Gendering the Nation: Canadian Women's Cinema

by Kay Armatage (Editor), Kass Banning (Editor), Brenda Longfellow (Editor)

Overview

Since Nell Shipman wrote and starred in Back to God's Country (1919), Canadian women have been making films. The accolades given to film-makers such as Patricia Rozema (I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, When Night is Falling), Alanis Obomsawin (Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance), and Micheline Lanctôt (Deux actrices) at festivals throughout the world in recent years attest to the growing international recognition for films made by Canadian women. With Gendering the Nation the editors have produced a definitive collection of essays, both original and previously published, that address the impact and influence of a century of women's film-making in Canada. In dialogue with new paradigms for understanding the relationship of cinema with nation and gender, Gendering the Nation seeks to situate women's cinema through the complex optic of national culture. This collection of critical essays employs a variety of frameworks to analyse cinematic practices that range from narrative to documentary to the avant-garde.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802079640
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	06/26/1999
Series:	Heritage
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.77(d)

About the Author

Kay Armatage is Chair, Graduate Programme in Women's Studies, University of Toronto. Kass Banning teaches Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. Brenda Longfellow is a filmmaker and an associate professor at Atkinson College, York University. Janine Marchessault is an associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Art, Digital Media, and Globalization in the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University.

What People are Saying About This

Arthur and Marilouise Kroker

'[Gendering the Nation is] a unique, imaginative history of Canadian women's cinema that convincingly demonstrates that to know Canadian women's filmic imagination is to know another country - a country with a "global sense of place" beyond gender, identity, and nation.'

Thomas Waugh

'This is the most refreshing and most useful - quite simply the best - book on Canadian cinemas of the last decade. At last gender is consolidated as the central issue in questions of nationality and culture, and in a way that enriches, problematizes and expands the entire field far beyond currently existing canons. Gendering the Nation offers a wealth of perspectives by leading Canadian film scholars and by those who clearly soon will be.'

Editorial Reviews

'[Gendering the Nation is] a unique, imaginative history of Canadian women's cinema that convincingly demonstrates that to know Canadian women's filmic imagination is to know another country - a country with a "global sense of place" beyond gender, identity, and nation.' Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, authors of Hacking the Future 'This is the most refreshing and most useful - quite simply the best - book on Canadian cinemas of the last decade. At last gender is consolidated as the central issue in questions of nationality and culture, and in a way that enriches, problematizes and expands the entire field far beyond currently existing canons. Gendering the Nation offers a wealth of perspectives by leading Canadian film scholars and by those who clearly soon will be.' Thomas Waugh, Professor of Film Studies, Concordia University, and author of the forthcoming The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema

From the Publisher