Canadian Dreams And American Control

A history of the Canadian film industry from its inception to 1980s, providing a chronological record of the conflicting priorities between American capital, which seeks to shape the Canadian film industry to its own image, and Canada's stated goal, which is to serve the Canadian people with films autonomously conceived, produced, and exhibited.

In this authoritative work, Seiler and Seiler argues that the establishment and development of moviegoing and movie exhibition in Prairie Canada is best understood in the context of changing late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century social, economic, and technological developments. From the first entrepreneurs who attempted to lure customers in to movie exhibition halls, to the digital revolution and its impact on moviegoing, Reel Time highlights the pivotal role of amusement venues in shaping the leisure activities of working- and middle-class people across North America. As marketing efforts, the lavish interiors of the movie palace and the romantic view of the local movie theatre concealed a competitive environment in which producers, exhibitors, and distributors tried to monopolize the industry and drive their rivals out of business. The pitched battles and power struggles between national movie theatre chains took place at the same time that movie exhibitors launched campaigns to reassure moviegoers that theatres were no longer the "unclean and immoral places of amusement" of yesteryear. Under the leadership of impresarios, the movie theatre rose up from these attacks to become an important social and cultural centre - one deemed "suitable for women and children." An innovative examination of moviegoing as a social practice and movie exhibition as a commercial enterprise, Reel Time depicts how the industry shaped the development of the Canadian Prairie West and propelled the region into the modern era. Robert M. Seiler is associate professor emeritus in communication and culture at the University of Calgary. Tamara P. Seiler is professor emeritus of Canadian studies at the University of Calgary. Reel Time is their second joint publication.

This is the first book to comprehensively examine the development of English-Canadian cinema since 1980; previous books in English have dealt either with specific films or filmmakers, with policy, or with specific genres (avant-garde film, documentary, films by women, etc.). It deals with regional and institutional questions, with the new authors that are defining contemporary cinema in English Canada, with avant-garde work and work by Aboriginal people. Bringing together a wide variety of contributors, the book deals with an enormous amount of cinema that has helped transform North American culture of the last two decades.

A nation is given shape in large part through the cultural activities of its builders. Historically, nationalists have turned to the arts and media to articulate and institute a sense of unique national identity. This was certainly true of Canada in the twentieth century. Canadian Content explores ways in which nationhood was defined and pursued through cultural means in Canada throughout the last century. As a framework for the study, Ryan Edwardson distinguishes between three phases of Canadianization: support for the arts and cultured mass media during the colony-to-nation transition; the 'new nationalist' empowerment of multi-brow culture and the call for state intervention in the mid-1960s and 1970s; and the 'cultural industrialism' initiated by the federal government under Pierre Trudeau in 1968. Examining each phase in its turn, Canadian Content looks at Canada as an ongoing postcolonial process of not one but a series of radically different nationhoods, each with its own valued but tentative set of cultural criteria for orchestrating and implementing a Canadian national experience. Considering the relationship between culture and national identity, this study offers an idea of what it means to be Canadian, and suggests just how adaptable, problematic, and ongoing the pursuit of nationhood can be.

This fourth volume of the History of the Prairie West Series contains fifteen articles examining the rich history of business and early industry in Canada's Prairie Provinces prior to the Great Depression. Without denying the central importance of agriculture in the development and growth of the early Prairie West, the essays in Business and Inudstry explore the lesser known history of some of the earliest businesses in the region. As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, a time when the three Prairie Provinces comprise the fastest-growing, and perhaps the most dynamic, economic regions in Canada, it may be worthwhile to cast our gaze back to an earlier and simpler era. In these essays, we can glimpse the origins of the entrepreneurial spirit and business ehtos that have come to define the business culture of the Prairie West.

First signed in 1886, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works is still the cornerstone of international copyright law. Set against the backdrop of Canada's development from a British colony into a middle power, this book reveals the deep roots of conflict in the international copyright system and argues that Canada's signing of the convention can be viewed in the context of a former British colony's efforts to find a place on the world stage. In this groundbreaking book, Sara Bannerman examines Canada's struggle for copyright sovereignty and explores some of the problems rooted in imperial and international copyright that affect Canadians to this day.

Contents: Part I: Print Industries Book Publishing, Rowland Lorimer Periodical Publishing, Lon Dubinsky Newspaper Publishing, Christopher Dornan Part II: Sound Industries Sound Recording,

A comprehensive history of the international movie industry during the 20th century. Essays examine the film industries of 19 countries focusing on individual national movie industries' economic, social, aesthetic, technological and political/ideological development within an international context.