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Performing Arts General

Hollywood North

The Feature Film Industry in British Columbia

by (author) Mike Gasher

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Oct 2007
Category
General, Film & Video, Media & Communications Industries
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774850322
    Publish Date
    Oct 2007
    List Price
    $32.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774809672
    Publish Date
    Aug 2002
    List Price
    $34.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774809689
    Publish Date
    Aug 2002
    List Price
    $34.95

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Description

British Columbia is celebrated as Canada’s principal centre of audiovisual production. Its billion-dollar industry trails behind only California and New York, the most well-established film production sites on the continent. Prior to the mid-1970s, however, British Columbia had little in the way of film production that could properly be called an industry.

 

This timely book recounts the story of British Columbia’s rapid rise from relative obscurity in the film world to its current status as “Hollywood North.” Mike Gasher positions the industry as a model for commercial film production in the twenty-first century – one strongly shaped by a perception of cinema as a medium, not of culture, but of regional industrial development. Addressing the specific economic and geographic factors that contribute to the province’s success, such as the low Canadian dollar and BC’s proximity to Los Angeles, Gasher also considers the broader implications of the increasingly widespread trend towards location service production on national cinema and cultural production.

 

Hollywood North is an important book that brings into focus the tension between globalization and localization in the film industry. It will have great appeal to those with an interest in debates on Canadian national cinema, the notion of cinema as industry, and the highly nuanced relationship between cinema and place.

 

Selected as a BC Book for Everybody.

About the author

Mike Gasher is a former journalist and professor in the Department of Journalism and director of the Centre for Broadcasting and Journalism Studies at Concordia University.

Mike Gasher's profile page