Introduction: 100 Years of 16mm in Canada

Abstract

The essays in this special issue tell a story of possibility and plenitude in Canadian film history. They do so by considering a one-hundred-year-old film format, one constituted by a shifting assemblage of cameras, film stock, projectors, and more. Since the standardization of 16mm in 1923, this family of compatible film technologies has left an expansive and still under-considered impact on cinema, and its institutions and practices. Hundreds of thousands of films have been shot on the gauge, and millions of titles have been printed, circulated, and seen. While often dubbed “small,” we are increasingly learning that there is nothing small about it. The 16mm format enacted a unique technological and aesthetic timeline while enabling vast networks of production, distribution, and presentation, turning any place with a projector into an exhibition venue. Across a seemingly boundless list of uses (educational, experimental, industrial, activism, military, pornography) and venues (living rooms, legion halls, schools, training centres, galleries, underground clubs, hotel rooms), this uniquely influential film format created a complex network that reshaped what it means to make and see a movie.