Flashback: People and Institutions in Canadian Film History ed. by Gene Walz (review)

HUMANITIES 231 good study could have been made even better if Chambers had done more personal interviewing and other kinds of fieldwork. Although both volumes rely on meticulous historical methodology, volume I is marred as a work of scholarship by the total absence of footnotes. Happily, this deficiency is rectified in volume II. One of the themes that emerges from Chambers's study is Davis's chronic ill health throughout much of his career - a result of both natural illnesses (e.g., arthritis, sickle-cell anemia) and self-induced illnesses (e.g., heroin addiction) - reminding us again that some of the world's most valued human achievements have been made by people who lacked good physical health. While Davis's health problems and professional problems are amply documented by Chambers, readers looking for a titillating account of Davis's love life, domestic life, and personal foibles are bound to be disappointed. Chambers, perhaps out of respect for the personal privacy that Davis so evidently cherishes, or perhaps because of the unavailability of information on these matters, reveals little. These lacunae leave us with a less than complete picture of the man, but we can be thankful that Chambers has been at least partially successful in making the Miles Davis persona less of an enigma. (ROBERT WITMER) Gene Walz, editor. Flashback: Pfoplfand Institutions in Canadian Film History Mediatexte Publications. 172. $12.00 This is the second volume of the Canaclian Film Studies series published under the auspices of the Film Stuclies Association of Canada. The first volume, Words and Moving Images (edited by William Wees and Michael Dorland, 1984) consisted mainly of papers read at the 1983 Conference of the Association. Unlike its predecessor, this book is made up of articles appearing for the first time, although one was delivered as a paper in 1980 at Duke University. Also unlike its predecessor, it concentrates solely on Canadian film, and, rather than focusing on the analysis or theory offilm, directs our attention to episodes in institutional history and biography. This kind of research reflects the background of the contributors, three of whom are or have been archivists and one of whom was a senior administrator at the National Film Board. In his preface, eclitor Gene Walz draws our attention to the importance of this kind of archival research as an essential precursor to the 'overview sung by a single voice: a suggestion that recapitulates a tendency in Canaclian film history to prolepsis, caution, and procrastination, something most aptly satirized in the title the filmmaker Jean-Pierre Lefebvre once gave to an article, 'notes en guise d'introduction a une preface eventuelle.' All the same, the articles are meticulously researched and footnoted, they do provide documentation of a valuable kind on certain 232 LETI'ERS IN CANADA 1986 nooks and crannies of the historical record, and we can be glad that this work has now been done. Peter Morris carefully reviews the Grierson files and reveals not only Grierson's compaign to forestall a Canadian feature film industry, something already known, but also how he fudged attendance figures to persuade politicians of the importance of the institution he headed, something no one had taken the trouble to refute before. The Thomas Waugh article on the history of the film Action Stations! (1941) that Joris Ivens made for the NFB is offered as a correction to the mystification he feels has shrouded documentary history through a failure to recognize the 'broad base of documentary practice and culture on which ... individual achievements were built.' It is reminiscent of the process/product emphasis of the Screen Education group in London a decade or more ago. For film historians, he makes connections between the 'personalized re-enactments' typical ofa number of wartime NFB documentaries and the 'Faces of Canada' series of the fifties often supposed to have broken new ground. Paul Tiessen's article on film critic Gerald Noxon, documenting his influence on Malcolm Lowry, sits most oddly in this book, although we do learn of Noxon's contacts with Grierson and the short film he directed for the NFB in 1940. The Malcolm Lowry specialist will have to be diligent indeed to track this one down...