Cinephemera: Archives, Ephemeral Cinema, and New Screen Histories in Canada ed. by Zoë Druick and Gerda Cammaer (review)

Zoë Druick and Gerda Cammaer’s weighty collection, Cinephemera, takes its place among a growing number of volumes (mostly edited collections) tackling the difficult-to-pin-down category of ephemeral film. And, while focused on Canadian works, the book is also the first in this expanding field to consider the topic so broadly (“ephemera,” for example, is a much more inclusive category than, let’s say, “educational” or “industrial” film, though the category might contain both of these as well). For this reason, the self-imposed limits of exploring only Canadian film seem all the more appropriate (even necessary), making Cinephemera a fine companion to the earlier and more narrowly focused Useful Cinema (Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson, Duke University Press, 2011). Cinephemera, however, also hopes to carve out a unique space for itself in its consideration of what it phrases “the digital turn,” and its effect on both cinema studies and archival practice, suggesting, in the introduction, the ways in which these technologies have (or haven’t) altered the work of preservation, access, and distribution. Though dealt with specifically in only a couple of the collection’s essays, this notion forms a kind of organizational logic that runs through the book in its entirety and becomes a significant part of the book’s contribution to the field. Druick and Cammaer’s volume makes explicit the connection, assumed in other recent books, between what we might still call “emergent” technologies and the rediscovery of moving image materials that have, since their creation, existed in a stratum below (sometimes well below) what we conceive of as the “mainstream.”

Though the book’s introduction conceives of a loose taxonomy of “cinephemeral” types, the essays themselves are organized in a roughly chronological fashion, which results, ideally, in the reader discovering materials and ideas outside of the rigidity of classifications. In a way, the strategy replicates the very nature of ephemeral film: the category is massive, unruly, full of surprises, and the films themselves are frequently found where you least expect them. Among the many things that recommend this book, then, reader experience (which is infrequently lauded in academic circles) ranks high. I urge readers, no matter the narrowness of their own research focus, to read the book from beginning to end, as this experience is part of the magic the field offers.

Possibly the book’s most radical quality is the sheer diversity of the essays themselves. The introduction hints at this in stating that “this collection aims to cover a wide range of issues surrounding cinema’s ephemerality in Canada, including neglected or overlooked histories; footage that has been lost and then rediscovered; the blatant recontextualization of images and sounds, with attendant questions of access and copyright; film preservation; as well as the past, present, and future of audio-visual archives.” It’s an extremely high bar the editors have set for themselves. The collected essays, however, fulfill this promise, tracing with remarkable precision not only the “design” the editors had in mind but, perhaps more crucially, the jagged contours of an emerging field.

The volume starts strong, with a compact, smartly researched contribution from Louis Pelletier that uncovers the history of silent-era actuality footage in Quebec that was custom-tailored depending on whether it was intended for local or foreign markets. Pelletier’s history also provides detailed insight into shifts in the public’s (and the industry’s) understanding of nonfiction’s place with respect to theatrically released materials.

Peter Lester, Charles Tepperman, and Liz Czach each contribute essays that add important films and filmmakers to the expanding roster of Canadian film history. Lester’s impressively researched contribution tells the story of a film that was never to be. A.D. Kean’s film Policing the Plains (1927) was meant as a restorative to years of misunderstanding Canada abroad, and especially its mounted police. Tepperman recovers the history of...