In Quebec National Cinema Bill Marshall tackles the question of the role cinema plays in Quebec's view of itself as a nation. Surveying mostly fictional feature films, Marshall demonstrates how Quebec cinema has evolved from the innovative direct cinema of the early 1960s into the diverse canvas of popular comedies, glossy co-productions, and reworked auteur cinema of the postmodern 1990s. He explores the faultlines of Quebec identity - its problematic and contradictory relationship with France, the question of Native peoples, the influence of the cosmopolitan and pluralist city of Montreal, and the encounters between sexuality, gender, and nation traced and critiqued in women's and queer cinemas.

In the first comprehensive, theoretically informed work in English on Quebec cinema, Marshall views his subject as neither the assertion of some unproblematic national wholeness nor a random collection of disparate voices that drown out or invalidate the question of nation. Instead, he shows that while the allegory of nation marks Quebec film production it also leads to a tension between textual and contextual forces, between homogeneity and heterogeneity, and between major and minor modes of being and identity.

Drawing on a broad framework of theory and particularly indebted to the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Quebec National Cinema makes a valuable contribution to debates in film studies on national cinemas and to the burgeoning interest in French studies in the culture and politics of la francophonie.

The status of art has undergone a tremendous shift in the last twenty years. While the value of a work of art once came from a dynamic but fundamentally stable consensus regarding its social and aesthetic status within its culture, this has increasingly been replaced by a more controversial role for art as a high-priced commodity in international markets - we live in a world where French-owned Van Goghs are sold in London to the Japanese for tens of millions of American dollars. In Capital Culture leading cultural critics, art theorists and artists re-examine the nature of artistic value, bringing historical and critical perspectives to bear on contemporary controversies surrounding national identity, political economy, and government policy.

The twelve essays in the collection address cultural theory, aesthetics, and policy issues related to the economics of art in the context of globalization and the spreading influence of the practices and ideologies of market culture. With particular reference to Canada, they question whether these shifts and the rise of new media technologies are endangering or enriching public participation, democratic negotiation, and cultural diversity. The book includes essays by John Fekete on Innis and censorship, Thierry de Duve on global markets, Nicole Debreuil on the Voice of Fire controversy, and Mark Cheetham on Alex Colville and Andy Patton. It also includes specifically commissioned artworks by leading Canadian artists such as Vera Frenkel and Cheryl Sourkes.

Authors: Bruce Barber (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design), Jody Berland (York), Mark A. Cheetham (Western), Thierry de Duve (Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington, DC), Michael Dorland (Carleton), Nicole Dubreuil (Montreal), John Fekete (Trent), Shelley Hornstein (York), Johanne Lamoureux (Montreal), Brenda Longfellow (York), Janine Marchessault (McGill), Paul Mattick, Jr (Adelphi),and Anne Whitelaw (Alberta).

Artists: Karl Beveridge, Michael Buckland, Carole Conde, Vera Frenkel, Janice Gurney, John Marriott, Luke Murphy, Yvonne Singer, Cheryl Sourkes, John Veenema, and Ron Wakkary.