In the National Interest: A Chronicle of the National Film Board of Canada from 1949 to 1989

Front Cover
University of Toronto Press, Jan 1, 1991 - Performing Arts - 407 pages

One of the cornerstones of Canadian culture, the National Film Board has throughout its history mirrored the social issues that preoccupy Canadians. Gary Evans traces the development of the postwar NFB, picking up the story where he left it at the end of his earlier work, John Grierson and the National Film Board: The Politics of Wartime Propaganda.

Evans points out that although Ottawa has not meddled in the operation of the NFB, outside stimuli have regularly forced the Film Board to reassess its mandate, a process which often has brought about as much confusion as light. For example, the unbridled optimism and expansion of the fifties and sixties led to English Production's desire for 'democratization' of programming, an end to the power of executive producers, and an expansion of the Film Board's core of permanent employees, all of which nearly caused the organization to founder. On the French side, despite the filmmakers' preference for the feature film rather than the cinema verite documentary, many in Ottawa regarded their 'political' films as both unfair attacks on the federal system and anachronisms coming from a federal institution. Throughout, the English-French tug of war so integral to the Canadian identity is a recurring theme.

Sources include interviews with former ministers, government film commissioners, policy-makers, and filmmakers, as well as archival documents and films. From them Evans has produced the first study to document the key trends in postwar Canadian filmmaking and to examine the role of film in the evolution of federal cultural policy.

 

Contents

Trying to Fit the National Film Board into the Postwar World
3
Down the Road from Ottawa to Montreal
29
The Golden Years
49
Unit B and Léquipe française
68
Art for Whose Sake?
91
Clouds Gather above Centennial Glamour
115
Austerity
135
Challenge for Change Société nouvelle
151
André Lamy Controlled by Events
221
The Atmosphere Changes from Siege to Neglect
254
Approaching a Second Halfcentury
288
Afterword
316
Appendices
321
Films of the Challenge for Change programme
328
Film commissioners and directors of English and French Production Distribution
334
Index
391

Sydney Newmans Tenure
177
The Chariot Disintegrates and Burns
192

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1991)

Gary Evans is a member of the Department of History, Dawson College, and author of John Grierson and the National Film Board: The Politics of Wartime Propaganda.

Bibliographic information