Hewing the Wood and Drawing the Water

Hewing the Wood and Drawing the Water: Women and Film in Colonized Canada

Ardele Lister

"Who controls the box office, controls the industry."

-Adolph Zukor, President, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation and Paramount Pictures, c. 1923

To comprehend fully or to appreciate the fact of women making films in Canada, one must know something of the history of filmmaking in Canada, because all filmmakers in this country are faced with certain facts:

• 1. The Canadian film audience pays over 200 million dollars annually to Famous Players and Odeon, both foreign-owned conglomerates (Famous is 51% owned by Gulf and Western, which also owns Paramount Pictures; Odeon is now owned by Rank, a British conglomerate concentrating on U.S. film productions. Rank was originally 50% owned by Famous Players' Nathanson.) None of this money is taxed to leave any percentage in Canada to build the Canadian film industry; and there is no stipulation that requires Canadian films to be seen in Canadian theatres.
• 2. Famous Players and Odeon control over 80% of urban Canadian theatres and openly indulge in practices such as tie-on bookings (made illegal in the U.S. in 1948 under U.S. Antitrust Laws) by which, in order to exhibit a moneymaking film like Jaws, theatres must agree to exhibit a string of mediocre American films pumped out by Hollywood studios. As a result, neither mediocre Canadian films nor excellent Canadian films qualify for exhibition.
• 3. In 1963 Canada was the sixth most important foreign buyer of American films. By 1975 Canada had the dubious distinction of being the biggest buyer of American films outside the U.S.
• 4. 94% of film rentals in Canada goes to the seven major U.S. distributors. With as little as a 5% cost-of-doing-business tax in Canada, 10 million dollars could be fed yearly into the impoverished local film industry. The Canadian government, afraid to be "unfriendly," refuses to legislate.
• 5. United Nations statistics suggest that an industrial ized nation should be able to produce a feature film per million population per year. Canada, with a population of 24 million, produces roughly five features a year.

Back to God's Country, directed by and starring Nell Shipman, a Victoria-born woman, was released in 1919. It returned 300% on its investment and was a smashing success. It was the first Canadian feature directed by a woman and ranks in the history of early Canadian filmmaking as one of the finest. In it Nell Shipman appeared nude. The scandal that ensued only provoked her to attach to all publicity for the film the slogan "The Nude is Not Rude." Such were our beginnings.

Based on the bestselling novel by James Oliver Curwood, Back to God's Country follows the adventures of an independent woman living in northern Canada, braving the bitter winters and fighting off would-be suitors and rapists dressed up as Mounties. Archetypal as the film's heroine and villains are, it offers a portrait of a woman with a strong sense of self and purpose outside traditional notions of servitude who spends eight reels fighting for her right to be herself, to make her own choices. She embodies some of those qualities that have since come to be seen as typically Canadian — a fierce individualism and tenacity without aggression; a tendency to explore undiscovered places, both physical and metaphysical; a quiet kind of intense spirituality; a strong identification with animals, especially as victims of man's greed and ambition; and a commitment to the land, however bleak. These are recurring themes in the broken threads of Canadian culture, the most timely of which is that of the loner, often a loser, often recently urbanized, in desperate search for his or her identity. In the culture of the last twenty years, the bearer of these qualities has most often been a male who exploits women in the process of upgrading his own status and self-image. This is a phenomenon common in world history — men who see themselves without power turn on their women and families in hostility and frustration, preferring some power, however ugly, to none.

... the English Canadian projects himself through his animal images as a threatened victim confronted by a superior alien technology against which he feels powerless, unable to take any positive defensive action, and survive each crisis as he may, ultimately doomed. (Margaret Atwood, Survival)

There have been few Canadian heroines and even fewer filmmakers as inspiring as Nell Shipman, and so it is that as Canadian women filmmakers we refer again and again to Back to God's Country, in search of our own reflection from which to build anew.

In 1927, when Canada's feature-film-producing industry was already on the decline because exhibition and distribution were so tied in to American production that indigenous industry was being suffocated, Universal studios remade Back to God's Country. This version starred a different cast and shifted the story slightly so that the romantic life rather than the independence of the heroine was emphasized. In 1953 Universal International Technicolor made the third version of this classic story, starring Rock Hudson and further diminishing the role of the heroine; her nirvana became inseparable from Rock Hudson's arms. Each version of this film accurately reflects its time and place; by 1953 women weren't allowed to be heroines without being submissive to men. The cultural focus had shifted back to the kitchen and away from other life styles.

