By Sean Graham Film in Canada | RSS.comFor over a century, Canadians have maintained a love affair with Hollywood, both as producers and consumers. This week, we look at how that has played out with Mary Graham, author of Stunning Backdrop: Alberta in the Movies, 1917-1960, and Michael Gates, author of Hollywood in the Klondike: Dawson City’s Great Film Find…. Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/History-Slam-168.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Howe Sound is a deep fjord north of Vancouver that has been described as the city’s “playground for sailing, diving, camping, hiking, and a host of other recreational activities.” It is also home to a reef that was thought to be extinct. Glass sponges, which build their skeletons out of silicon… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/History-Slam-158.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham The years following the Second World War saw major changes to American society, from the rise of suburbs to powerful social movements to shifting international priorities. Within that change, popular culture took on a new significance in American life as television spread across the country and radio stations increasingly shifted to… Read more »
Ronald Rudin Once upon a time, I did my research in the archives, a controlled environment where weird things rarely happened. Then, I became a public historian, venturing out into the real world, and things were not always so straightforward, particularly when I was on the road with a film crew. For instance, there was the time when the director… Read more »
David Frank The catalogue of labour history films in Canada is a small one. There is a very good body of work in the documentary tradition, but you will not need a long weekend to screen all of the dramatic films related to this country’s labour and working-class history.[1] To this shelf, we can now add a new film based… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/History-Slam-141.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Golda will begin its theatrical run at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in Toronto on January 3. You can watch the trailer here and find showtimes here. In March, 1969, a then 70-year old Golda Meir came out of retirement to serve as Israeli Prime Minister following the sudden death… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/History-Slam-140.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Brotherhood opens for a week-long engagement at the Cineplex Yonge & Dundas in Toronto starting December 6. It will also be shown at the Sudbury Indie Cinema on December 13. In the summer of 1926, a group of young men were attending a camp along the shores of Balsam Lake in… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/History-Slam-134.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham Since I started doing the podcast back in 2012, there have been a lot of topics and discussions that have surprised me. Perhaps nothing was as surprising, though, as when I learned of the new documentary Advocate, which premiered earlier this year. The film tells the story of Lea Tsemel, an… Read more »
Bryn Coates-Davies The Emperor’s Club (2002, directed by Michael Hoffman) stars Kevin Kline as a History teacher who works at a prestigious boys’ boarding school in the 1970s. Kline’s character, William Hundert, is a strict teacher of the history of the Roman Empire. He teaches a very structured class until Sedgewick Bell, a senator’s son, certified bad boy, and potential… Read more »
Hochelaga: Not a Real Thesis Defence Scott Berthelette A Ph.D. thesis defence is at the centre of the narrative in Hochelaga, terre des âmes (Hochelaga, Land of Souls), a Canadian historical drama film released in 2017. The film’s portrayal of the process hardly meets my expectations for how a defence normally unfolds. The story of Hochelaga is told through a… Read more »
