One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

In this book, University of Calgary professor George Melnyk sets out to
explain “the contradiction between Canadian film’s artistic
accomplishment and its acknowledged public invisibility by outlining the
history of cinema in Canada, its main players and developers and the
trends that have evolved into underlying themes.”

The overarching structure of the book’s 17 chapters is chronological,
starting with the invention of the cinema and concluding with the
author’s thought-provoking musings on the future of Canadian film.
Topics addressed in between include the creation of provincial film
agencies and the Canadian Film Development Corporation; the
establishment and achievements of the National Film Board; the emergence
of, and competitiveness between, the anglophone and francophone film
industries; the rise of Aboriginal and women’s films; the
interventions of reviewers, academics, and film historians; the
experiments of underground filmmakers; and the impact of technology and
the digital revolution.

Melynk’s prose occasionally lapses into the “obscurantist scholarly
discourse” he decries, but that is a minor quibble about a book that
makes a substantial contribution to Canadian film studies, and is
certain to be well received by cineastes and cultural historians.