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Home , Atom Egoyan, Claude Jutra, David Hemblen, Denys Arcand, Elias Koteas, Gabrielle Rose (actress)

AKE OMR TOP by theTorontoInternationalFilmFestivalin1993.David official Top10. and Cronenberg isrepresentedbythreefilms, point toseveraldifferenceswiththeofficialTop10listissued list. Whileentirelyunscientific,thisalphabeticallistingdoes matched withmyownchoicesandcameupthisTop20 College, )andMarcGlassman(freelancecritic Canadian cinema,Iaskedthecontributingeditors,Tom submit anevendozenoftheirfavouritetitles.Imixedand editor ofseveralbooksonCanadianfilmfromToronto),to in Ottawa),MaurieAlioff(screenwriterandlectureratVanier McSorley (directorofprogrammingatCinemathequeCanada In Take One's , ongoing efforttopromoteandcelebrate and hewascompletelyshutoutofthe Dead Ringers,Crash prendre just asthey'rebeingrevivedbydirectors rangingfromWongKar-Wai to OliverStone,notmentionmainstream TVlike Canadian FilmAward: FeatureFilm. It's instructivetoview ad-libbing stylethatistheidealcorrelative oftheslaphappyturmoil his homosexualityandendsareal-lifeaffairwithHaitianwoman searching forpersonal,politicalandsexualidentity.Hesaysyes to the pictureaimsatevoking. (Johanne Harrelle).Asdirector,Jutra discoversarelentlesslyjittery, life. Asthefilm'srestlessyounghero,JutrachasesaroundMontreal, plotless excursionintohisownpsycheatadecisivemomentin his In hisdebutfeature,ClaudeJutratakesthevieweronavirtually Garant Jean—Claude Labrecque,BernardGosselin 1964 99m A Hereafter, Exotica Wyndham Wise offer ourselectionforyourconsideration. Canadian cinematobepartofitsmandate,andwemodestly fearlessly considersidentifyingandcelebratingthebestin represents somethingclosetomindporridge, Mireille Dansereau.Whilesomemightconsiderlistsofanything ,WilliamD.MacGillivray,FrancisMankiewiczand Kotcheff, PhillipBorsos,MichelBrault,JeanPierreLefebvre, each, andtherestoflistisroundedoutwithfilmsbyTed wisdom thatthebestinCanadiancinemacomesfromQuebec. Atom Egoyanisalsorepresentedbythreefilms, ,ClaudeJutraandDonShebibhavetwofilms there hasbeenasignificantshiftawayfromtheaccepted with tout prendre can betranslated as "Everything'sUpforGrabs." prod Johanne Harrelle,ClaudeJutra,VictorDesy,TaniaFedor,GuyHoffmann, Les FilmsCassiopee,Orion and A toutprendre's The , m Maurice Blackburn,JeanCousineau,Serge classic FrenchNewWavemoves suggesting verystronglythat p/d/sc/ed NYPD Blue.Atout MA ph The Sweet Take One , IAN of all Time

Jacques Gagnon as Benoit in Claude Jutra's Antoine

The Adjuster 1991 102m prod Ego Film Arts, p , disc Atom Egoyan ph Paul Sarosssy ed m with , Jennifer Dale, Patricia Collins, , Arsinee Khanjian, , Don McKellar, Insurance adjuster Noah Render (Elias Koteas) attempts to restore the damaged lives of his clients. His methods are unorthodox: he sleeps with most of them, puts them up in a designated hotel, and quotes his profession's code to them like a mantra: "You may not know it yet, but you're in shock." Living with his film censor wife (or is she?) in a barren, unfinished suburban development, Noah's various encounters are interwoven with the story of Bubba (Maury Chaykin) and Mimi (Gabrielle Rose), a couple desperate to live out their fantasies to achieve passion. Egoyan's amoral yet compassionate protagonist is one of the most strangely compelling creations in all his cinema, and his effective use of widescreen describes the terrifying abyss that separates Noah from everyone he encounters.

