IFCO's TRIM BIN: Discussions on Contemporary Celluloid Practices

"IT'S SOOO CANADIAN".

I don't want to call myself an expert on what shapes national identity. I am an immigrant and my cultural boundaries are in a constant state of mutation, creating new dynamic relationships with the environment I am now in. However, I was told once "do not lose your Russianness". So, even though I am floating in indecisiveness regarding who I am, I possess "Russianness" that is an indistinguishable part of my  identity.

If we blew up the scale of an identity map from a single individual to the whole country, we would see that "Canadianness" persists the same way as my "Russianness" does. Culture caught on celluloid becomes fixed filmic evidence, similar to that of a scene in a suspense film; where one can search for the elusive clues of what "Canadianness" means. Now, I am on a mission, on my new personal quest to try and formulate my own definition of "Canadianness". I will keep you posted on how this investigation unfolds.

Truly yours,
Irina Lyubchenko

SOOO CANADIAN EH! by PATRICE JAMES

It’s interesting how often I’ve encountered, or even myself uttered the phrase – “that’s sooo Canadian”, not only in reference to Canadian cinema, but in reference to so many ‘things’ that can be considered to be just “sooo Canadian”.  In actuality I’ve had a relationship with this nation of ‘in-betweens’ for a long time even before I arrived in Canada nearly 23 years ago.  I grew up watching Canadian TV shows like The Littlest Hobo; Beachcombers and  The Raccoons; wow I’m really dating myself.  And long before I entered into film studies at Carleton University, I’d already developed a preconceived notion about Canada and its ever ambiguous landscape and culture(s) etceteras.  My perception of this land was that it was extremely isolated, naked of any real dynamism; trapped in between some sort of makeshift identity, that had some whisperings of both USA and UK cultural markers.  I mean; the language, music, culture and geography is somewhat similar, yet greatly dissimilar all at once to the latter nations’.
I began to ultimately grasp some understanding of what is meant by “sooo Canadian”, especially during my stint at Carleton.  I began to identify with the angst of displaced characters , like Peter and Joey in Donald Shebib’s iconic film - Goin' Down the Road.  Wasn’t my family and I, and sooo many Canadians, just like these characters in one main way?  I mean, I’m not a young white male from Nova Scotia, travelling to the big urban centre (Toronto) in search of a better life; but I was a young immigrant who travelled half way across the world, from a little West Indian island, with my family in search of a better life and new beginning in Canada.
I think so much of being Canadian is wrapped up in this constant search for something more!  Something more beyond the class we’re born into; beyond our gender limitations; beyond other imagined, or real social constraints.  As well, like Peter and Joey, a lot of people will never be able to escape certain prescribed stations in life, no matter how hard they try; they’ll remain perpetual underdogs, and though this may seem extremely fatalistic;  I’m often fascinated by just how many other Canadian films I’ve enjoyed over the years, which situate their protagonists in environments or situations, which somehow often ends up displacing them; ‘born losers’ so to speak.
Another common notion that comes to mind as soon as I conjecture about what is meant by “sooo Canadian”, is a perception of a Canadian obsession with duality; cultural duality, linguistic duality, geographic duality.  Sooo many Canadians want to be from ‘somewhere else’, and for those of us who immigrated here, we’re either constantly trying to assimilate, or desperately trying to hold on to our original culture(s).  Canadian cinema has been instrumental in its attempts to explore, delineate and explain this constant Canadian dichotomy of dualities. 
Films for instance like Deepa Mehta’s Heaven on Earth speak directly to both our need as Canadians born or naturalized, to be constantly in search of something more, something better; along with certain of our struggles around cultural duality.  In Heaven and Earth, the film’s leading female protagonist (Chand), leaves her homeland of India to relocate to Ontario, Canada.  She has left all that is familiar to her behind, to embark on a promising new life, as a happy new bride.  Surely one’s perception is that she will enjoy a much higher quality of life in ANYWHERE Ontario, Canada, when compared to what her quality of life in India might have been.  As the film unravels though; we see that this new bride, although in a new and more modernized land, becomes trapped in a cycle of violence which is deeply mired in her traditional Indian culture.  She has one foot in the new world, and the other foot in the old world, and when both worlds collide, her only escape is through her OWN imagination.
So when I think about the notion of a “Sooo Canadian” cinematic experience; I think of a Canadian obsession with always searching, and being trapped between dual experiences/realities.

