Codes for North is a study of the early evolution of the Canadian avant-garde film and its roots in an aesthetic of difficulty. Stephen Broomer traces the evolution of this cinema through the work of three artists—Jack Chambers, Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland—from their early development as painters in the 1950s to the creation of their epic films: Reason Over Passion (1969), The Hart of London (1970), and La Region Centrale (1971). Their work formed in response to a strain of Neo-Dada that took root in southern Ontario in the late 1950s.
