FS 412 LEC850: Extractivism and Canadian Film

K. Richards

Canada’s origin as a commercial extraction colony overseen by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and its perceived economic dependence on so-called “natural resources” like fish, fur, lumber, minerals, and fossil fuels, continue to shape social, cultural, and political life in profound ways. This course examines how film has been used to cultivate public support for resource extraction, settler nationalism, and racial violence in Canada, and how filmmakers are responding to these forms of colonial oppression by making stories and images that subvert the extractive gaze. Across the semester, we will study a range of moving image practices to examine extractivism as a subject, structure of relations, and mode of perception. We will also read and engage essays and interviews by Indigenous, anticolonial, feminist, and queer of colour artists, activists and scholars who are concerned with the enduring impacts of coloniality, and animated by the desire for a more just and sustainable future. Together, we will discuss the capacity for film to be used as a tool for social critique and renewed perception in the wake of extractive capitalism and colonial destruction, and we will examine specific aesthetic strategies for undermining the state of extraction, remediating relations, and proposing alternative ways of seeing, being, and relating.