Egoyan's best film to date, The Adjuster is a searching reinterpretation of Luis Buriuel's Nazarin, with distant echoes of 's The Sacrifice, and is a haunting drama of disconnection and desire. TM

II TAKE ONE 19 Archangel 1990 82m prod Ordnance Motion Pictures exp Andre Bennett p Greg Klymkiw d/ph/ed Guy Maddin sc Guy Maddin, George Toles with Margaret—Anne MacLeod, Ari Cohen, Victor Cowie, David Falkenberg, Kyle McCulloch, Kathy Marykuca

Set in the remote northern Russian town of Archangel at the end of the First World War, Archangel is the story of a one—legged amnesiac Canadian soldier, Lt. John Boles Les Bons debarras The (Kyle McCulloch). As he courageously fights 1980 114m prod Les Productions Prisma p Marcia Cou011e, the Huns and the Bolsheviks in a Claude Godbout d sc Rejean Apprenticeship of Ducharme ph Michel Brault ed Andre Corriveau m Bernard strategically suspect set of battles, made Buisson with Charlotte Laurier, , , more vague by the general amnesia , , Gilbert Sicotte Duddy Kravitz afflicting most of those around him, Boles 1974 121 m prod International Cinemedia Centre exp searches for his beloved, Iris. Trouble is, as Made during a period when Quebecois Gerald Schneider p John Kemeny d Ted Kotcheff sc filmmakers were fascinated by Mordecai Richler, Lionel Chetwynd novel Mordecai Richler we know and as John Boles has forgotten, ph Brian West ed Thom Noble m Stanley Myers with Iris is dead. dysfunctional losers—rather than today's Richard Dreyfuss, Micheline Lanctot, Jack Warden, Randy snappily dressed, gloomy yuppies—the late Quaid, Joseph Wiseman, Denholm Elliott, Joe Silver. Shot in sumptuous black and white worthy Francis Mankiewicz's best picture is saturated with a deep and satisfying If Canadian cinema is in some way defined by of Josef von Sternberg and filled with slices melancholy. Set during a cold, grey autumn Norman McLaren's pristine animation, Ted of the surreal and the cruel, Winnipeg in the Laurentian mountains, the movie Kotcheff's adaptation of Mordecai Richler's visionary Guy Maddin's second feature is a presents its fallen world through the eyes of novel comes across like a burp at a society masterpiece: a wistful, luminous conflation an obsessive young girl who won't let her ball. Duddy is an early Canadian feature that's of absurdity, high romance, heroic delusion mother (Marie Tifo) have a life. Imagined by not afraid to get its hands dirty in the material and the Canadian colonial. Buster Keaton the reclusive writer Rejean Ducharme, world. A young Jewish hustler grasps for would approve. ButWel, too. TM played by Charlotte Laurier, the kid is a success and breaks the hearts of everyone dangerously compelling seductress who around him. Despite the fact that Duddy wreaks havoc out of a need to control those Kravitz is a louse, you can't stop yourself from Between Friends she loves. Mankiewicz was one of the most responding to his naively hopeful, crackling 1973 90m prod Clearwater Films p G. Chalmers Adams d emotionally powerful, and yet subtle, of energy. It may be in bad taste, but it jumps at sc Claude Harz ph Richard Leiterman ed Canadian filmmakers. It's hard to you in Richard Dreyfuss's career—making Tony Lower, Donald Shebib m Matthew McCauley with understand why he's also one of the most performance. All Kotcheff had to do was keep Michael Parks, Bonnie Bedelia, Chuck Shamata, , Hugh Webster overlooked. MA up with the pace. MA : Film, Director, Screenplay, Actress (Marie In spite of the mythic resonance and justified Tifo), Supporting Actor (Germain Houde), Cinematography, "Richler has been accused of anti—Semitism in fame of Goin' Down the Road, Between Friends is Editing, Sound. this film, and at times he envisions Duddy really Shebib's finest effort. This tale of a and the Jewish subculture in Montreal as botched robbery of a mine in Northern venal, crass and materialistic. But it is Duddy, involves the troubled quartet of played so dynamically by Dreyfuss, who Chino (Chuck Shamata), his American surfing complicates and transcends cheap stereotype buddy Toby (Michael Parks), his girlfriend's by revealing compassion, family loyalty and father Will (Henry Beckman) and Coker a curious lonely vulnerability." Jump Cut (Hugh Webster). While the robbery is being Canadian Film Award: Film of the Year; Oscar nomination planned, Chino's girlfriend Ellie (Bonnie for Best Adapted Screenplay; Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Bedelia) becomes attracted to Toby.

