Film and the City: The Urban Imaginary in Canadian Cinema

Examining fourteen Canadian films produced from the late 1980s onward,including Denys Arcand’s Jesus de Montreal (1989), MinaShum’s Double Happiness (1994), and Guy Maddin'sMy Winnipeg (2007), Film and the City is the firstcomprehensive study of Canadian film and urbanity -the totality of urban culture and life asrefracted through the filmmaker’s prism. Drawing on insights fromboth film and urban studies and building upon issues of identityformation long debated in Canadian studies, Melnyk considers howfilmmakers interpret and employ the spatiality, visuality, and oralityof urban space and how audiences read the films that result. In thisway, Film and the City argues that Canadian narrative film ofthe postmodern period has contributed to the articulation of a new,multifaceted understanding of national identity.