The Historical Imaginary: Quebec National Cinema in the Twenty-First Century

Since the year 2000, Quebec’s film industry has burgeoned with a parabolic increase in the number of films released and the production of a wide array of film genres.Building on the notion of ‘Quebec national cinema’ outlined by Bill Marshall, this book analyses French-language fiction features that construct images of the past. Scholar of Quebec cultural studies, Amy J. Ransom, explains how the studied films participate in the nation’s ‘historical imaginary’, revisiting and revisioning the past for present-day audiences and constructing new ‘sites of memory’ for twenty-first-century Québécois viewers.Each chapter examines a film genre explicitly engaged in representing the past: the historical film per se, the historical fantasy, the literary adaptation, the biopic and memoir, and the period film.The Historical Imaginary offers analyses of significant films and filmmakers while also providing a broader overview of these genres’ development in Quebec.From examining rigorous historical