A taut, serious dramatic study of loyalty, —U.S. relations and the limitations of male bonding, Between Friends also distinguishes itself with its intelligent, suggestive use of desolate Northern Ontario landscapes and a failed heist sequence TOP which rivals any film noir you can name. TM CANADIAN Dead Ringers 1988 113m prod The Mantle Clinic II exp Silvio Tabat, Carol Baum p , Marc Boyman d David Cronenberg sc David Cronenberg, Norman Snider book Bari Wood, Jack Geesland ph ed Ronald Sanders m Howard Shore with , Genevieve Bujold, Shirley Douglas, Stephen Lack, Heidi Von Palleske

The basic premise of Dead Ringers is derived from a novel based on a true incident. The twin gynecologists, Elliot and Beverly Mantle, played exquisitely and to perfection Le Declin de by Jeremy Irons, encounter a famous actress and carry on an affair with her. Elliot l'empire seduces her, pretending to be Beverly, and she ends up falling for Beverly. This leads to americain a rapid downhill spiral for the brothers into 1986 101m prod Corporation Image M & M, National Film Board exp Pierre Gendron p Rene Maio, Roger Frappier pills, eventual drug addiction and death. d/sc Denys Arcand ph Guy Dufaux ed Monique Fortier m Francois Dompierre with Remy Girard, Dorothea Berryman, Although fairly restrained for Cronenberg, , , , , Daniel Briere, Genevieve Rioux the film contains several brilliant set pieces. Crash In a particular lurid touch, inside the Mantle A black comedy of manners built around a clinic's operating theatre, the doctors and series of satiric and witty conversations 1996 98m prod Alliance Communications exp Robert nurses wear blood—red surgical masks and about sex, love and life between several Lantos, p/d/sc David Cronenberg ph Peter gowns. Beverly designs and commissions a Suschitzky ed Ronald Sanders m Howard Shore with Montreal academics who are friends, lovers James Spader, , Rosanna Arquette, Elias range of special gynecological instruments or both. The group includes a serial Koteas, Deborah linger for treating "mutant" women. Laid out on a adulterer, an AIDS sufferer and a divorcee trolley, they are truly the stuff of in a sadomasochistic relationship. It's as if Advertising executive James Ballard (James nightmares. WW these aging professors are the militants of Spader) and his wife Catherine (Deborah Genie Awards: Film, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actor 's faded Quiet Revolution who are Unger) lead complex, if hollow, sexual lives. (Jeremy Irons), Art Direction, Cinematography, Editing, now locked into a sexual roundelay as their Following a near—fatal car crash with Dr. Original Score, Sound Editing. only outlet for action and iconoclasm. As Le Helen Remington (Holly Hunter), Ballard is Chat dans le sac in 1964 was the rallying cry drawn into an exploration of the connections for a militant generation, Le Declin de l'empire between sex, danger and death. As their americain is its epitaph. involvement with scientist/photographer Vaughan (Elias Koteas), who specializes in This Oscar—nominated film put Arcand on restaging famous car crashes, and accident the international map as one of Canada's victim Gabrielle (Rosanna Arquette) greatest directors and was embraced by deepens, Ballard and Catherine discover English—Canadian audiences like no other new and disturbing ways of fucking and Quebecois film since Claude Jutra's Mon seeking the release of death. oncle Antoine. In post (first)—referendum Quebec, Arcand perfectly captures a society An intentionally controversial film, Crash is in transition in its frantic desire for neither pornographic nor dull, as its many individual happiness, which may or may critics have claimed, but rather a cold, not be historically linked to the decline of detached look at sexual obsession. It's a the American empire that we are now brave, brilliant film that maintains with witnessing. WW rigged assurity its non—narrative, anti—realist, cool—as—a—piece—of—highly- Genie Awards: Film, Director, Screenplay, Supporting Actor (Gabriel Arcand), Supporing Acress (Louise Portal), Editing, polished—steel conceptual idea— that some Sound, Sound Editing; Golden Reel Award; Oscar people can be sexually aroused by car nomination for Best Foreign—Language Film; International wrecks. Intensely erotic and surprisingly Film Critics' Prize at Cannes. witty, Crash is a cerebral ride, an end—of—the—millennium meditation on sex, death and alienation. WW Genie Awards: Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Sound Editing; Golden Reel Award; Special Jury Prize at Cannes. Exotica

