Cinephemera: Archives, Ephemeral Cinema, and New Screen Histories in Canada ed. by Zoë Druick and Gerda Cammaer (review)

Zoë Druick and Gerda Cammaer’s weighty collection, Cinephemera, takes its place among a growing number of volumes (mostly edited collections) tackling the difficult-to-pin-down category of ephemeral film. And, while focused on Canadian works, the book is also the first in this expanding field to consider the topic so broadly (“ephemera,” for example, is a much more inclusive category than, let’s say, “educational” or “industrial” film, though the category might contain both of these as well). For this reason, the self-imposed limits of exploring only Canadian film seem all the more appropriate (even necessary), making Cinephemera a fine companion to the earlier and more narrowly focused Useful Cinema (Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson, Duke University Press, 2011). Cinephemera, however, also hopes to carve out a unique space for itself in its consideration of what it phrases “the digital turn,” and its effect on both cinema studies and archival practice, suggesting, in the introduction, the ways in which these technologies have (or haven’t) altered the work of preservation, access, and distribution. Though dealt with specifically in only a couple of the collection’s essays, this notion forms a kind of organizational logic that runs through the book in its entirety and becomes a significant part of the book’s contribution to the field. Druick and Cammaer’s volume makes explicit the connection, assumed in other recent books, between what we might still call “emergent” technologies and the rediscovery of moving image materials that have, since their creation, existed in a stratum below (sometimes well below) what we conceive of as the “mainstream.” Though the book’s introduction conceives of a loose taxonomy of “cinephemeral” types, the essays themselves are organized in a roughly chronological fashion, which results, ideally, in the reader discovering materials and ideas outside of the rigidity of classifications. In a way, the strategy replicates the very nature of ephemeral film: the category is massive, unruly, full of surprises, and the films themselves are frequently found where you least expect them. Among the many things that recommend this book, then, reader experience (which is infrequently lauded in academic circles) ranks high. I urge readers, no matter the narrowness of their own research focus, to read the book from beginning to end, as this experience is part of the magic the field offers.