Every colonized people — in other words every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality- finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated ... in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards....the goal of his behaviour will be the Other ... for the Other alone can give him his worth. (Franz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks)

The division of sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history... Here is to be found the basic trait of woman: she is the Other in a totality of which the two components are necessary to one another. .. To decline to be the Other, to refuse to be a party to the deal — this would be for women to renounce all the advantages conferred upon them by their alliance with the superior caste. Man-the-sovereign will provide woman-the-liege with material protection and will undertake the moral justification of her existence; thus she can evade at once both economic risk and the metaphysical risk of a liber ty in which ends and aims must be contrived without assistance. (Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex)

Although the proportion of female to male directors in early Canadian filmmaking was small, there was at least room for women's participation in key roles. As in most professions at the earliest stages, there was no rigid role tradition to prevent women definitively from any or all interests or occupations. Most of the women active in early Canadian filmmaking did, however, work in husband-and-wife production teams. They shared the work- rarely the credit. Only recently was Nell Shipman correctly credited with directing Back to God's Country, previously attributed to her producer-husband, Ernest Shipman.

In addition to the women working in independent filmmaking, there have been women working at the National Film Board since its inception in 1941. John Grierson, founder and director of the NFB, believed that the organizational skills and talents of librarians were ideal credentials for beginning filmmakers. Much to the surprise of the women librarians he hired, not to mention that of the established filmmakers, the ensuing films did in fact prove the skill of these women. So it was that in the 1940s Gudrun Parker and Evelyn Cherry, to name just two, began their careers in filmmaking, careers that continue to this day, each woman still successfully producing and directing commercial short films, each with her own prairie-based production company.

From the earliest days of Canadian filmmaking through the 1940s, women played key roles. For the next twenty-five years they did not, and only in 1969, with Sylvia Spring's first feature film — Madeleine Is... —was a woman again visible in a directorial role. What accounts for the quarter-century gap? First, as the NFB's production of short films and documentaries increased, the production of feature films radically decreased, often to the point of non-existence. If Canadian men were getting few opportunities in film, Canadian women were getting fewer—or none. As is the case in all other professions and classes, competition among male filmmakers is such that female inclusion would only make it worse, and in every aspect of the industry women have been deterred from participation. Second, in keeping with the general back-to-the-kitchen backlash after World War II, not only were women omitted from key roles in making films, but the images of women in the films made by men regressed, became more hollow and one-dimensional, reinforcing the cultural stereotype. All of this compounded the problem of Canada's aborted film industry, sanctioned by the Canadian Cooperation Project and Canada's previous refusals to hinder the American takeover of exhibition and distribution.

During the 1920s two factions in the American film industry battled over methods of expansion. The struggle was between the independents (producers and exhibitors) and the monopolists, who favored "vertical integration" — bringing all aspects of filmmaking, distribution and exhibition under the control of the big production studios. Under the guidance of Adolph Zukor, the monopolists won, and independent filmmaking in both Canada and the United States was wiped out. In 1948 the U.S. legislated against this kind of control, and distribution and exhibition were separated from production, allowing the resurrection of an independent film-producing and exhibiting community. In Canada, no such legislation has been passed; foreign companies are allowed privileges they do not even have in their own countries, and the existence of a commercial Canadian film industry is effectively killed. All Canadian filmmakers are, then, by definition, "independent, and yet there is no parallel "independent" system for distribution and exhibition.

In 1931 Famous Players was taken to court under the Canadian Combines Act which forbids foreign companies from controlling the Canadian market in such a way as to put Canadian companies at a disadvantage. But after various tactical pressures and maneuvers, Famous Players was allowed to continue its expansion. In 1948, when the Canadian film-producing community was ready to build a permanent feature industry, the American government was threatened with the loss of millions of profit dollars from Canada. It quickly proposed the Canadian Cooperation Project, by which Canada would promise not to make any feature films. The U.S. Motion Picture Export Association promised the Canadian government that the Cooperation Project would make at least 520 million a year for Canada in tourist trade sparked by Hollywood films mentioning Canada. In addition, Canada was to get a film on her trade dollar problem, more complete news coverage, a short film on Canada made in Hollywood, release of NFB films in the U.S., Canadian "sequences" in Hollywood features, radio recordings extolling Canada and a more careful selection of films sent to Canada. In its infinite naiveté, the Canadian government agreed.

If you watch American films from that time (1948-58) you will catch occasional references such as: "Well, they're sort of a special kind. They live in the hills there ... red-winged orioles ... from Canada..." (from Bend in the River with Jimmy Stewart). No such bird exists. And if it did, it is highly unlikely that such a reference would increase tourism to Canada. The other most common reference was to villains escaping over the border. Aside from these totally meaningless mentions, the image of Canada was that of a bleak and harsh landscape unsuitable for human life, with mounties and sex-crazed coureurs-du-bois (trappers) running after helpless females. Needless to say, tourism not only failed to rise, it took a turn for the worse. In retrospect, the only thing that the Project did publicize was how easily, and how cheaply, the Canadian authorities could be persuaded to sell out Canada's chances for her own film industry.