1994 102m prod Ego Film Arts p Atom Egoyan, Camelia Frieberg disc Atom Egoyan ph ed Susan Shipton m Mychael Danna with , , Don McKellar, Arsinee Khanjian, Elias Koteas, Entre la mer et The Grey Fox Of the many interconnected relationships, 1983 91 m prod Mercury Pictures exp David Brady p Peter the film's most complex is between O'Brian d sc John Hunter ph Frank Tidy ed l'eau douce / a 30-something tax auditor (Bruce Frank Irvine m Michael Conway Baker, The Chieftains with , , Kenneth Pogue, Greenwood) who regularly patronizes Wayne Robson, Timothy Webber, Gary Reineke Drifting Upstream Exotica, always requesting the same table 1968 85m prod Cooperatio Inc. p Pierre Patry d Michel dancer (Mia Kirshner) who invariably starts Bill Minor (Richard Farnsworth), infamous Brault sc Denys Arcand, Michel Brault, Marcel Dube, Gerald out her routine dressed as a schoolgirl, a American stage robber, is released from San Godin, Claude Jutra ph , Michel Brault, very convincing Lolita, who, in fact, is not Jean-Claude Labrecque ed Michel Brault, Werner Nold m Quentin Prison after 33 years, "into the 20th Claude Gauthier with Claude Gauthier, Genevieve Bujold, too many years past her own minority. Their century." Following a botched train heist, Paul Gauthier, , Louise Latraverse relationship is intensely ritualized, and it is Minor flees northward to . only with the film's gradual unravelling that Under the name of Bill Edwards, Minor Co-written by director Michel Brault and such we fully understand its hidden meaning. passes as a prospector, does some horse luminaries as Denys Arcand, Claude Jutra, rustling, befriends the local RCMP officer Marcel Dube and Gerald Godin, this is a Egoyan's box-office breakthrough, Exotica is and takes a lover, a fiery feminist seminal film in Quebec cinema. Brault's most a film that displays a faith in cinema as a photographer played by Jackie Burroughs. poetic and richly complex fiction feature vehicle for provocation and intellectual Eventually his past catches up with him and concerns Claude Tremblay (Claude Gauthier), complexity. Egoyan creates a dreamy he returns to jail. who leaves his small town for Montreal. There atmosphere, one that reflects the partial, he falls in love with an actress, Genevieve fragmented way the character's pasts are A revisionist in the tradition of (Genevieve Bujold) and enters a singing uncovered bit by eloquent bit. WW Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Grey contest which launches his career. As he Genie Awards: Film, Director, Screenplay, Supporting Actor Fox is set in a mythic, nostalgic Canada becomes more famous, Claude drifts apart (Don McKellar), Art Direction, Costume Design, where manners receive respect, where order from his lover and when he tries to go home, Cinematography, Original Score; International Film Critics' Prize at Cannes. is preferable to law and fair play is more understands that things have changed forever. important than self-promotion. Richard Farnsworth gives a terrific performance as Contrasting Claude's Quiet Revolution- Going Down the gentlemanly bandit and shines in the inspired restlessness with the eternal flow of scenes with Burroughs who singlehandly the St. Lawrence River, Brault's evocative, turns him into a romantic lead. The Grey Fox episodic, often improvised first fiction feature the Road signaled the arrival of a major directorial is a startling work. Entre la mer et l'eau douce 1970 87m prod Evdon Films p/d/ed Donald Shebib sc William Fruet ph Richard Leiterman m Bruce Cockburn with talent in Phillip Borsos and is probably the is an engaging combination of Heraclitus and Doug McGrath, Paul Bradley, Jayne Eastwood, Cayle single most successful feature-film debut in Thomas Wolfe: the river is never the same, Chernin, Nicole Morin the history of Canadian cinema. WW and you really can't go home again. TM Pete (Doug McGrath) and his pal Joey (Paul Genie Awards: Film, Director, Screenplay, Supporting Bradley) are two wistful roustabouts from Actress (Jackie Burroughs), Art Direction, Original Score. the Maritimes with 30 bucks and an abused Chevrolet labelled "My Nova Scotia Home." They pick up and head for where they find temporary work in a soft-drink factory, drown their troubles in beer and make various and futile attempts to improve themselves. Joey marries a girl (Jayne Eastwood) he has made pregnant, then loses his job. After robbing a food store, Pete and Joey, still believing there is a better life somewhere, take to the road once more.

The most influential English-Canadian film of its generation with absolutely incredible performances by McGrath and Bradley, Shebib's first feature is still, today, an impressive piece of realist cinema. It's TOP intelligent blend of fiction and documentary = realism gives the film a clarity and insight into the lives of marginal people sharing a universal burden of existence, unable to cope even with their own aspirations, and there is never a loss of human dignity. WW : Feature Film, Actor (Doug McGrath, Paul Bradley).

