D is for Daring.

D IS FOR DARING

Gail Vanstone

Toronto, Sumach Press, 2007:262 pp.

D is for Daring is the first book-length study of the groundbreaking feminist studio created within Canada's National Film Board in 1974. Author Gail Vanstone adopts the title from a brochure produced by Studio D in 1994, announcing its twentieth anniversary of "making films" and "breaking stereotypes." Variously dismissed as a "blinkered collection of privileged, white, middle-class filmmakers," and lauded as both a "national treasure" and "the only government-sponsored feminist film studio in the world," the story of Studio D and its films reflects many of the ideas, insights, accomplishments, provocations, conflicts and limits of second wave feminism more broadly. In this book, Vanstone persuasively argues that the issues raised by the very existence of the studio, its struggles, and achievements speak to the complex range of social, cultural and political concerns that characterized feminism's second wave.

D is for Daring weaves a complex narrative that includes analysis of the studio's relationship to the National Film Board, to the imagined communities of the Canadian state, the international women's movement, as well as to feminist film practices and aesthetics that emerged during the period. While much has been written about Studio D, particularly specific films that it produced, Vanstone is unique in offering a comprehensive overview of this curious government-created, feminist-run collective which was formally shut down in 1996. Her goal is to make a fresh case for the significance of the now defunct studio as a feminist instrument of change which continues to speak to contemporary (and global) feminist concerns. To this end, Vanstone also lists a chronology of important dates at the back of the book both for the studio itself and for Canadian women's rights more broadly.

The text is structured more or less chronologically, beginning with an overview of the Studio's creation. A key figure here is Kathleen Shannon, the Studio's first and longest acting executive producer (1974-1986) who was already a successful filmmaker at the NFB though the 1960s, having made several documentaries about women's and aboriginal rights. Shannon took advantage of the momentum generated by both the Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (released in 1970) as well as Canada's commitment to meet the goals of the United Nation's International Women's Year in 1975 to help establish the studio. Vanstone sets this story in the context of second wave feminism and the ideological terrain it was beginning to mine in English-speaking Canada at this time. She explores the politics of establishing a feminist film studio within the NFB as a cultural institution, arguing that the chronically underfunded studio was often at odds with the NFB's gender-blind concept of national identity and national culture. Links to second wave feminism are established throughout the book as she examines the unique position of the studio as a new and exciting space for feminist film production. While establishing the relationship between Studio D's films and the didactic brand of documentary film characteristic of the NFB, Vanstone also links the form and content of the films to two central second wave precepts: first, that "the personal is political"; and second, that the evidentiary status of experience enables the process of "consciousness-raising" to empower women and activate social change.

Vanstone examines many of Studio's films vis-a-vis the context (and politics) of limited funding, the broader contemporaneous aesthetics and practices of feminist filmmaking, as well as criticisms lodged against that genre in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly from British feminists powerfully informed by a turn to continental theory. Her recuperative reading lauds many of these critically undervalued texts as valuable documents of "women's stories" which combine a form of "life-writing" as a genre and consciousness-raising as a feminist praxis. Despite what some regard as their lack of formal and theoretical sophistication Vanstone sees these films as important examples of feminist narrative which offer up valuable and resonating insights for feminists today.

A number of Studio D documentaries have received considerable attention and extensive critical scrutiny, particularly during the 1980s when Not a Love Story (1981) and If You Love This Planet (1982) achieved widespread international acclaim. Vanstone offers some new background information that helps contextualize the significance of these films to feminism today. For example, she summarizes the dire economic situation of the studio against the internal politics behind the decision to fund only one feature film during the year in which Not a Love Story was produced alongside the backdrop of contemporaneous women's issues of the day. She reads the film's controversial examination of hardcore pornography in relation to debates that were gradually building (and polarizing) in the feminist movement around pro- and anti-censorship camps at the time. This confluence of circumstances, combined with the controversial, contradictory politics of the film has clearly led Not a Love Story to become a germinal text at the forefront of the "sex wars" debates.

From interview material she has assembled, we are given an interesting glimpse into the politics behind what films got financed by Studio D (and why), and a defence of the studio's collective decision-making against those who criticize its often "white middle-class" point of view. For example, Abortion: Stories from North and South (1984), Behind the Veil: Nuns (1984), and To a Safer Place (1987) about incest address a number of topical issues crucial to women's rights movements on a global scale. Dionne Brand's Women at the Well series (1989-93) tackles race and gender issues which Vanstone sees as breaking a silence for black women in Canada as well as a crucial moment in the Canadian women's movement. Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992) is positioned in relation to momentum gathering around North American gay and lesbian studies around this time. The last film to be released under the Studio D banner, Under the Willow Tree (1997), is a unique portrait of the history of Chinese women in Canada. These and other films produced by Studio D (including filmmaking collaborations with other women's groups) suggest that considerably more effort to engage multicultural issues was consistently at play here than many of Studio D's detractors have previously argued.

Vanstone's access to insider accounts of the politics of production at the NFB and her link between those accounts and the perpetually fragile economics to which Studio D was subjected offers up a far more generous and complex portrait of its history and its legacy. D is for Daring provides fresh insights into the storied studio and its relationship to second wave feminism. The result is a thoughtful, provocative portrait of this unique feminist collectivity underwritten by the state but which nevertheless fought (and often won) the battle to situate women's interests at the centre of national (and global) concerns.

Reviewed by Christie Milliken

Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film

Brock University

St. Catharines, Ontario