A wryly humorous
excavation of history and personal memory, Moose Jaw
is a reflexive view of the filmmaker’s childhood town in
the Canadian west, as a mythic symbol of nation-building and the
‘manifest destiny’ of North America. With its revitalization
motto, ‘There’s a Future in Our past,” this
post-colonial crash site ingests the filmmaker in its museumizing
process as a once thriving rail head on the margins of (British)
Empire.
“Appropriate
to a context of Canadian de-confederation, Moose Jaw
is at once a statement of the filmmaker’s own maturation;
a regionalist dirge on the fatality of economic dependency; an
excavation of our ever-vanishing collective past; and the ironic
deconstruction of all the above.” Michael Dorland, Art Gallery
of Ontario
“Part
love letter, part swan song, Rick Hancox’s diary film is
a quintessential Canadian road movie… Hancox’s return
to his childhood town creates one of the most inspired pieces
of Canadian filmmaking in recent memory. Impressively archival…
shines with visual wit in its right-now perspectives of the past.”
(Helen Lee, Oh! Canada Project, Art Gallery of Ontario, Cinematheque
Ontario, 1996)
Moose Jaw
was a frontier boom-town flourishing on the Canadian Pacific rail
line forging Canada as a “Dominion” in the late 1800s.
But as rail gave way to the jet age, Moose Jaw began
to decline. Now, museums dot the landscape (along with a giant
moose), and schemes to restore yester-year boast the motto “
There’s a future in our past”-ironically adopted by
Hancox himself in this one-hour, experimental documentary filmed
over the course of a decade. A poetic, multi-levelled excavation
of personal memory, social and political history, and the pre-historic,
Moose Jaw is also a reflective portrait of the filmmaker’s
hometown as a faded symbol of Empire, and “storm centre”
on the frontier of a museumized future.
“Rick
Hancox’s Moose Jaw is a poetic prophetic analysis
into a personal and deeply existential journey...a meeting point
of autobiography and history... Here the museum has finally come
inside.” Arthur Kroker, “The Possessed Individual,”
New World Perspectives
An epic work-in-progress
since 1978, Moose Jaw is a multi-levelled excavation
of ever-vanishing collective past and an ironic deconstruction
of the present state of the Canadian federation. (Toronto International
Festival, 1992)
“Hancox
grew up in Moose Jaw, a prairie town in Saskatchewan.
As a child his memories of the city are romantic-a cavernous train
station, thundering steam engines, dazzling air shows and wild
west rodeos. As its name suggest, Moose Jaw as, and is,
no ordinary town. Once an exciting frontier boom town, chief ref-light
district of the Prairies, hide-out for Chicago gangsters, etc.
Moose Jaw has degenerated into little more than a ghost
town. Hancox left at the beginning of the sixties when the city
was beginning to decline. The film concerns the fate of this town.
(Cathy Jonasson, “Recent Canadian Experimental Films,”
Catalogue published by Canada House, 1990) “Replete with
every museum imaginable, but particularly the Western Development
Museum of Transportation, a pristine shrine to the technology
on which Moose Jaw was founded, became independent, and
then floundered when the CPR pulled up stakes, Moose Jaw
has become a fascinating study in the downside of technological
nationalism. If one were to view postmodern culture as the detritus
of an advanced capitalist economy, then Moose Jaw would
be the postmodern site par excellence.” (Rick Hancox)
“…there
is an ironic reversal of viewpoint when the film turns on its
maker, symbolically showing him filming inside the actual museum
of the city’s history where he realizes he has become inextricably
intertwined with the past he thought he had stepped outside of.”
(Jeff Round, Arts Atlantic)
“…
one of the most eagerly awaited and critically discussed Canadian
independent films of recent years… Mixing experimental and
documentary techniques, offering a variety of texts and points
of view, Hancox’s Moose Jaw emerges as a poetic,
reflective, surrealist-tinged portrait.” (Jim Sinclair,
Pacific Cinematheque, Vancouver)
Awards: Director’s
Citation, Black Maria; Special Citation for Excellence, Sydney
Festival Australia; Director’s Citation, Toronto International
Festival.