National Cinematic Identity. What is it? by DAVE JOHNSON

I cannot consider myself an authority on the subject of cinematic identity, but being that I am a practitioner in the celluloid arts and a Canadian. I am submitting a “rant”, if you will, on what I believe should be a form of national cinema.
It is without a doubt that Canadian cinema was born through the loins of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). This cinema was that of primarily documentary genre and later animation. These early generation NFB films created a whole industry for Canada as a self sustained unit, creating stories of so called far away lands only to be shown within Canadian theaters as news reels. Moving forward to 1967, the first screening of Michael Snow’s film Wavelength was received with the audience members throwing their chairs in reaction to such a film. With this, some could argue, was the birth of Canadian avante-garde film, even though the film debut was in New York(?). In the 80’s we saw Canadian films, produced through American companies, such as Porkies, Meatballs, etc. and the establishment of such directors as David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, etc. etc.  All this just scrapes the surface of the history of Canadian Cinema. If one was to throw all this in a bowl we would then have a salad of different styles and influences. Are these good examples of Canadian cinema? Well, one could argue that this is separate from American cinema in that they all have some sort of temporal displacement, landscape becomes the muse, characters, even the so called heroes are unsavoury, and essay upon essay has been and will be written making one point or another defining “OUR” cinema.
Let’s move on from this tired debate and talk briefly about the 1985 manifesto of R. Bruce Elder "The Cinema We Need."

“In this essay, Elder attacks the attempt on the part of Canadian filmmakers to make "New Narrative film": a cinema that is different from Hollywood cinema's desire for traditional storytelling and which draws upon, in part, the aesthetic of the Canadian avant-garde. Elder claims that Canadian narrative cinema will never be able to compete with American products and that this "New Narrative cinema" engages in a process of vandalization and commercialization of the Canadian avant-garde tradition.” (Referenced from National Identity, Canadian Cinema, and Multiculturalism:  Scott MacKenzie, University of Glasgow http://www.uqtr.ca/AE/vol_4/scott.htm).

Now I’ve been known to miss an obvious point or two, but, from a certain context, and from a cultural viewpoint, this states that we need to ignore the American import and concentrate on our own engineering of cinema. The only way this could be done is through political awareness, education (or an unbiased knowledge of cinema as an art form, not just an entertainment industry) and through support for artist centers and cooperatives. If we want to define Canadian cinema we must continue to create and support it despite of what our imports tell us. A Canadian cinematic identity will only be prevalent if we choose to create one. From a practitioner’s point of view, I would like to not worry so much about trying to identify and worry more about engineering our own cinema… keep creating with awareness and put it on the big screen, a screen, ANY screen! The more we create the more we will be recognized!!! Create, don’t be Created!!!!

By MATTHEW A. MACDONALD

I don't mean to offend anyone, but ...

When I was teenager (1993-1999), and before I was particularly passionate about filmmaking and took a genuine liking for the certainly not mainstream films of Jean-Luc Goddard, Vittorio De Sica, and Michelangelo Antonioni (though, alas, no Canadian directors of note), my friends and I generally understood that if one of us referred to a movie or television show as being "so Canadian," it simply meant the production values were relatively low, the images were inexplicably grainer than American productions we were used to seeing, the acting was not quite as good as American productions, and the movie or show itself was often not quite as interesting.

This may sound harsh, but it's true, and I think it was, and perhaps is still, true for a lot of people. For example, the writing and acting in the new TV show "Chicago Code" is clearly a cut above the writing and acting in the Canadian "Rookie Blue," although Canadian production values have otherwise definitely improved since the 1990s compared to American productions.

