Hollywood North: The Feature Film Industry in British Columbia

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.

“British Columbia has become in the span of twenty-five years one of
the largest centres of film and television production in North
America,” observes Mike Gasher, a professor of journalism at Concordia
University and the coauthor of Mass Communications in Canada. In a
well-documented study that features interviews with retired B.C.
politicians and film/cultural bureaucrats, Gasher traces the history of
filmmaking in British Columbia, describes the various policy initiatives
of different government regimes as they relate to the film industry, and
examines the growth and political and economic effects of the
“Hollywood North” phenomenon. He discusses cinema “as a medium of
expression specific to a geographically situated culture” and argues
that British Columbia’s indigenous film industry doesn’t fit the
national frame. A textual analysis of several films leads him to
conclude that the province is particularly well suited to portraying
“a global sense of place” through its feature film industry.
Hollywood North will particularly interest film educators and students,
cultural policymakers, and media historians, but the author’s
accessible style should garner the book a general audience as well.