Scott MacKenzie

Introduction: Arctic Modernities, Environmental Politics, and the Era of the Anthropocene

Since its “discovery,” the Arctic has held a longstanding significance as a critical, and exceptional, space of modernity. It has been utilized and imagined as a location where the past, present, and future of the planet’s environmental and geopolitical systems are played out. These imaginations and projections have hit a crescendo in recent years, catalyzed by anthropogenic climate change, accelerating resource extraction, mass tourism, and a heightened global awareness and activism regarding environmental change, indigenous rights, and nature preservation. Arctic Environmental Modernities critically investigates the exceptional status of Arctic environmental discourses and practices by foregrounding the diversity, hybridity, and multiplicity of Arctic modernities, and by nuancing differentiations between sublime “nature,” cultural and vernacular landscapes and cityscapes, and social practices. To this end, the book addresses the rise and conflicted status of Arctic modernities from nineteenth-century European exploration of the Arctic to the present day. Arctic Environmental Modernities provides a framework for examining the continuing role of the explorer mythology in accounts of Arctic modernities, while foregrounding methodologies that contest such a monolithic historiography.

“An Arrow, Not a Target”: Film Process and Processing at the Independent Imaging Retreat

The history of Canadian educational film practice must be understood in light of the country’s close proximity to the United States.1 This proximity is not simply geographical, but also linguistic. Like other predominantly English-speaking countries (such as the UK), Canadian film production and education has developed in the shadow of the United States’ dominance in English language fiction film production. For this reason, the role of documentary filmmaking as an alternative mode of film production and apprenticeship (in both its traditional and experimental forms) has played a central role in the development and perpetuation of Anglo-Canadian film culture, and the production practices that are taught and valued in the country. This is especially true because of the influence of the National Film Board of Canada / Office national du film (NFB/ ONF), which for decades has fostered documentary, experimental, and animated film production in Canada.2 Indeed, even practice-based film education outside the NFB often amounts to responses to the aesthetic and production strategies deployed by the organization and the documentary aesthetic permeates the history of Canadian fiction filmmaking.