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Filming Politics
Communism and the Portrayal of the Working Class at the National Film Board of Canada, 1939-46
by Malek Khouri
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Book Presentation:
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) was created in 1939 to produce, distribute, and promote Canadian cinema both domestically and abroad. During the early years of the NFB, its creative output was largely informed by the turbulent political and social climate the world was facing. World War II, Communism, unemployment, the role of labour unions, and working conditions were all subjects featured by the NFB during the period from 1939 to 1946.
In Filming Politics, author Malek Khouri explores the work of the NFB during this period and argues that the political discourse of the films produced by this institution offered a counter-hegemonic portrayal of working class people and presented them as agents of social change. These films also saw an organic link between Canadian struggles for social progress, in the war against fascism and for peace, and those promoted at the time by the Soviet Union. Khouri also analyzes the various social, institutional, and political elements that contributed to the formation of the NFB's discourse.
Filming Politics brings to light a number of films from the early years of the NFB, most of which have long been forgotten. Khouri presents a thorough reading of these films and the historical context within which they were produced and viewed. As such he proposes a radically new outlook on the films from how they have been appropriated in previous studies on Canadian cinema.
About the Author:
Malek Khouri is associate professor and director of the Film Program at the American University in Cairo. He is co-editor of Working on Screen: Representations of the Working Class in Canadian Cinema and author of The Arab National Project in Youssef Chahine's Cinema.
See the publisher website: University of Calgary Press
> From the same author:
The Arab National Project in Youssef Chahine's Cinema (2010)
by Malek Khouri
Subject: Director > Youssef Chahine
> On a related topic:
So Close to the States (1998)
The Emergence of Canadian Feature Film Policy
In the National Interest (1991)
A Chronicle of the National Film Board of Canada from 1949-1989
by Gary Evans
Challenge for Change (2010)
Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada
by Thomas Waugh, Michael Brendan Baker, Ezra Winton and Michael Brendan Baker
Subject: Genre > Documentary
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