all other sites of film activity as regional, by default. By approaching his subject in this manner, Varga helps us understand how every regional cinema begins its life in a sort of debt position, always working to break even. To break even in this scenario would mean to gain a degree of autonomy and a level of support that is currently denied film artists; or, more precisely, these very qualities are actually set against each other, particularly so in neoliberalism, so that artist is now given choice of having autonomy but not support, or they can have support but not autonomy. The books informed and spirited response to this context gives it an assertive, even aggressive, edge-captured in title-making it a unique and important contribution to scholarship about film in Canada.If focus of book was only to lament dominance of Toronto it would quickly lose its charm. Instead, having introduced conceptual problems of centrism and regionalism, Varga proceeds, in Chapter 1, to high road of close readings and critical analysis-the bedrock of film studies-by looking at his favourite films: those of Bill MacGillivary and magnum opus by Brothers Jones and NIFCO, The Adventures of Faustus Bidgood. These are all in art film tradition and Varga applauds creative autonomy, freedom and innovation that characterises such work. Providing details from personal interviews with filmmakers and extensive research and close readings, chapter makes a compelling argument for considering ruins of art film as a refuge against onslaught of entertainment films that conceptualize all places as space to be colonized. …

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