Exercise Musk-Ox: The Challenges of Filming a Military Expedition in Canada’s Arctic

• Main Author: Holloway, Caroline Forcier
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Edinburgh University Press 2015
• Subjects: Arctic; Canada; Holloway; Eastman; musk ox
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748694174.003.0019

This chapter by Canadian film archivist Caroline Forcier Holloway examines the extreme difficulty filmmakers in the 1930s faced filming in the Arctic. Interviewing many Canadian filmmakers from the era, including pioneering cinematographer Roger Racine, Holloway uncovers how film practitioners discovered new ways of filming in the Arctic’s extreme cold, with the help of the National Film Board of Canada and Eastman Kodak. Forcier Holloway also examines Canadian government Department of Defense documents that outline the reasons for Canadian military exercises in the Arctic and the documentaries that were made about these manoeuvres, including the film Exercise Musk-Ox (1946), which was released as a newsreel as part of the National Film Board of Canada’s Canada Carries On series.