The Projection of Canada

The making of motion pictures is a mixture of mechanism and art, and the mechanism looms large. There is also the question of money. Who pays the bill? Romantic and fictional films can net box-office profits equally well from audiences in Lucknow, Ontario, or Lucknow, India, but it takes millions of dollars to promote them. On the other hand, with more moderate funds, government departments may aim to do a job of citizenship through visual education, or manufacturing firms may seek to gain prestige by distributing informational movies. In Canada, only the last two types of sponsor appear. We have here no Hollywood of the north, no great studio lots and highly paid stars, no cigar-smoking magnates, but we have flourishing documentary and factual film units, which aim to put the workaday face of Canada on the screen. The largest of these is the National Film Board of Canada, promoted by John Grierson, who was formerly head of the General Post Office Film unit in Great Britain. As for Grierson, his particular job has been to encourage films that will relate our familiar scenes to wider concepts of citizenship and statehood.