On the occasion of the National Film Board's 60th anniversary: some thoughts on the future of the film board

TAKE ONE, Dec-Feb, 1999 by Colin Low

Let's go back to Grierson and the idea of the Board as something that would interpret Canada to Canadians and the world, which was the buzz phrase at the time. It was probably meant to be political, something you couldn't quite put your finger on, but it has had an amazing longevity.... In a way the Board comes out of 19th-century ideas which were the English/Scottish emphasis on education and with a scholarship you could see the future.

I think Grierson, like H.G. Wells, believed that. Grierson really was a school teacher and he believed you could devise an educational system using film.... Film has lasted longer than anyone could have imagined. By the time the documentary school really got started there had been 30 years of filmmaking and they knew it could last.... What is the worrying thing at the moment is that everybody rushed into television and the electronic future. And I think it is a very shaky future because tape lasts only 20 years at the most. Film has lasted over a hundred. The physicality of video recordings is very short life. We know that now. We didn't know that 10 years ago, but we know that now. In a way, the NFB is leading the way in video preservation. It has lowered the temperature in its vaults, which was a very expensive process.... If the Film Board does actually succumb to all this downsizing it will have thrown out the baby with the bath water, all that wonderful 19th--century technology. You have to preserve things that give meaning to the present .... Fortunately the Board has maintained its 35mm equipment for the animation work, because nothing else will do the same thing. And the Film Board, as we all know, has led the country in animation in a firm and vigorous way and it still has a huge reputation for that. It's still very much experimentation, but that's very close to the artistic heart of the Board.... The downsizing of the Film Board seems more like political revenge than anything else, to get at the French-Canadian fact. Being in Montreal was not helpful in that respect. When you go to the yearly Film Board party, held at Christmas, the place is completely full, and it's French and it's English. It is a spectacular gathering. It [the NFB] was a bridge between the two solitudes. Many of the best filmmakers of this country have come through the Film Board. There's a good deal of memory of things past. It's nostalgia. The NFB made Canada a kind of gentler culture than the American's and gave focus to the country.... Grierson's original intention was for the maintenance of film and its historical importance, to create a storehouse and, of course, to create a leading--edge experimentation into what the hell moving pictures are all about.