Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Urban Imaginary in Canadian Cinema

The City of Faith: Navigating Piety in Arcand’s Jésusde Montréal (1989)

The City of Dreams: The Sexual Self in Lauzon’s Léolo(1992)

The Gendered City: Feminism in Rozema’s Desperanto(1991), Pool’s Rispondetemi (1991), andVilleneuve’s Maelstrom (2000)

The City Made Flesh: The Embodied Other in Lepage’s LeConfessional (1995) and Egoyan’s Exotica (1994)

The Diasporic City: Postcolonialism, Hybridity, and Transnationalityin Virgo’s Rude (1995) and Mehta’sBollywood/Hollywood (2001)

The City of Transgressive Desires: Melodramatic Absurdity inMaddin’s The Saddest Music in the World (2003) andMy Winnipeg (2006)

The City of Eternal Youth: Capitalism, Consumerism, and Generationin Burns’s waydowntown (2000) and Radiant City(2006)

The City of Dysfunction: Race and Relations in Vancouver fromShum’s Double Happiness (1994) to Sweeney’sLast Wedding (2001) and McDonald’s The Love Crimesof Gillian Guess (2004)

Conclusion: National Identity and the Urban Imagination

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Promotional Information

Film and the City puts forth a new paradigm for the consideration of Canadian identity in cinema. Contending that earlier models were dependent on a largely rural representation of the nation. Melnyk shows how recent urban films facilitate and showcase a new mode of identity formation and articulation ... Through examining specific films and filmmakers with an eye to their locality, and by folding them into a composite constellation that illustrates new ideas of Canadian identity, this text will surely provide a new marker for discussions of this evergreen topic. -- William Beard, University of Alberta

About the Author

George Melnyk is associate professor in theDepartment of Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary.He is the author of One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema(2004), as well as the editor of The Young, the Restless, and theDead: Interviews with Canadian Filmmakers (2008) and, with BrendaAustin-Smith, of The Gendered Screen: Canadian WomenFilmmakers (2010).

Reviews

"Film and the City" puts forth a new paradigm for the consideration of Canadian identity in cinema. Contending that earlier models were dependent on a largely rural representation of the nation. Melnyk shows how recent urban films facilitate and showcase a new mode of identity formation and articulation ... Through examining specific films and filmmakers with an eye to their locality, and by folding them into a composite constellation that illustrates new ideas of Canadian identity, this text will surely provide a new marker for discussions of this evergreen topic.
- William Beard, University of Alberta