The National Film Board Of Canada: a History

A gargantuan task, the National Film Board has sifted through the roughly 10,000 films made over its 55 year history to bring together the 22 complete works and 2 excerpts included in this 5-tape boxed set. Three of legendary animator Norman McClaren's masterworks are included on the opening tape: 1952's Neighbors, 1949's Begone Dull Care, and 1962's Pas de Deux, as well as Caroline Leaf's beautiful 1976 short The Street and Alison Snowden and David Fine's wonderful George and Rosemary (which I had the great good fortune of seeing in Vancouver before its general release in 1987). The second and third tapes offer representative documentaries, from Roman Kroitor's 1954 classic Paul Tomkowicz: Street-Railway Switchman and Kroitor and Wolfgang Koenig's cinema verité piece on Paul Anka, Lonely Boy (1962), to Michael Rubbo's Waiting for Fidel (1974)--a kind of Roger & Me by way of Beckett, and the Academy Award winning If You Love This Planet, featuring nuclear critic Dr. Helen Caldicott (a film officially labeled by the U.S. government as "political propaganda"). The fourth tape covers French film production at NFB and includes a pair of shorts and the full-length motion picture Mon Oncle Antoine (1971), a charming coming-of-age story. The final video offers the 1989 documentary history of the NFB, The Magical Eye, and includes tantalizing excerpts from the films Strangers in Good Company (1990) and Forbidden Love: Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992). a 30-page booklet by media critic Deirdre Boyle gives a good overview of the NFB, and includes annotations for each of the films presented in the collection. To its credit, The National Film Board of Canada: a History does a marvelous job of doing what it sets out to: chronicling through film the history of techniques, approaches, innovations, and diverse subject matter of the NFB's giant oeuvre. However, as might be expected, not everyone's tastes will be satisfied here: some of my favorite animated pieces (The Big Snit, Getting Started, Get a Job, or The Cat Came Back) were not included, while the somewhat dated Universe (1960) and primitively animated vignette The Romance of Transportation in Canada were. Still, the purpose of the collection is to make available a representation of the history of film production at NFB, not a compilation of current audience favorites, and in this respect the collection will be a boon to film lovers everywhere. For public libraries, however, there is one very serious consideration: Bonnie Sherr Klein's 1981 film Not a Love Story: a Film About Pornography. Banned in Ontario upon its release, Klein's controversial exploration of pornography contains explicit footage from pornographic films and scenes from live sex shows, in addition to strip routines and men's magazine photo shoots. a thought-provoking and serious exploration of the subject (the film was instrumental in building the anti-pornography movement), Klein's Not a Love Story would probably spark complaints. Still, for the brave and the bold with a flush budget and a steady queue of film connoisseurs, The National Film Board of Canada: a History is a plum acquisition, and is highly recommended for larger collections. (R. Pitman)