Shameless Propaganda

In 1939, Canada followed Great Britain in declaring war against Germany. In an effort to bring the nation together, the government of Prime Minister Mackenzie King invited British documentary filmmaker John Grierson to head up the National Film Board of Canada and spearhead an effort to create morale-boosting films designed to forge a national identity while also supporting the war effort. For his Shameless Propaganda, filmmaker Robert Lower watched all of the National Film Board productions made between 1939-1945, with the aim of evaluating Grierson's grand endeavor. This is certainly a heroic effort on Lower's part, although also a bit masochistic, as the overwhelming majority of these films—primarily documentary shorts—were fairly quotidian in style and substance, presenting a happy country in which good manners and hard work were the order of the day. What is interesting, however, is what is clearly absent from the screen: the output under Grierson showed a white, English-speaking nation loyal to the British Crown, with little acknowledgment of French-speaking Quebec or the indigenous population, and no special mention of black Canadians. Ironically, the best film from this canon had nothing to do with Canada: the 1941 documentary Churchill's Island, a portrait of British resolve under the Nazi air attacks, which won the first Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. An entertaining slice of Canadian history as seen through the somewhat skewed lens of its government-sponsored cinema, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)