Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor (review)

Following his accounting of the nation's first film societies, Cinema 16: Documents Towards a History of the Film Society (2002) and Art in Cinema: Documents Towards a History of the Film Society (2006), film historian Scott MacDonald's latest contribution to a cinema history other than that of the Hollywood narrative tradition shifts from the East Coast focus of his earlier books to profile Canyon Cinema and its influential role in pioneering and streamlining a communal and efficient model for independent film distribution and exhibition in San Francisco and the West Coast during a time of turbulent transition in American film. Buoyed by the counterculture and in reaction to the overall repressive climate of the postwar period, Canyon Cinema's "birth" in the Bay Area brought life both literally and figuratively into a burgeoning local scene of filmmakers, artists, and multimedia enthusiasts whose work reflected a commitment to experimentation and to the greater, still unnamed American avant-garde movement. Whether they became major players or remained in relative obscurity, these West Coast–based filmmakers and their contributions to the art, in MacDonald's view, deserve historical recognition for their roles in rounding out an accurate history of "critical cinema," MacDonald's preferred term for avantgarde and experimental forms of media making. Moreover, as has been the case in his numerous publications, including his editorship of the book series Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers, the power of institutions to influence and shape the historical record serve as the foundation of his intellectual inquiries and explorations. MacDonald makes transparent and straightforward his preference for using primary materials—the reproduction of original documents, illustrations, and correspondence—to tell the "stories" of an institution, with support from his interviews with key individuals and witnesses who can comment directly and, hopefully, "fill in the gaps" or at least offer context.

In Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor, MacDonald structures a chronological compilation of the organization's documents into five chapters, each reflecting a particular period in its history. Each chapter begins with his analysis and interpretation of that period drawn from information revealed in documents reprinted in the following portfolio section. The bulk of each chapter, these documents are a potpourri of reportage from the organization's membership and affiliates at large on events and happenings related to the burgeoning independent film movement in the United States and abroad—film festivals, profiles of film artists, and general "community board" postings from the membership—from the early days to, later on, polemics and dialogues between filmmakers and members on the state of the field. Between MacDonald's intervention and each portfolio he assembles, he features a key contemporary interview as further evidence toward accurately reconstructing the organizational "narrative" at that moment. MacDonald's rationale for such a framework reflects his scholarly commitment to privilege the "voices" of those who lived the history. In his salient Introduction, he discusses both the necessity and context of this latest addition to a growing scholarship on independent film and media making and its audience. Canyon, modeled initially after the New York Filmmakers' Co-op, represented "a three-pronged attack on the conventional film scene."One could say this was a formidable mission on part of this once nomadic, communal artists' forum that originated out of the northern Californian living spaces of filmmakers and multimedia artists Bruce Baillie, Chick Strand, and Film Quarterly editor Ernest Callenbach. However, MacDonald makes the case for Canyon's forward-looking goals even at its inception. He observes that the "establishment of an artist-run distribution organization in San Francisco that could serve Bay Area independent filmmakers and, later, filmmakers from across the country and across the globe created a lasting model for those who are committed to alternatives to commercial culture." He notes the seeds of this zeitgeist had been implanted much earlier, with more independent media histories being taught in universities and art schools, the proliferation of film culture through...