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Pushing Boundaries: Canadian Independent Films of the '60s and '70s
Plaza Theatre
Friday, November 21 - Saturday, November 22

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Film history tends to be seen in terms of periods or movements, though exactly what constitutes one of these is in constant flux, subject to the rhetorical needs of whichever critic or academic happens to be at the forefront of the discussion. Canadian cinema is worse off than most in this regard, as it constantly struggles to find any consistent attributes between films, let alone enough to define several distinct periods across a timeline. The fine people at the Calgary Cinematheque Society — bless them — are trying to help our oft-neglected national cinema find some foundation with their Pushing Boundaries film series, which is bringing four films (and their respective filmmakers) to Calgary and trying to place them within a broader cultural context. A Married Couple (directed by Allan King), High (Larry Kent), Montreal Main (Frank Vitale) and Rubber Gun (Allan Moyle) will be screening on Friday, November 21 and Saturday, November 22 at the Plaza Theatre. In many ways, the four films, made in Toronto and Montreal in the late ’60s and ’70s, helped define what people expect from Canadian filmmaking.

“The films push at the boundaries of propriety — sexual promiscuity, drug use, language and a general questioning of marriage and morality, and include — this is from Montreal Main — a serious and sympathetic look at an intimate though not quite sexual relationship between a teenage boy and a man in his 30s,” says Cinematheque president Donna Brunsdale. With that type of content, it’s no surprise that the films weren’t exactly mainstream successes. For Brunsdale, screening the films now is a chance to experience a cultural moment that her small-town upbringing didn’t provide.

Like many intellectual or artistic movements, though, the films of King, Kent, Vitale and Moyle weren't a deliberate attack on the status quo. Rather, they were simply depictions of the artists' thoughts and feelings that, through a combination of luck and honest self-reflection, managed to resonate with the right people. Moyle, who went on to direct more commercially successful films like Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records, says the only boundary he and his friend Vitale were intentionally pushing was their “arrogant” attempt to make movies without spending any money.

“For Rubber Gun, the most expensive element was the Kodak film,” he says. “It was the only thing we couldn't beg, borrow or steal. We had to pay for that in cash, in other words, and we didn't have any cash…. We had three hours of Kodak stock to shoot a 90-minute movie, so it looked pretty rough. [There’s] not a lot of editing you can do. Of course, it played at a bunch of film festivals worldwide and, like, the German critics, they were like ‘wow, big breakthrough,’ but, in fact, a lot of it was just necessity being the mother of invention.”

Still, Moyle praises the Cinematheque Society for observing that a group of people all happened to be making films about the same things at the same time and in the same place, and he's right to do so. Given the uncomfortable sexual content and cultural critique present in these films, it could be argued that the filmmakers in the Pushing Boundaries series had a major influence on Canada’s most popular contemporary filmmakers, like David Cronenberg or Atom Egoyan. The screenings and the discussions that follow will be invaluable in understanding our own culture — it's a cliché, but the series is proof that you have to know where you've been to know where you are.