Available
from:
Canadian
Filmmakers' Distribution Centre
37 Hanna Ave. #220
Toronto, Ontario Canada M6K 1W8
telephone: 416-588-0725, e-mail: bookings@cfmdc.org
web: www.cfmdc.org
Canyon
Cinema
145 Ninth Street, Suite 260, San Francisco, CA 94103
phone/fax: 415-626-2255 email: films@canyoncinema.com
web: www.canyoncinema.com
(printable
version of description)
Reviews,
Articles, Text & Notes:
HANCOX'S
MOOSE JAW/MOOSE JAW'S HANCOX: An Analysis of Richard Hancox's
Moose Jaw -There's a Future in our Past by Greg Linnell,
5 April 1994
You
can never go home again, Nelson Bennett, Moose Jaw Times
Herald, October 15, 1993
Going
back home can shatter illusions, by Steve Tompkins, Moose
Jaw Times Herald, October 15, 1993
Film
Society will show short film about Moose Jaw Thursday,
Moose Jaw Times Herald, October 9, 1993
Irony,
Self and Landscape in the Films of Richard Hancox, by
Michael Dorland
National Gallery talk April 14, 1993
Moose
Jaw, du personnel a l’experimental, by Joanne Legault,
April 14th, 1993
Les 5 Jours du cinema independent canadien
Moose
Jaw Film"a bit weird" to the average viewer,
by Susan Winkeelar, Moose Jaw Times Herald, March 26, 1993
From
boomtown to bleak town by John Timmins, Concordia’s
Thursday Report, February 4th, 1993
Arts
Council Letter, April 1, 1992
Letter
to Jan Rofekamp, March 5, 1992
Letter
to Danielle Roy, Media Arts Assistant Canada Council
Ottawa, Ontario
October 15, 1992; William C. Wees, Associate Professor, Dept.
of English, McGill University
Rick
Hancox's Moose Jaw: Betrayed by the Canadian Film Tradition
by Philip Preville, April 21, 1992
Ruin
Nation: Richard Hancox’s Moose Jaw or “Now it’s
an air town” , by Lianne McLarty, May 1990
The
Moose Jaw Postmodern by Arthur Kroker
Originally published in a catalogue: Richard Hancox (Toronto:
Art Gallery of Ontario, 1990)
Disaster
still Haunts Moose Jaw by Ron Seymour, The Times Herald,
April 8, 1989
Canada
Council Film Application, December 1989
Beyond
the Forgetful Snow: Richard Hancox's "poetics of space"
in the Moose Jaw, by Reza Farokhfal ,COMMS. 652
CANADIAN DOCUMENTARY FILM FINAL ASSIGNMENT A REVIEW
Libidinal
Technology: Lyotard in the New World by Arthur Kroker
Moose
Jaw: There's a Future in Our Past by Chris Gehman, published
in Canadian Film Encyclopedia
Moose
Jaw: The Reflexive in Documentary by Danny Stefik, essay
for Nonfiction film since 1956, instructor: Robert Craig, Concordia
University
Personal
Artist’s Statement by Rick Hancox about Moose Jaw
(There’s a Future In Our Past)
Moose
Jaw Pavcific Cinematheque Flyer
Misguided
look at Moose Jaw, editorial, Moose Jaw Times Herald
Moose
Jaw Stands Tall with Mac, by Robert Martin, Moose Jaw
Times Herald
Les
5 Jours Du Cinema Independant Canadien, Sequences, No.
163
Negative
Cutter Cue Sheets
Moose
Jaw Timing Sheets
Moose Jaw Interviews:
CBC
Interview with Kevin Newman
DATE: JUNE 16, 1993 TIME: 12:38 P.M.
CBC
Radio “Prime Time” with Geoff Pevere
CBC
Radio Interview with Michael Dorland about Moose Jaw
English transcript: April 9, 1993 “A L’Ecran”
CBC FM 12 minutes
Translated from the French transcript by Emma Hancox
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