By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Cutting edge Canada: what the NFB's buying these days
Brendan Kelly catches up with the latest ventures, including cell phone movies, with Canadian National Film Board commissioner and chairperson Jacques Bensimon for Montreal’s Gazette. “What we’ve done in the last five years is open up to the democratization of the audio-visual industry,” puffs Bensimon. “When Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King tapped a dynamic 40-year-old Scottish filmmaker by the name of John Grierson to set up a new public film studio way back in 1939, the idea was to “interpret Canada to Canadians and to other nations.” Grierson, the first government film commissioner, proposed to do that by producing socially conscience films and screening them to as many Canadians as possible in theatres across the country… Sixty-seven years later, the NFB hasn’t lost any of its enthusiasm for churning out activist films, but what’s rapidly changing is how the films are distributed and where we see them. With the arrival of a slew of specialty channels over the past 15 years, the NFB has shifted its focus from cinemas to the small screen, and its films have become staples on networks like the Documentary Channel and History Television… Bensimon [makes] every effort to ensure that the studio’s films make full use of all the new distribution avenues, from iPods to cellphones to the Internet… “The problem is that the NFB tends to live on its old glory and people have only the past on their minds. But there’s a continuing need for someone who’s experimental. When you win an Academy Award [for the innovative animated NFB co-production Ryan], someone is saying ‘you’re good.’ What you need is a place that’s innovative. When I arrived (in 2001), the NFB was closed in its bubble. You have to get out of the frame of mind where the NFB is stuck in its 67 years of history.” … The NFB is currently in negotiations with Apple to sell the iPod maker a package of 200 films – both animated and documentary shorts – that would then be made available for downloading from the iTunes online store for iPod users. The Board is also big on movies made for cellphones. Last year, the NFB and Bravo!FACT, a fund for Canadian filmmakers, partnered to co-produce four so-called “micro-movies” designed to be viewed on cellphones. One of the four, director Don McKellar’s Phone Call from Imaginary Girlfriends, was actually shot using a cellphone, as well. The Shorts in Motion series also includes Unlocked by Sook-Yin Lee, host of CBC Radio’s Definitely Not the Opera; Go Limp, from Love, Sex and Eating the Bonesdirector Sudz Sutherland; and former Kid in the Hall Mark McKinney’s I’m Sorry… Bensimon’s film studio also began shooting many of its major documentaries in high-definition long before private producers took to the format, and that gamble is paying off now that more TV networks are switching to broadcasting in high-definition.” [More initiatives at the link.]