SPRING 1998 III 1971 104m prod National Film Board p Marc Beaudet d Claude Jutra sc Clemont Perron ph Michel Brault ed Claude Jutra, Claire Boyer m Jean Cousineau with Jean Jesus de Montreal Duceppe, Jacques Gagnon, Lyne Champagne, , Claude Jutra, Monique Mercure 1989 118m prod Max Films, Gerad Mital Productions exp Monique Letourneau p Roger Frappier, Pierre Gendron d/sc Denys Arcand ph Guy Dufaux ed Isabelle Dedieu m In a mining town in the late 1940s in Quebec, Yves Laferriere with , Remy Girard, Benoit (Jacques Gagnon), a 15—year—old Monique Miller, Johanne—Marie Tremblay, Catherine Wilkening, orphan goes to live with his uncle Antoine (), the town's undertaker. When a group of actors is asked by the Young Benoit quietly observes the hypocrisy, The Sweet to revitalize the Passion joy, despair, carnality, class tension and Hereafter Play on Montreal's Mount Royal, the results strange melancholy of the adults who are electrifying. Led by unemployed actor surround him. On Christmas night, he is 1997 110m prod Ego Film Arts exp Robert Lantos, Andras by his uncle to a farm to collect the Hamori p Atom Egoyan, Camelia Frieberg disc Atom Daniel Coulombe (Lothaire Bluteau), Egoyan novel Russell Banks ph Paul Sarossy ed Susan the troupe creates a breathtaking body of a young boy who has died. Shipton m Mychael Danna with , Tom McCamus, reinterpretation which incorporates ancient Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Gabrielle Rose, , Arsinee Khanjian texts, historical and theological debates Released in post—FLQ Quebec, the film has been accused of being a backward—looking about Christ and even Hamlet's famous Based on the novel by Russell Banks, The postcard of an earlier Quebec society. It is. It soliloquy. As the production becomes a hit, Sweet Hereafter recounts the events leading is also, more importantly, a perceptive, the lines between fiction and reality become up to and following a school bus accident subtle and emotionally devastating portrait blurred, particularly for Daniel. The play that kills 14 children and injures many of pre—Quiet Revolution Quebec. Tracing the becomes a media sensation, too, much to the others. The story follows the families, told vast personal and political fissures about to alarm of church authorities. When the from multiple viewpoints, whose lives tear open the rural Catholic Quebec church intervenes to stop the new irrevocably change and the big city lawyer heartland, Jutra's episodic narrative production, the replication of the tale of (Ian Holm) who shows up in the community structure and inspired use of landscape Christ's persecution and death grows to hoping to sign people up for a class—action render unforgettable this portrait of a sad, eerie proportions. lawsuit. In the ensuing atmosphere of wintry town and the end of innocence. TM suspicion, guilt and doubt, a surviving A Borgesian weaving of the real and the Canadian Film Awards: Feature Film, Director, teenager (Sarah Polley) manages to regain fictional, the perceived and the invisible, Actor (Jean Duceppe). her strength and dignity, and by telling a lie, Arcand's most rewarding fiction feature to date reunites the community and drives the is an analysis of power, institutional authority, lawyer from the town. rampant materialism and the spiritual vacuum Stations in modem Quebec society. TM The film takes place in layers, on sometimes 1983 86m prod Picture Plant d William D. MacGillivray sc Genie Awards: Film, Director, Screenplay, Actor (Lothaire William D. MacGillivray, Michael Jones, Lionel Simmons ph subtly different temporal planes, both before Bluteau), Supporting Actor (Remy Girard), Art Direction, Lionel Simmons ed William D. MacGillivray, Lionel and after the accident. Told in —like Costume Design, Cinematography, Editing, Original Simmons with Michael Jones, Richard Boland, Libby fashion, Egoyan has made an almost perfect Score, Sound, Sound Editing; Golden Reel Award; Oscar Davies, Patricia Kipping nomination for Best Foreign—Language Film; Jury Prize at adaption of Banks's complex novel of guilt Cannes. When successful Vancouver television and redemption. The cast is seamlessly journalist Tom Murphy (Mike Jones) learns perfect, featuring a central performance by of a friend's suicide back home in St. John's, Holm as the deeply flawed lawyer with a Nfld, he travels back for the funeral by train. smouldering intelligence which holds the His station asks him to produce a docu- screen with a magnetic core. Egoyan's most mentary record of his pan—Canadian accessible film to date. WW odyssey. As he travels, Murphy