The Depression approached a grim 10th birthday, the menace of world war intensified, and the power of the Hollywood film production industry stole momentum from both. In Canada, the government wanted to put film to good use at home.

Such were the times in 1938 when the politicians invited Scottish born John Grierson, a visionary with a proven track record in making exceptional documentaries, to immigrate to Canada to study the Canadian government’s use of film. His report led directly to the establishment, in 1939, of the National Film Board (NFB) with Grierson as its first commissioner. He envisioned the NFB becoming “the eyes of Canada.” Sixty years later, the Board is globally acclaimed as an icon among documentary producers.
 

1. In 1995, Canada's National Film Board won its 10th Oscar for Bob's Birthday, co-directed by Alison Snowden and David Fine. [Photo, courtesy National Film Board of Canada]  2.  Logo of the National Film Board, recognized internationally as a symbol for excellence in filmmaking.

Hired in peacetime, Grierson went to work in support of the war effort and began building the NFB’s reputation with persuasive dramatizations such as Canada Carries On and The World in Action. But he envisioned a broader public service role for the NFB beyond the war years, of interpreting Canada to Canadians and Canadians to each other and the world. Grierson also required that all major NFB films of this era be translated into French, years before the Board established a separate French Program branch.

In 1950, the “official” mandate of the NFB was set down in The National Film Act. It required the NFB to “produce and distribute and to promote the production and distribution of films designed to interpret Canada to Canadians and to other nations.”

But the seeds of spectacular projects in which animators interpreted the world to Canadians had been planted years earlier. One of the people most identified with the history of the NFB, Norman McLaren, became director of the Board’s Animation Department in 1943. The public marvelled at McLaren’s artistic brilliance as an animator. He produced a series of masterpieces, such as Neighbours – the Oscar-winning 1952 film inspired by the Korean War – where the battle of two men over a flower that borders each man’s property leads to a devastating “war” and ultimately to the death of both, and A Chairy Tale (1957), and Pas de deux (1965).

The Film Board grew quickly and, thanks to its “travelling theatres,” could boast that millions of Canadians saw its productions each year – to say nothing of the thousands of prints circulating internationally. Still, the filmmakers longed to apply the precepts of photojournalism to their craft, to capture insights, catalytic and intimate moments on film.

Film Board experts systematically worked with emerging technologies to devise portable equipment which eventually allowed synchronized recording of picture and sound by the late 1950s. This liberating leap forward led later to the filmmaking style known originally as Candid Eye and later as direct cinema/cinéma direct.
 

John Grierson, left, NFB's founding commissioner, and Ralph Foster, Chief of Graphics Division for NFB, examine one of the many posters circulated and popularized by the NFB during Canada's war effort in 1944. [Photo, courtesy National Film Board of Canada]

An important example of the roots and rationale of cinéma direct was Les Raquetteurs, a 1958 film examining a snowshoe congress in Sherbrooke, Québec. The filmmakers called it a sociological documentary and, as writer Gary Evans explains, it was an exciting new film form since “it showed the common people in tribal ritual.”

The cinéma direct style gave rise to many classic productions, including Donald Brittain’s Memorandum, a study of a Holocaust survivor, Claude Jutra and Michel Brault’s Québec-U.S.A. ou l’invasion pacifique, Hubert Aquin and 28 filmmakers’ À St.-Henri, le 5 septembre, Colin Low and Wolf Koenig’s City of Gold, Koenig and Roman Kroitor’s Lonely Boy and Glenn Gould: On the Record.

The pattern of NFB research advancing the artistry of filmmaking has been repeated over and over. Once image and sound capture had become relatively portable, NFB tech experts turned their attention to the engineering of a wireless microphone prototype, a marvel first tested by crews filming Stravinsky in 1963. At the moment the composer assumed the mic, Evans writes, its chief designer, Marcel Carrière, “achieved the transcendence of which documentary filmmakers had long dreamed – the subject was freed completely from the hardware. Carrière finished perfecting the prototype while shooting the Film Board’s second English feature, Nobody Waved Goodbye, in 1964.

During Canada’s Centennial year the Board initiated two watermark programs: Challenge for Change and Société nouvelle.