When I first met the woman who would become my wife, she expressed the same feeling about Canadian cinema. Canadian movies, she felt, just didn't stand up very well next to American movies, at least most of the time. Sure, she loved Canadian children's shows like "Danger Bay," but her general feeling was that Canadian movies and TV shows were, on a whole, not so much "so Canadian," but rather "too Canadian."

In 1995, for instance, while U.S. studios released movies like Apollo 13, Braveheart, Babe, Sense and Sensibility, Dead Man Walking, Leaving Las Vegas, and Nixon, Canadian filmmakers gave us what? Here are the Genie nominees for Best (Canadian) Picture of 1995:

(1) "Magic in the Water," a children's film about which Roger Ebert writes: "One of the problems with the first two-thirds of "Magic in the Water" is that we don't see Orky [the sea creature the movie is focused on]. One of the problems with the last third is that we do. Orky turns out to be singularly uncharismatic, looking like an ashen Barney on downers. ... "Magic in the Water" is innocuous fun, but slow, and not distinguished in the special effects department."

(2) "Le Confessional"

(3) "Liste noire"

(4) "Margaret's Museum" [a decent, if still a bit "too-Canadian" film, in my opinion]

(5) "Rude"

Huh?

Yes, the U.S. spends a lot more money on films, which accounts for its higher output and generally higher production values, but then it seems the Canadian solution is a strange one: produce films that are too-often so culturally idiosyncratic and self-absorbed that they only rarely and then often only tangentially touch upon universal themes that would allow them to appeal to a broader audience and break out of the "so Canadian/too Canadian" mold.

Part of the problem may be the hybrid identity life in Canada often forces upon people. It is often said that Americans, the British, the French, the Japanese, and so on, generally have a much clearer, more coherent, positive sense of national identity than Canadians, who very often include "not American" as an implicit part of their self-understanding. As a result, I suspect, it may be easier for filmmakers from these countries to move beyond persistent personal questions of identity and belonging to make films with more confidence and much broader appeal because they focus on more universal themes or, when they focus on more idiosyncratic concerns, at least they do not simply assume that audiences will care—they actually make an effort to show the audience why it should care.

Sure, it's important to tell different, meaningful stories, and Canadian filmmakers certainly do. But when Canadian cinema becomes mired in cultural idiosyncrasy and narcissistically obsessed with telling Canadian stories and stories about it's search for "identity," all the while simply assuming that other people will care, as I believe it sometimes does, instead of simply telling good stories, it suffers and becomes "too much."

Kaleidoscope by IRINA LYUBCHENKO

Long before I knew I was going to come to Canada I watched the film Léolo that was nominated for 1992 Cannes Film Festival and was directed by Canadian filmmaker Jean-Claude Lauzon. I assumed it was French but to my surprise I discovered it was made in Canada. My Russian TV, which delivered stories of anxiety and political cataclysms daily, never mentioned Canada in any of them. Even though I knew where it was positioned geographically, I almost didn’t believe in its existence. It was a mythical land to me.
I didn’t hear the stories of violence coming from this country but I knew that great films were coming out. Furthermore, I identified with Canada because it had the National Film Board, this Government funded agency supported animation as did my favorite Russian animation studio, Soyuzmultfilm.
I have to admit that my knowledge of Canadian cultural landscape back then was shaped by the voices that were directed outside of the country where they originated from, towards foreigners. These voices shaped Canadian cultural identity for me. Now I am inside this voice-making machine, hearing multiplicities, that are not edited down to create coherence, a unified body of national identity. The cultural picture I am now trying to assemble is not a jigsaw puzzle, where each piece has its original purpose and creates meaning only when it is in the right place. I would like to think of Canadian culture as of kaleidoscope, where with each slight movement an original mosaic is created, emphasizing the unique charisma of Canadian culture that allows re-editing of the national identity in a continuous cycle of multicultural transformation.