Jill Sharpe with Robert Lepage

Weird Sex and Snowshoes: A Trek through the Canadian Cinematic Psyche

Directed by Jill Sharpe
Produced by Gabriela Schonbach
Omni Film Productions
59 minutes • 2004

Also available on DVD

If you had to boil Canadian film down, would you get the unlikely combo of awkward sex pitched against a barren northern landscape? Weird Sex and Snowshoes, the fresh, fast-paced, funny documentary based loosely on Vancouver Sun film critic Katherine Monk's acclaimed book, is cagey enough to say just that. And more.

A smorgasbord of interviews and film clips, Weird Sex gives some of Canada's most celebrated filmmakers the chance to sound off on "Just what is Canadian film?" Atom Egoyan, Robert Lepage, Patricia Rozema, Denys Arcand, Zacharias Kunuk, Denis Villeneuve, Lynne Stopkewich, Clement Virgo, and others reveal opinions as diverse as their filmmaking styles. But despite scads of ideas, certain defining characteristics do emerge: a fascination with the outsider, exiled by Canada's enormous geography, cultural differences, internal demons; the everyday and ordinary made by turns poignant, bizarre and even mystical; a willingness to take artistic risks; a style that borrows heavily from both documentary and theatre; absurdist humour; and it goes without saying, the ever-present influence and reaction against the behemoth to the south, the USA.

As scenes from Mon Oncle Antoine, Atanarjuat, My American Cousin, Rude, Margaret's Museum, Jesus de Montreal, The Saddest Music in All the World, 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould, Flower & Garnet, Goin' Down the Road, and all told more than 70 Canadian films, rocket across the screen, the notion of a unified Canadian cinema starts to take shape.

Subject(s): Canada, Film studies, Filmmaking, Identity

Read review in Associates: The Electronic Library Support Staff Journal