A group of Canadian films emerged in the 1980s and 1990s that has come to be known as the “Toronto New Wave” (TNW). Most scholarship regarding this “wave” considers the films usually identified with it not as an ideologically or aesthetically cohesive ensemble, but as a disparate mélange engendered by the merely coincidental socio-political, economic, and government policy circumstances that developed at the beginning of the 1980s. Critics who engage more robustly with the cinematic content of these films often make reference to a new global sensibility of the filmmakers and almost universally discuss the theme of urban social alienation that permeates the film narratives. However, the motif of urban social alienation is always understood by these critics as merely a theme in these films. These critics overlook or openly reject the possibility of what anarchist cultural studies refers to as philosophical praxis, an active effort to intervene in cultural meaning-making and to change dominant ideologies. Moreover, the urban alienation theme upon which so many of the TNW narratives trade seems to map very specifically onto more progressive understandings of the term “apocalypse” in the project of philosophical praxis. In the following dissertation, I will argue against the commonly held view that the films of the TNW do not share any significant aesthetic or political unity. In doing so, I will make a case for the marriage of theories of apocalypse with both anarchist cultural philosophy and perception-based psychoanalytical theory as a means to understand a selection of films from within the TNW that I argue are particularly “anarchist-apocalyptic” in their cultural and political work. / Graduate / 2022-08-16

This project is about the visual ways people represent the nonhuman world, and the struggles over its meaning. It is the story of how the Canadian government used the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) to manufacture and sustain a national identity that was defined by its encounters with nature, and how those definitions morphed over time. The NFB was established in 1939 by the federal government. It was to be the eyes and ears of Canada, a way for Canadians to experience the nation. As a cultural institution supported by the state, the NFB is fertile ground for an examination of state discourses about nature. In particular, I analyze NFB films as vehicles for the Canadian government’s long-running nation-building project. Between 1939 and 1974, NFB filmmakers aligned their representations of nature with the views of the government. They imagined nature as a unifying symbol of national identity and as an object to be surveyed, rationalized and exploited by government institutions. Utilitarian narratives about natural resources and wilderness management served other ideological motives too. Specifically, NFB films about nature in the postwar period privileged a high modern way of seeing the environment. This project also seeks to discern instances of ideological conflict between filmmakers and official “environmental” viewpoints, where government strategies are questioned, ridiculed or reformulated in the films themselves. Although the NFB is a product of state policy as well as an interpreter of it, it was also actively involved in producing grass-roots narratives about the environment. The NFB’s directive to “interpret Canada to Canadians” unwittingly created opportunities for independent filmmakers to share their own visions of nature that often diverged from the state. This project therefore investigates moments where filmmakers used the camera as an apparatus of reflection to challenge and subvert state modes of thinking. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) was established and financed by the federal government to be the “eyes of Canada.” It is therefore a valuable site in which to examine, among other things, how the state defined the limits and uses of nature. While NFB discourses about the environment often mirrored state ideology, they also reflected alternative voices and perspectives. Filmmakers made documentaries within the NFB production system that challenged, questioned, or even ridiculed state ideology. In other words, nature was not only imagined as a national resource to be exploited and controlled through technology and science, it was also envisioned as something to be appreciated for its ecological diversity and its wildness.