Arts & Culture

The Toronto International Film Festival kicks off its 41st anniversary beginning on September 8th, and while it has become one of the premier showcases for movies from around the world since its founding in 1976, we shouldn't let the international flavour of the festival obscure the fact that Canada has had a thriving film industry for well over a century now, with its own home-grown crop of critically-renowned directors, actors and films. If you're interested in learning more about "Hollywood North," the Toronto Public Library has an appropriately vast collection of books and DVDs with historical and critical appraisals of the rich history of film in this country.

• Canadian cinema since the 1980s: at the heart of the world, by David L. Pike
• One hundred years of Canadian cinema, by George Melnyk
• Weird sex and snowshoes: a trek through the Canadian cinematic psyche, by Diana Bodnar, Katherine Monk, Gabriela Schonbach and Jill Sharpe

• The young, the restless and the dead: interviews with Canadian filmmakers, edited by George Melnyk

• Toronto on film, by Steve Gravestock, Piers Handling, Geoff Pevere and Kate Lawrie Van de Ven
• World Film Locations: Toronto, edited by Tom Ue

• Hollywood North: creating the Canadian motion picture industry, by Mike Spencer and Susan Ayscough
• Hollywood North: the feature film industry in British Columbia, by Mike Gasher
• Dreaming in the rain: how Vancouver became Hollywood north by northwest, by David Spaner

• Film and the city: the urban imaginary in Canadian cinema, by George Melnyk

• Reel Asian: Asian Canada on screen, by Elaine Kyung Chang

• Film in Canada, by Jim Leach
• Canadian national cinema: ideology, difference and representation, by Chris Gittings

• Quebec national cinema, by Bill Marshall
• The radio eye: cinema in the north Atlantic, 1958-1988, by Jerry White
• Essays on Quebec cinema, by Joseph Donohoe