Embattled Shadows

Know about the book -

Embattled Shadows is written by Peter Morris and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0773503234 (ISBN 10) and 9780773503236 (ISBN 13).

Embattled Shadows is the first and only history of Canadian film making in the years before the establishment of the National Film Board of Canada in 1939. It begins with an entertaining account of the travelling showmen who brought the movies to large and small communities across the country, and discusses the films produced in Canada before World War I. In the atmosphere of heightened nationalism during and after the war there was a determined attempt to establish a film industry. Peter Morris chronicles its occasional successes while, at the same time, examining the reasons behind its ultimate failure -- using the colourful career of the independent producer Ernest Shipman ("Ten Percent Ernie") as a particular reference. He goes on to describe the establishment and eventual collapse of both the federal and Ontario governments' Motion Picture Bureaus. By the Thirties, with the connivance of the Canadian government, Canadian feature film production had deteriorated to the point of turning out "quota" films from the Hollywood mould.