Moments of Perception: Experimental Film in Canada by Stephen Broomer and Michael Zryd (review)

Abstract

Moments of Perception: Experimental Film in Canada has already seen warm reviews in the Toronto Star, the Winnipeg Free Press, and Cinema Scope. This reception likely comes with the recognition that Moments of Perception addresses the need for an accessible survey of Canadian experimental films that brings the topic up-to-date. The book offers obvious utility for the classroom. No one teaching a course on this cinema would fail to find it an indispensable source for syllabus building. Readers of Moments of Perception can feel confident that they are in the capable hands of well-informed writers. The authors, York University film professor Michael Zryd and three filmmaker-programmer-critics, have each spent decades working in experimental film circles. Barbara Sternberg and Jim Shedden are veteran organizers of conferences (including the International Experimental Film Congress in 1989) and innumerable film series. Sternberg is a veteran organizer of film co-ops. Shedden has edited some key Canadian publications on experimental cinema, notably Presence/Absence: The Films of Michael Snow 1956-1991 (1995). Stephen Broomer has published an invaluable interpretive study of Jack Chambers, Joyce Weiland, and Michael Snow in Codes for North: Foundations of the Canadian Avant-Garde Film (2017). In Hamilton Babylon (2016), Broomer devised a detailed history of the McMaster Film Board, a 1960s avant-garde start-up led by John Hofsess. Before Moments of Perception, there was no book offering this kind of coverage. Most books have focused on one filmmaker, such as Catherine Russell’s David Rimmer–Films and Tapes, 1967–1993 (1995). Or, they’ve covered a thematic selection, such as Process Cinema: Handmade Films in the Digital Age (2019), edited by Scott MacKenzie and Janine Marchessault. Bruce Elder’s Image and Identity: Reflections on Canadian Film and Culture (1989) has some features of a survey, but soon enough, the book’s focus narrows to Chambers and Snow. In contrast, Moments of Perception offers some thirty short profiles (all