Challenge for Change encouraged filmmakers to explore social problems such as poverty, racism, and sexism, simultaneously affording the productions an opportunity to help the disadvantaged improve their situations. Notable titles – which tended to create controversy and reflect the social unrest of the decade – included The Things I Cannot Change, Pow Wow at Duck Lake, You Are on Indian Land, and Working Mothers.

Société nouvelle offered Québecois filmmakers opportunities to address what they saw as social ills. During the ’60s, the artists’ thrust was to discuss the need for recognition of Québec’s distinct society within Confederation. Many controversial films emerged as part of Société nouvelle, several of which preceded the larger national unity debates led by the Parti Québecois. Some titles are: Cap d’espoir, On est au coton, Un pays sans bons sens, and Québec, Duplessis et après.

During the following decade, the Film Board saw considerable decentralization. The credo of “democratization” was being promoted throughout the federal government. The Film Board responded by establishing production and distribution offices for both English and French programs outside Montreal. Board staff could then establish production relationships with local filmmakers and could meet their library and educational clients – and, increasingly, television programmers and other distribution partners – face-to-face.

Canada’s NFB has achieved an international reputation for excellence in the production of films although the Board’s artistic creations cover an astonishingly wide variety of issues and topics, the NFB consistently maintains a Canadian sensibility and focus of concerns. It releases films produced by both English and French program branches, its production achievements not just limited to fine documentaries and animation. Much celebrated fiction and docudrama is associated with the NFB and with Board co-productions. Notable examples include John N. Smith’s The Boys of St. Vincent (co-produced by Les Productions Télé-Action), Denys Arcand’s Jésus de Montréal (co-produced by Max Films and Gérard Mital Productions), Cynthia Scott’s The Company of Strangers, Jean Beaudin’s Mario, Paul Cowan’s Justice Denied, and The Kid Who Couldn’t Miss.

One of the Board’s most recognizable symbols is its logo. Designed in 1968 by Georges Beaupré, the drawing represents a human figure in which the head resembles the eye’s iris. The upraised arms and joined hands suggest celebration. The bold lines of the logo suggest the art of the Inuit and First Nation peoples.

At about this time, Roman Kroitor and Colin Low assisted in the development of the IMAX screens, an innovative technology that is now seen in theatres around the world – a direct result of the NFB’s willingness to support experimental filmmaking.

Also known and loved around the globe are such celebrated films as Claude Jutra’s Mon oncle Antoine, Grant Munro and Gerald Potterton’s My Financial Career, “Co” Hoedeman’s The Sand Castle, Richard Condie’s The Big Snit, Cordell Barker’s The Cat Came Back, Bernard Longpré’s and André Leduc’s Monsieur Pointu, Jean Beaudin’s J.A. Martin, photographe and Tahani Rached’s Au Chic Resto Pop.

The NFB has won more than 3,000 awards, and by 1996 had been nominated for 60 Oscars and had won 10. In 1994 alone, films produced by the NFB won close to 100 awards across Canada, throughout Europe and in United States. Oscar awards won by NFB films as Neighbours (1952), Every Child (1979), If You Love This Planet (1982), Flamenco at 5:15 (1983), and, in 1995, Bob’s Birthday. In 1989, the NFB received an Honorary Oscar “in recognition of its fiftieth anniversary and its dedicated commitment to originate artistic, creative and technological activity and excellence in every area of film-making.”

The NFB received almost $66 million in 1996/97 to make and distribute films and audiovisual products that convey Canada’s social and cultural realities. An additional $10 million is generated by a variety of sales and videos both in Canada and around the world.

A major techological innovator in the world of filmmaking, the NFB has been responsible for dozens of important breakthroughs, including the development of a digital sound library management system; digital footage, frame and time counter; an electronic film subtitling system; and the first large-scale audiovisual server in Canada, the CinéRobothèque. It continues to produce state-of-the-art films every year. Current research projects include a computer animation workstation and the establishment of a digital imaging service for film ensure a pre-eminent role for Canada’s National Film Board in the 21st century.

Patricia Stone/Susan Tolusso