Tax Shelter Terrors: The Real Story of Canadian Cult Cinema
- Submitting institution
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Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 34 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
- Output identifier
- 34Z_OP_Q0041
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
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- Month
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- Year
- 2016
- URL
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https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1169201/1169202
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This 60 minute documentary (directed and researched by Mendik) is the first project to fully explore the social and historical significance of the controversial ‘tax shelter’ films that were released in Canada between 1974 and 1984. The documentary considers both the tax shelter phenomenon (which allowed investors to deduct 100% of taxable investment in film production), and the dramatic expansion in populist Canadian cinema it prompted (including ‘body horror’ films, home invasion thrillers, ribald teen movies and regional sex comedies). In his assessment, Mendik incorporates a range of social, historical and gender-based methodologies, combining these with national cinema perspectives. One specific focus of these approaches is the Québec based producers Cinépix Inc, who released over 70 films using state funds. The documentary interviews 18 filmmakers and historians who fully assess how Cinépix releases can be contextualised through key events in the region’s history (such as the 1970 October Crisis). The project also makes extensive use of Cinépix’s archives, seeking to create new knowledge on 1970s Canadian film via the following research questions: Who were the key filmmakers associated with the 1970s Canadian tax shelter phenomenon? How did state funding structures influence the production practices of Cinépix Films? Why did the iconography of the sexually liberated Quebecois female become so prominent in Cinépix releases? How did the emergence of countercultural protest and terrorism impact on the films Cinépix created during the 1970s? Since its release, the documentary has screened at international conferences and festivals, winning the Director’s Choice Best Documentary Award (Sydney Night of Terror Festival, 2016). The documentary also formed the basis of Mendik’s subsequent study ‘Tax Shelter Terrors: Cinépix and the Hidden History of 1970s Canadian Horror Cinema’, which is forthcoming in the Mendik and Petley (eds) volume Shocking Cinema of the Seventies (Bloomsbury, 2021).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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