Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
Since the 1980s, a generation of new filmmakers has
emerged in Canada who together have taken Canadian
films in different directions from the downbeat realism
that characterized the first wave of Canadian feature films
in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of these directors, including Jerry Cicoretti (b. 1956), David Cronenberg, Atom
Egoyan (b. 1960), Bruce MacDonald (b. 1959), Don
McKellar (b. 1963), Kevin McMahon, Jeremy Podeswa
(b. 1962), and Patricia Rozema (b. 1958), are located in
Toronto. The city is home to the annual Toronto
International Film Festival (TIFF), which, since its
inception in 1975, has grown to become one of the
largest and most important film festivals in the world.
A major part of the festival each year from 1984 to 2004
was the Perspective Canada series, a program of new
Canadian features. The series provided the highest international profile anywhere for new Canadian films, and
all of these filmmakers had their work featured within
it. As of 2004, TIFF altered its programming format
so that only first-time directors are featured in the
Canada First series, while work by other Canadian directors is integrated into the other programs. As of 2006,
TIFF has screened an astonishing 1,500 Canadian
feature films.
David Cronenberg’s international success as a
Toronto-based filmmaker, moving from low-budget horror movies to internationally acclaimed art films, was
the inspiration for many of these other directors. After
Cronenberg, Rozema gained international recognition
with I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987), a comedy
about a nerdy young woman, which became a surprise hit
at both the Cannes and Toronto film festivals. Atom Egoyan has successfully combined the formalist mannerisms of his early films (Next of Kin [1984], Family
Viewing [1987], and Speaking Parts [1989]), with mainstream accessibility in The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and
Felicia’s Journey (1999). Born in Egypt and raised in an
Armenian family in Victoria, British Columbia, Egoyan
emphasized issues of ethnic identity in his early films. His
success has prompted other young Canadian filmmakers
to explore their own ethnicity in relation to the nation.
Films such as Masala (Srinivas Krishna, 1991), in which
the Hindu god Krishna appears wearing a Toronto
Maple Leaf hockey jersey; Double Happiness (Mina
Shum, 1994), an exploration of the filmmaker’s own
cultural identity as a Chinese Canadian in Vancouver
starring Sandra Oh, who has since gained wider attention
in the American independent breakthrough hit Sideways
(2004); and Rude (Clement Virgo, 1995), a film about
black life in urban Toronto, provide a more accurate
reflection of Canada’s actual ethnic diversity than earlier
Canadian cinema did. Deepa Mehta (b. 1950) is an
Indo-Canadian filmmaker whose films Fire (1996),
Earth (1998), and Water (2005) were filmed and set in
India. At the same time, directors who have established
international reputations seem to be moving away from
Canadian concerns and making more mainstream movies. Rozema’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park
(1999) was a bigger budget film made in the United
Kingdom; Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005) is
a crime film set in Anytown, USA, and stars actors Ed
Harris, William Hurt, and Viggo Mortenson; and
Egoyan’s Where the Truth Lies (2005) features his most
conventional narrative structure, a murder mystery
involving a Lewis-and-Martin-like comedy duo starring
Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon.
Although English-Canadian feature filmmaking is
centered in Toronto, films are also produced in other
regions of Canada. In the East, the Newfoundland director William D. MacGillivray has produced a series of
intelligent dramas (Stations [1983] and Life Classes
[1987]), while in the West, the Calgary-based filmmaker
Gary Burns (The Suburbanators [1995] and Kitchen
Party [1997]) has gained attention with his hip comedy
waydowntown (2000). The Winnipeg Film Group has
developed a distinct style known as ‘‘prairie postmodernism,’’ its most significant practitioner being Guy Maddin
(b. 1956), whose films, such as Tales from the Gimli
Hospital (1988), Careful (1992), and the brilliant short
The Heart of the World (2000), hark back to the classic
styles of silent cinema.