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The Canadian film industry is often overshadowed by Hollywood's studios and has a reputation for producing art films rather than blockbusters. But there is a homegrown institution with a decades-long reputation for excellence: one with 10 Oscars and 65 Academy Award nominations, that counts viewers in the hundreds of millions; an institution that has consistently developed innovative technology. Its name? The National Film Board of Canada, of course.
The NFB was created in 1939 to be the 'eyes of Canada.' In the years since, the NFB has released over 10,000 productions and become an internationally acclaimed agency.
Shortly after the creation of the NFB (originally the National Film Commission), Canada entered the Second World War. NFB-produced series to support Canada's war effort were soon seen by millions around the world and, in 1941, the Board received the first Oscar ever presented for a documentary for Churchill's Island. With the hiring of Norman McLaren that same year, the NFB's renowned animation studio was born and animation quickly became one of the Board's most recognizable, popular and critically praised products. For example, the Academy Award-winning short film, Bob's Birthday, led to the development of the animated series Bob and Margaret, which airs in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada.
The NFB has frequently been at the forefront of advances in film technology, from innovative film-printing machines in the 1940s to multi-image technology premiered at Expo 67 in Montréal (a predecessor of IMAX) to an electronic subtitling system in 1990. The NFB produced Metadata, its first computer-animated film, in 1971.
The NFB continues to produce and distribute about 100 films per year, ranging from documentaries like Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows, about Canadian professional wrestler Bret Hart, or Le Rocket, about hockey legend Maurice Richard, to the animated feature Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square (an Academy Award nominee). Many productions are now seen on television, both in Canada and abroad.
The productions and technical innovations of the NFB continue to generate award nominations: two animated films—When the Day Breaks and My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts—received nominations for the 2000 Academy Awards and the NFB received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for work on post-production technology.
Perhaps the most significant new initiative is the development of Cineroute, a system that allows computer users to view NFB productions on demand via the Internet. The project, begun on a pilot basis in the late 1990s using a high-speed network, lets faculty and students from a hundred universities, colleges and research institutes across Canada order films from a database for viewing in class or in libraries.
The NFB's current mandate is to make films that "increase viewers' knowledge and understanding of the social and cultural realities of Canada." The Board reflects those realities by supporting and developing filmmakers from groups that have not always been front-and-centre in the film industry: Aboriginal people, visible minorities and persons with disabilities.
Even as our nation becomes more diverse and inclusive, the National Film Board is still very much the eyes of Canada.