The View from Here. . .or There

THE VIEW FROM HERE. . .OR THERE CANADA'S BEST FEATURES: CRITICAL ESSAYS ON 15 CANADIAN FILMS Edited by Gene Walz Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2002, 418 pp. NORTH OF EVERYTHING: ENGLISH-CANADIAN CINEMA SINCE 1980 Edited by William Beard and Jerry White Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2002, 518 pp. Right out of the gate, collections on Canadian cinema always seem burdened by the weightiness of representation. Any organization according to canon or genre, linguistic or regional divides, audience or gender will implicitly miss out on the whole. The editors of North of Everything (NOE) and Canada's Best Features (CBF) have very different goals in mind when limiting the scope of their anthologies-at least on the surface-to only the fifteen best Canadian films in the first case, and to only English-Canadian cinema since 1980 in the second. What distinguishes them at first glance, besides their respective foci on language and canon, is that NOE addresses a more clearly domestic audience, while CBF's purview seems to be international. And, although the former claims to be a more general Canadian cinema book, it nonetheless assumes its readers are well-versed in the debates about (English) Canadian cinema. CBF, on the other hand, functions more as a primer for new students of Canadian cinema. These assumptions about audience and intent are not to suggest that the appeal of either book is limited, however; both hold riches beyond their acknowledged parameters. The Walz anthology contains many new essays on canonical films and auteurs, but also some revised or reprinted essays, notably from the Canadian Journal of Film Studies. The book is part of Rodopi's Cross/Cultures series, Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English. With a few exceptions, Beard and White's collection, published by the University of Alberta Press, contains new material. A number of the same critics appear in both books (Blaine Allan, Christine Ramsay, Andre Loiselle, Thomas Waugh, Catherine Russell). Gene Walz provides the reader with an introduction that functions as a fairly detailed road map of Canada's critically acclaimed cinema, with various detours and stops along the way. The anthology is structured according to the chronology of film release dates and covers almost thirty years of feature filmmaking in Canada, beginning with Christine Ramsay's revised essay on Coin' Down the Road and ending with grad student/violinist Eluned Jones's essay on The Red Violin. Each chapter begins with detailed production information and plot summaries, followed by a filmography, list of reviews, and bibliography. Very useful indeed. Also useful is an annotated bibliography of selected Canadian cinema books and a listing of current and defunct periodicals and web sites that feature Canadian films. CBF is a reference book, as well as a collection of essays on a somewhat diverse selection of the films Canada can be proud of: what might be our most popular or prestigious cinema. It combines close readings of films with a variety of textual, cultural and film theories. By contrast, Beard and White position their survey in relation to earlier anthologies such as Take Two, Canadian Film Reader, and Self-Portrait, as well as reference books like David Clandfield's Canadian Film.1 Much is written in the introduction to NOE in defence of the editors' decision to focus on EnglishCanadian cinema and to exclude francophone cinema in their purview of Canadian productions, even while they include other non-English language (aboriginal) films. Full-sized, single-authored books, of which there are now a burgeoning number, are deemed by the editors to be too theoretical, too narrowly focussed, too broad historically, or too preoccupied with the problem of the construction of the nation. Admitting that the year 1980 is an arbitrary starting point for their study, Beard and White nevertheless scrutinize the terms underlying their focus on English-language films made in Canada post-1980. …

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