Government policy dictated that the NFB should not make dramatic features, but a brilliant young documentarian from Toronto, Don Owen, who had gained his movie appreciation at the Toronto Film Society, assigned to make a short on troubled youth in Toronto, fooled the system by just shooting and shooting until he had secretly made the dramatic feature Nobody Waved Goodbye (1964). At about the same time and under similar circumstances a young Montreal documentarian, Gilles Groulx, directed Le Chat dans le Sac (1964). These were landmarks in Canadian movie history because they showed that a Canadian dramatic feature could be made with a personal style and a relevance to specifically Canadian world-views. With the ice broken, more features followed and, while none of them were commercial successes, many were excellent. In Ontario, a feature film industry was just struggling out of its long sleep, but in Quebec the NFB virtually created a feature film industry where none had existed before. Almost all the leading participants in the Quebec industry got their start at the NFB. One of the best of the NFB features was The Best Damn Fiddler from Calabogie to Kaladar (1968) directed by Peter Pearson with Kate Reid and Margot Kidder. Kidder has gone on to major stardom in Hollywood, but Kate Reid is just simply the greatest actor that Canada has ever produced. Seeing her on the stage in Tennessee Williams's Summer and Smoke is an experience never to be forgotten. She fills the screen with her warmth and incredibly realistic characterizations and there are few actresses of her generation anywhere in the world who can give her competition. She has worked in Hollywood —The Andromeda Strain (1972), for example—but the commercial movie industry does not seem to know what to do with a woman who is not particularly glamorous.

Of all the talents nurtured at the NFB, undoubtedly the greatest was Norman McLaren, a Scot who was working in New York City when he was brought to the Board by Grierson in 1941. McLaren is recognized world-wide as one of the greatest original geniuses the movies have ever known. He has brought unparalleled prestige to his adopted country, winning over 200 awards, including both the U.S. and British Academy Awards, the Palme d'Or at Cannes, three first prizes at Venice and the Silver Bear at Berlin. Everything he does is touched by innovation and, more importantly, by the soul of an artist. He has made movies without a camera by drawing or painting directly onto raw 35 mm film stock, has made sound without musical instruments or a recording device by drawing directly onto the film sound track, has made live actors behave like animated characters by a technique he invented called "pixilation" and has broken down live action by multiple, phased exposures. Even a brief analysis of the beauty, humour and incredible variety of McLaren's work would occupy the space of this chapter, but his unique juxtapositions of sound and visuals have perhaps best been summed up by the title of the feature-length biography the BBC did on him, The Eye Hears, The Ear Sees.

McLaren's burning light quickly drew to the NFB and nurtured a whole school of younger animators, of whom Don Arioli might be mentioned as one of the best story and voice men, including many who went on to prestigious careers outside the Board, such as George Dunning, who established his own studio in England and made the Beatles' animated feature Yellow Submarine (1968). The world leadership of the NFB in animation also drew to it some of the greatest animators from around the world, such as Alexander Alexeieff, Lotte Reiniger, Zlatco Grgic and Bratislav Pojar. It also inspired a whole school of independent animators across the country who have also added to Canada's leadership in this field, such as Al Sens of Vancouver, John Straiton and Gerald Robinson of Toronto and A. Keewatin Dewdney of London. This flourishing of talent culminated in the winning of the 1985 Oscar by Jon Minnis for his hilarious Charade which he made for $300.00 while a student at Sheridan College in Mississauga, Ontario, the first time this award has been won by a student.

Perhaps the greatest dramatic feature ever made in Canada, Mon Oncle Antoine (1971), a National Film Board production which can stand comparison with the best anywhere in the world, gave to Canada the same kind of prestige that the Board's documentaries and animation had done earlier. Directed by Claude Jutra, who had made one of the first Quebec features in , Á Tout Prendre (1961–63), with leading lights of the Quebec industry participating, it is beautifully made in every respect. It tells the story of a boy learning about the adult world in a rural asbestos town in Quebec. Once seen, its characters and its view of life can never be forgotten and its universal theme will no doubt send the same messages to the hearts of its viewers 65 years from now just as Nanook of the North does.

The formation of the NFB in 1939 may have been the most significant event in Canadian movie history, but the decision to virtually destroy the NFB as a movie production company in 1984 must be recorded as the single most tragic event of that history. No longer will Canadians have the pleasure of seeing the NFB bring home an Oscar as almost an annual event.

A year before the NFB was formed, F.R. "Budge" Crawley made his first movie, Ile d'Orléans, with his wife Judith—while they were on their honeymoon! Crawley Films of Ottawa became an example of the quality that an independent company could produce despite direct competition from the government funded NFB, having won about 50 awards, national and international. In 1948, he made the classic short, The Loon's Necklace, based on an Indian legend, that is still shown regularly today. Crawley's first dramatic feature, Amenita Pestilens (1964), directed by René Bonnière and starring Geneviève Bujold (her first movie!), showed the high risk of such an endeavour. At that time it did not get any distribution, although it is now shown on television. With typical courage, he followed it with The Luck of Ginger Coffey, also in 1964. Starring Robert Shaw, and set in Montreal, it was directed by Irvin Kershner (the director of The Empire Strikes Back) and was widely shown at home and abroad. Crawley directed three documentaries that were outstanding in very disparate styles - a short, Saskatchewan Jubilee 1965), and two feature lengths, Janis (1974), a touching biography of Janis Joplin, and The Man Who Skied Down Everest (1975), which won a 1976 Oscar.

Toronto's Christopher Chapman, another independent movie-maker (although he has done work for both Crawley and the NFB), has made some of the most beautiful paeans to nature ever put on film and his vision is as unique and powerful in its way as McLaren's. He began his career in 1953 with The Seasons, sponsored by Imperial Oil Limited. It is noteworthy that this same company sponsored The Loon's Necklace and has been the only Canadian company to sponsor movies of lasting artistic significance which do not refer to the sponsor's product. The Persistent Seed and The Enduring Wilderness (both 1964) typify his best work. He created a major innovation in film technique when he used multiple images on the same screen for A Place to Stand, the Ontario government's Centennial film in 1967, for which he won an Oscar, and made telling use of the avant-garde Imax process in Volcano (1973).