Candid Eyes: Essays on Canadian Documentaries

265 Pages·2003·2.146 MB·English

by  Jim Leach, Jeannette Sloniowski

CANDID EYES
ESSAYS ON CANADIAN DOCUMENTARIES
Even before the creation of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in
1939, documentaries dominated Canada’s film production; since then,
more than any other form, they have continued to be crucial to the
formation of Canada’s cinematic identity. Surprisingly, there has been
very little critical writing on this distinguished body of work. Candid
Eyes: Essays on Canadian Documentaries addresses this oversight in the
scholarly literature with an exceptional collection of essays by some of
Canada’s best-known film scholars. Focusing on films produced in
French and English under the NFB umbrella, the fourteen essays in this
book discuss and critique such landmark documentaries as Lonely Boy
(1961),Pour la suite du monde (1963), and Kanehsatake (1993). This long-
awaited and much-needed volume will be an indispensable resource
for anyone seriously interested in Canadian film studies.
jim leach and jeannette sloniowski teach in the Department of
Communications, Popular Culture, and Film at Brock University.
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CANDID EYES
Essays on
Canadian Documentaries
Edited by Jim Leach and Jeannette Sloniowski
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
©University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2003
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-4732-7 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-8299-8 (paper)
Printed on acid-free paper
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Candid eyes : essays on Canadian documentaries / edited by Jim
Leach and Jeannette Sloniowski.
ISBN 8-8020-4732-7 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-8299-8 (pbk.).
1. Documentary films – Canada – History and criticism. 2. National
Film Board of Canada. I. Leach, Jim II. Sloniowski, Jeannette
Marie, 1946–
PN1995.9.D6C35 2003 070.1(cid:2)8 C2002-903319-5
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to
its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the
Ontario Arts Council.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities
and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for
its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
To Joe, Lisa, and Mick, and to Jenny, Aphra, and Nat
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Realist documentary, with its streets and cities and slums and mar-
kets and exchanges and factories, has given itself the job of making poe-
try where no poet has gone before it, and where no ends, sufficient for
the purposes of art, are easily observed. It requires not only taste but
also inspiration, which is to say a very laborious, deep-seeing, deep-
sympathizing creative effort indeed.
John Grierson
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Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Contributors xiii
Introduction 3
jim leach and jeannette sloniowski
Geography and Myth in Paul Tomkowicz: Coordinates of
National Identity 13
richard hancox
The Days before Christmas and the Days before That 31
seth feldman
From Obscurity in Ottawa to Fame in Freedomland:
Lonely Boy and the Cultural Meaning of Paul Anka 48
barry keith grant
Images and Information: The Dialogic Structure of Bûcherons
de la Manouane by Arthur Lamothe 61
peter harcourt
Linking Community Renewal to National Identity:
The Filmmakers’ Role in Pour la suite du monde 71
david clandfield