The Arts

Toronto New Wave cinema and the anarchist-apocalypse

by David Christopher

Description

The Toronto New Wave (TNW) comprises a group of avant-garde filmmakers working in Canada from the 1980s and into the new millennium whose innovative film works share significant affinities with anarchist themes and aesthetics. Several of the TNW filmmakers openly identify as anarchists and/or acknowledge a debt to anarchism in their production of highly apocalyptic narratives as part of their cinematic political projects. However, recognition of anarchism's progressive apocalyptic theoretical relevance has yet to be substantially taken up by scholarship in cinema analysis. This analysis introduces an anarchist-inflected analytical methodology to understand the apocalyptic-revelatory political work these films attempt to accomplish in the perceptual space between the filmic texts and both their auteurs and potential viewers, and to re-locate the TNW within cinema history as an ongoing phenomenon with new significance in an apocalyptic era of digital distribution.

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Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo [DRC], Congo, Republic of the, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, French Guiana, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Hongkong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, China, Macedonia [FYROM], Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Reunion, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tokelau, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Cyprus, Palestine, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Liechtenstein, Azerbaijan, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Dominican Republic, Myanmar, Monaco

Reviews

The Toronto New Wave cinema that emerged in Canada in the 1980s spawned the careers of David Cronenberg, Don McKellar, Vincenzo Natali, Patricia Rozema, Sarah Polley, and many other unsung Canadian auteurs who produced films that betray anarchistic philosophies and apocalyptic propensities. This book recognizes the anarchist-apocalyptic vergence that the movies stage and interrogate and develops a new analytical paradigm that is consonant with the Canadian film production exigencies in which the Toronto New Wave was immersed. Chapters include discussion of historical contexts and auteur interviews in concert with sophisticated film analyses to explore David Cronenberg's earliest films and the anarchist-apocalypse effect they engendered, Don McKellar's cohort of collaborators and the anarchist idea of "kissing this world goodbye," the anarchist-apocalyptic critique of cybernetic technology, Vincenzo Natali's anarchist-apocalyptic critique of industrial technologyand class-based incarceration, films and auteurs dedicated to anarchist-queering and anarchist-gendering the apocalypse, zombies and the end of time in the post-millennium neo-TNW films, and beyond. The text's eloquent dance with film studies' admixture of theory, history, and analyses is a ballet of insight and essential reading for anyone interested in the study of film and the exciting anarchist-apocalyptic contributions made to it by the Toronto New Wave and some of its progeny. The idea of a pending social apocalypse is a prescient issue in contemporary cinema theory and this study offers an original approach to issues keyed to anarchist values and apocalyptic revelation in an historically important but under-represented Canadian filmmaking group.

Author Biography

David Christopher is Lecturer of Popular Screen Cultures at the University of Leicester

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Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Manchester University Press
  • Publication Date June 2025
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9781526188366 / 1526188368
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • FormatPrint PDF
  • Pages296
  • ReadershipGeneral/trade
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions234 X 156 mm
  • Biblio NotesDerived from Proprietary 6446
  • Reference Code17348

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