BIOGRAPHY

A founder and past president of the Film Studies Association of Canada, Seth Feldman has published widely on national and international cinemas. He has edited three anthologies on the subject of Canadian cinema, among them the seminal Canadian Film Reader— the first textbook to be published on Canadian film. Other academic publications include numerous articles in the field of film and television studies and two books on the work of the Soviet director Dziga Vertov.

Dr. Feldman is the author and broadcaster of more than two dozen documentaries for the CBC Radio program Ideas. His arts and media commentary has appeared widely on Canadian broadcast outlets and in the popular press.

As a film programmer, Seth Feldman helped shape the Canadian Images Film Festival and the Grierson Film Seminar. In 1998, he co-organized a landmark Canadian cinema retrospective with the China Film Archive in Beijing. In 2000/2001, as Robarts Chair in the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at York University, he curated “The Triumph of Canada Cinema”, a series of lectures, screenings and panel discussions featuring some of the leading lights in Canadian film and television. In 2002, he programmed the Toronto International Film Festival’s Canadian Retrospective series on pioneering Canadian filmmaker Allan King, and edited the book, Allan King, that was launched in conjunction with the retrospective.

Dr. Feldman is the director of the short film The Dachau Line, a documentary that follows a path marked by the City of Dachau between the railway station and the concentration camp. He is currently working on a second short film, titled Mauthausen: Like a River.

Professor Feldman has served as associate dean and dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University, as Chair of the Canadian Association of Fine Arts Deans, on the board of the International Council of Fine Arts Deans, and as director of York’s Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies.

York University conferred the formal title of “University Professor” upon Dr. Feldman in 2001 in recognition of his extraordinary contributions in teaching and service to the University.

Publications

“Vertov After Manovich”, Canadian Journal of Film Studies Vol. 16 No. , Spring 2007, 39-50.

“On the internet, nobody knows you’re a constructivist: Perry Bard’s The Man With the Movie Camera:The Global Remake. Jump Cut No. 52. Available online only.

Entries on James Beveridge, Donald Brittain, Challenge for Change, Alanis Obomsowin, Nettie Wild in The Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film (New York: Routledge), 2005.

“The Girl from God’s Country by Kay Armatage”, University of Toronto Quarterly, 74.1 2004/2005, 561-563.

“Canadian Social Documentary in the Age of Michael Moore”, CineAction 65, 2004, 17-19.

“The Days Before Christmas and the Days Before That.” Candid Eyes; A Canadian Documentary Film Reader. James Leach and Jeannette Sloniowski, eds. University of Toronto Press, 2003, 31-47.

“He Kept Us Out of Buffalo: Jean Chretien and Canadian Nationalism”, Canada Watch, IX, 3-4 February, 2004, 14-15, 18.

Allan King: Filmmaker. Toronto: Toronto International Film Festival, 2002. pp. xii + 115.
“Preface:” North of Everything; English Canadian Cinema Since 1980. William Beard and Jerry White, eds. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2002. xi-xiv. “Counterfeit Apples; A Brief History of Fiction Verity.” Point of View 39 Spring 2000, 26-28

“Peace Between Man and Machine: Dziga Vertov’s ‘The Man with the Movie Camera’ “, Documenting the Documentary, B. Grant and J. Sloniowski, eds. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997

“Our Regularly Scheduled Paradigm Shift”, Queen’s Quarterly 104,2 Summer 1997, 211-217

“And Always Will Be: The Canadian Film Industry”, Seeing Ourselves – Media Power and Policy in Canada, 2nd edition, H. Holmes and D. Taras, eds. Toronto: Harcourt Brace Canada, 1996, 99-115

“The Hungry Games: Television at the Atlanta Olympics”, Queen’s Quarterly, 103,3 Fall 1996, 461-469

“Sheiks of the Burning Sands”, Queen’s Quarterly 103,2 Summer 1996, 234-241

“What was Cinema?” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 5,1 Spring 1996, 3-22

“Glue Guns: Television Does the Recession”, Queen’s Quarterly 103,1 Spring 1996, 111-119

“Theme Park Nation”, Queen’s Quarterly 102,3 Fall 1995 546-555.

“Everybody, The Jury: O.J. T.V.”, Queen’s Quarterly 102,1 Spring 1995, 167-173.

“A Box Full of Chameleons: The Historical Progression of Television Ideology”, Queen’s Quarterly 101,3 Fall 1994, 697-705.

“The Black Maria”, Queen’s Quarterly 100,1, Spring 1993, 239-246

“Sizzle, Stand Up Politics and the Long Form: Television 1992” Queen’s Quarterly 99,4 Winter 1992, 999-1004

“Paying for Power: Digital Television and Class Structure in the 1990s” Queen’s Quarterly 99,2Summer 1992, 483-494

Dialogue: Canadian and Quebec Cinema ed. with M. Dorland, P. Veronneau. Montreal: Mediatexte, 1987.

Take Two ed. Toronto: Irwin, 1984.

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Selected Radio Documentary Broadcasts on CBC Radio’s Ideas

The Evolution of Charles Darwin, November 11, 18, 25 & December 2, 2009

Inventing Dinosaurs, January 17 & 18, 2006

The Case of the Harvard Mouse, June 4, 2003

Hunting for Robin Hood, October 8, 2001 (Gold WorldMedal, Radio Programming (History), New York Festivals 2002)

We, the Animals, December 7 & 8, 2000

Wagging the Post-Modern Dog, December 14 & 15, 1998

It Ain’t Kansas: The Myth of New York City, February 23 & 24, 1998

Perfect Machines: Looms, March 11, 1997

The Inventions of Cinema, December 18 & 19, 1995

Coming Home, December 5, 1995

Tales Out of School, October 3, 10 & 17, 1995

Perfect Machines: The Canoe, May 23, 1995

Talk Television, May 23 & 30, 1994

1893 and the Idea of the Frontier, December 14 & 15, 1993

The Rise and Falls of the Middle Class, June 14, 21 & 28, 1993

Four Men and a Chair, November 18 & 19, 1992

Operation RYAN, November 4 & 5, 1992

The Idea of Pearl, December 4, 5 & 6, 1991

A Stop in Baltimore, October 31 & November 1, 1990 (2nd prize – Innovative Programming, George Armstrong International Radio Awards)

John Dewey, The Pragmatists’ Pragmatist, June 4 & 11, 1990