not only Genie Awards: Film, Director, Actor (Ian Holm), Cinematography, Editing, Original Score, Sound, Sound interviews his fellow passengers, he begins Editing; Oscar nominations for Best Director, Best to take stock of his own life. Adapted Screenplay; Jury Prize and International Film Critics' Prize at Cannes. Acclaimed Atlantic Canadian director William D. MacGillivray's first feature film, co—scripted with cast and crew as they themselves travelled coast—to—coast, Stations is a quiet, meditative "rail movie" which penetrates that odd combination of displacement and roots that constitutes, for many Canadians, a kind of identity. Reminiscent of early films, Stations is an absorbing examination of distinctly Canadian angst and the modes by which our culture expresses it.TM La Vie revee Le Vieux pays ou 1972 85m prod ACPAV d Mireille Dansereau sc Mireille Dansereau, Patrick Auzopy ph Francois Gill, Richard Rimbaud est mort Rodriguez, Louis de Ernsted ed Danielle Gagne m 1977 113m prod Cinak Compaigne Cinematographigue Emmanuel Charpentier with Liliane Lemaitre—Auger, (Canada), Filmoblic (), Institut National de Veronique Le Flaguais, Jean—Frangois Guile, Guy Foucault l'Audiovisuel (France) p Marguerite Duparc, Hubert Niogret d sc Jean Pierre Lefebvre, Mireille The first fiction feature ever directed by a Amiel ph Guy Dufaux ed Marguerite Duparc m Claude woman in Quebec, La Vie revee offers a Fondrede with , Anouk Ferjac, Myriam Boyer, Roger Blin refreshing perspective on the politics of liberation. As Isabelle (Liliane The second of Lefebvre's "Abel" trilogy (the Lemaitre—Auger) and Virginie (Veronique third is now in postproduction), Le Vieux Le Flaguais) work in an advertising firm, pays oft Rimbaud est mort follows Abel they dream, sexually and otherwise, of (Marcel Sabourin) on a journey to France to finding their ideal man. Becoming ever more visit the land of his ancestors. What he aware of their oppression and margi- discovers is his distance from the "old nalization within popular media, within country" is considerably more than Videodrome Quebec history and society and in personal geographical. Constructed upon Abel's three relationships, both recognize that battles rj 1983 87m prod Filmplan International II (Canada), tr separate voyages within France, Le Vieux Universal Pictures (U.S.) exp Pierre David, Victor Solnicki must be fought for respect and recognition. pays on Rimbaud est mart is a visually p Claude Heroux disc David Cronenberg ph Mark Irwin stunning exploration of identity, melancholy ed Ronald Sanders m Howard Shore with James Woods, Consistently intelligent, Dansereau's first Sonja Smits, Deborah Harry, Peter Dvorsky, Les Carlson and solitude. film is by turns lyrical, polemical, playful, David Cronenberg is one of the few sensual, amusing and ferocious. While its Through the searching and personal Canadian directors who figured out how to Godardian influences are numerous, this encounters of his protagonist, Lefebvre deal with the country's lack of mythical kinetic film is an original detonation of reveals the paradoxes of living in a former urban centres like New York or Paris. The Quebec machismo and a convincing call to colony; indeed, the contours of colonial visionary shlockmeister created a parallel arms for a generation of women left out of consciousness have never been drawn more universe which might be the nightmarish the cinematic articulation of their own clearly or astutely. Made as the Parti flip side of The Canadian Dream, but is experience of Quebec's emergent cultural Quebecois came to power, the film is accessible to international audiences. nationalism. TM unfashionably critical of Quebec's colonial Videodrome's hero (an especially feral James relationship with France, and remains a Woods) suggests Duddy Kravitz for the 21st poetic commentary on how we in. Canada are century. A hustling cable—TV operator, perhaps still fighting the old colonial battles Woods's character seeks out the ultimate of European powers who could care less pornography to boost the ratings on his about former distant holdings of empire. TM failing channel. Naturally, he gets more than he bargained for. Some claim that Cronenberg's debut feature, Shivers, anticipated AIDS. Videodrome certainly points toward today's quest for psychosexual fulfilment on the Web. Near the end of the movie, Woods gets fucked by a monitor. MA

"A Boschian brew of lurid S&M, hallucinagenic TV Transmissions and biomorphism run amok." J. Hoberman, Village Voice Genie Award: Director. TOP CANADIAN of all time 2024 SPRING 1998 II FILMS