In the last twenty-five years, Hollywood's business in Canada has continued to boom uninhibited. Canada remains the only film-producing country in the world with no quota for nationally made films in national theatres, no levy restrictions on money being made by foreign companies in Canada. The films that do manage to get made in Canada are "foreign" in their own country. In addition, Canadian films that have received awards in Cannes, in New York or in Edinburgh, such as La Vie Rêvée (Dream Life) (1972) directed by Mireille Dansereau, have yet to receive commercial Canadian distribution. Sometimes five or six years lapse between the completion of a film and its distribution -if it is distributed.

Not making films you should be making is awful, but making them and then not having them shown is worse. (Claude Jutra, French-Canadian director)

To dispel the popular notion that Canada is a lucrative paradise for filmmakers, who are fully funded by a national system of art patronage — here are some other facts. In Canada there is virtually no private or corporate funding for films. Until last year there were no tax incentives to encourage investment. There are two government-sponsored funding sources for film: the Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC) and the Canada Council. The CFDC, in nine years, has invested 525 million in "Canadian" films, many of which were American coproductions in which Canadian filmmakers were doing no more than "hewing the wood and drawing the water." This kind of generosity has, for the most part, ceased. To give an idea of amounts of actual financial support: Joyce Wieland's feature, The Far Shore, was the most expensive film funded by the CFDC to date; their share was $210,000, half of the film's total production costs. In the CFDC's history, only two films have been made by women. (The other one was La Vie Rêvée.) The film section of the Canada Council funds an average of ten to fifteen short films a year, usually between $5,000 and $10,000. Their budget is diminished year by year by government cutbacks.

The National Film Board does not fund independent films or filmmakers. It is an institution, producing institutional shorts and documentaries. In the early days of the NFB, women enjoyed a certain amount of equality; recent surveys indicate otherwise. The following is from a 1975 interview with Peter Jones, then Regional Director of the NFB in Vancouver:

Q: In Studio D's literature, it says that the Film Board makes more films with fish in them than with wom en. Do you have any comment on that?

A: Well, there are more fish than women.

Q: But are they more important?

A: I don't know...

In 1975 (International Women's Year) "Studio D” was set up by the NFB to focus on women as filmmakers and as audience. Conveniently rendered impotent by having substantially less staff and a lower budget than other NFB studios, it has been able to make few films. Those that have been made are so heavily booked it is often difficult to obtain them. Films About Women and Work, a series of eleven shorts, is booked up six to eight months in advance of screenings. (Most NFB films are available within a week or two.)

Despite obstacles that have at times seemed insurmountable, Canadian women have made a considerable number of films over the last ten years. There have been three features made for commercial release, and several feature-length, non-commercial films. Sylvia Spring's Madeleine Is... was released in 1969, Mireille Dansereau's La Vie Rêvée in 1972 and Joyce Wieland's The Far Shore in 1976. Each of these films presents us with a woman as central character, in different stages of social and political development. Madeleine has not yet clearly defined her position in the world but she is aware of and struggling with the forces that exploit her. In La Vie Rêvée the two female leads are friends (a rare relationship for women in film) who work for a film company and on the weekends, live out their fantasies, most of which concern men. Nevertheless, they are not in competition with each other, nor are they victimized by their fantasies. The Far Shore goes back to 1919 (the period in which Back to God's Country was made) and to a story of love, the isolation of artists, the conflict between the French and the English, and Canadian history.

Several films have resulted from the universal feminist preoccupation with digging up one's roots, personally and collectively. Great Grand Mother (NFB, 1976, 30 min., color) is a film by Lorna Rasmussen and Anne Wheeler made in Edmonton about the lives of pioneer women who were instrumental in settling the prairies. Bonnie Kreps' After the Vote (CFDC, 1969, 22 min., black and white) is a feminist documentary covering the history of women's rights in Canada; it is factual and informative with a sense of humor. Kathleen Shannon's Goldwood (NFB, 1975, 22 min., color) is one woman's memories of childhood in the wilderness of northern Ontario, first recalled in paintings, then revisited in the reality of thirty years later. Shannon is currently producing a documentary film about the women filmmakers who began making films at the NFB in the 1940s. Buenos Dias Compañeros: Women of Cuba (Phoenix, 1975, 58 min., color), directed by Aviva Slesin, examines the lives of four very different Cuban women.

Over the last few years some people have concluded that the future of Canadian filmmaking rests in the hands of women. Though it reeks of reverse sexism, this opinion gains credibility with the emergence of more women's films. Women making films in Canada have had nothing to lose and everything to gain. They continue, encouraged by the words of one of Canada's most outrageous foremothers, Nellie McClung, who said in 1873: "Never retract, never explain, never apologize — get the thing done and let them howl."