Volume 29, Issue 3-5 / March–May 2025

Independent Canadian Cinema, New Romanian Cinema, Grassroots Cinema, The Impact of Class and Capitalism

This triple issue has many focus points. One belongs to the trials of independent filmmaking in Canada which like many countries that don't have a large self-sustaining commercial film industry, need a combination of guile, resourcefulness, sacrifice (sometimes financial), talent and/or, if successful in the grant system, government aid to get a film made and seen. Two such films are the British Columbia (Vancouver) made Crawdaddy (Kassandra Voss, Dan Rocque) and the Quebec (Montreal) made Scarpedicemente (John Vamvas, Victoria Sanchez). Though these two films are different in tone and content they share some production similarities (low budget, small cast, COVID restrictions, distribution problems, etc.). In both cases I offer a brief analysis of the film followed by interviews with the filmmakers. I then discuss one of the hidden gems of Canadian cinema, the 1991 folk horror Clearcut (though the term folk horror does not explain all of it) that takes a land dispute between a logging company and a Native community and turns it into a dark tale of retribution. Thanks to the efforts of producer-writer-programmer Kier-La Janisse and Severin Films, Clearcut is part of the much lauded mega Folk Horror box set, All The Haunts Be Ours: Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched. Therefore, Clearcut is no longer (thankfully) so 'hidden'. One of the most notorious land disputes between the Canadian government and a Native community is the 1990 Oka Crisis, which is fictionalized by Mohawk filmmaker Tracey Deer in Beans (2020). Daniel Garrett covers Beans along with the First Nations film, The Business of Fancydancing (2002), by Sherman Alexie. Toronto-based writer Ryan Nachnani offers a unique, poetic reflection on the Coen brothers idiosyncratic film Inside Llewyn Davis. First-time writer Dmitry Kamyshenko gives an overview of Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgl, and his penchant for absurdism. Canadian independent films feature heavily in Jordan Adler's report on the 2025 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, situated in Toronto. Two other film festival reports (and a cinema space) are featured, M. Sellers Johnson on the most recent Cannes Festival and N. Buket Cengiz on the 44th Istanbul Film Festival. Rebecka Kaan reports on the grassroots run cinema space called Atlas Cinema, in South London, that showcases political documentaries and socially engaged dramas with a 'pay what you can' fee structure. Bucharest-based film writer Dalesia Cozorici reminisces about the earlier days of the internet where cinephiles communicated through longer form correspondence, such as letters, message boards, phone calls and eventually, email. After admiring Kevin Ma's writing on Hong Kong film industry, film archives and martial arts films from afar, Dalesia Cozorici contacted Kevin Ma about having an exchange about their shared interests. Cozorici lives in Romania and their talk naturally included a discussion of popular Romanian cinema. The next two articles also deal with Romania cinema. In "The Intermedial Passions of the “New” New Romanian Cinema," Christian Stojanova concentrates on three recent entries of New Romanian cinema, Radu Jude's Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Babardeală cu bucluc sau porno balamuc, 2021), Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers (La Gomera, 2019), and Cristi Puiu’s Malmkrog (2020). Lucian Tion concentrates on director Radu Jude's satire of Romania's brand of capitalism from his earlier works to his most recent Eight Postcards from Utopia (co-directed with Cristian Ferencz Flatz). Capitalism is also a theme running through Daniel Garrett's article, in which he contexualizes the social impact of capitalism in the films Hell or High Water (2016) and The Big Short (2015) and then concludes with an interview with the author of the book Money, Power, and the People by Christopher W. Shaw. The power of the class system in India is the subject of our last essay, an important analysis of the short film Pistyula (Nagaraj Manjule, 2009) by Dr. Chandrakant Kamble. Kamble explains his study: "Famous Indian Dalit director Nagaraj Manjule's first short film, Pistulya (Shooter), sheds light on the lives and struggles of nomadic tribes and other marginalized communities in India. The film highlights the harsh reality of these communities which are often ignored or denied by the dominant class and state. The film’s protagonist belongs to the lower caste Paradi, which is traditionally known for creating stone pots as per the Indian caste system. The film depicts caste-based oppression, brutality, illiteracy, and discrimination –free work. It also delves deeply into an age-old issue of the Hindu Indian social system. The central idea of the movie is to raise awareness about the Nomadic Tribes' plight and to promote humanism worldwide. It aims to combat inhuman practices such as caste-based occupation, discrimination between high and low castes, segregation, superstitions, the concept of purity and impurity, as well as atrocities and exploitations." (Donato Totaro, ed.)