Goin’ Down the Road
Written by William Fruet and Donald Shebib
Directed by Donald Shebib
Canada, 1970
Donald Shebib’s landmark 1970 drama Goin’ Down the Road was a watershed moment in Canadian national cinema, in part because it proved that there could be one. The very notion of a Canadian national cinema was relatively new when the film was released. Though the National Film Board (Nfb) was establish in the late 1930s, it was only in the 1950s that its focus shifted from war-effort propaganda to a very specific form of national soul-searching, wondering aloud who we were and what our place in the world was. The collective attempt at pinpointing Canada’s national identity would reach a fever pitch with the Centennial just around the corner, but ended up yielding precious few concrete answers (though it wasn’t for lack of trying, as Nfb-produced works like Helicopter Canada, commissioned specifically for Canada’s 100th birthday,...
Written by William Fruet and Donald Shebib
Directed by Donald Shebib
Canada, 1970
Donald Shebib’s landmark 1970 drama Goin’ Down the Road was a watershed moment in Canadian national cinema, in part because it proved that there could be one. The very notion of a Canadian national cinema was relatively new when the film was released. Though the National Film Board (Nfb) was establish in the late 1930s, it was only in the 1950s that its focus shifted from war-effort propaganda to a very specific form of national soul-searching, wondering aloud who we were and what our place in the world was. The collective attempt at pinpointing Canada’s national identity would reach a fever pitch with the Centennial just around the corner, but ended up yielding precious few concrete answers (though it wasn’t for lack of trying, as Nfb-produced works like Helicopter Canada, commissioned specifically for Canada’s 100th birthday,...
- 4/7/2015
- by Derek Godin
- SoundOnSight
Helicopter Canada
Written by Donald Brittain and Derek May
Directed by Eugene Boyko
Canada, 1968
Last November, Netflix Canada and the National Film Board extended a deal they had made earlier that year, making upwards of twenty additional Nfb documentaries available for streaming. Though it’s a far cry from the 13,000+ shorts and features available on the Nfb’s own website, it’s a nice gesture, a way to make this particular iteration Netflix uniquely Canadian (and a way to get the necessary CanCon into the service to make it legal). One of the films added in November was Helicopter Canada, a mid-length documentary consisting solely of helicopter shots of the Canadian landscape. The effect is often thrilling, effortlessly creating power shot after power shot of both city and country, but much of why it doesn’t work is as much structural as it is political.
Helicopter Canada was originally commissioned...
Written by Donald Brittain and Derek May
Directed by Eugene Boyko
Canada, 1968
Last November, Netflix Canada and the National Film Board extended a deal they had made earlier that year, making upwards of twenty additional Nfb documentaries available for streaming. Though it’s a far cry from the 13,000+ shorts and features available on the Nfb’s own website, it’s a nice gesture, a way to make this particular iteration Netflix uniquely Canadian (and a way to get the necessary CanCon into the service to make it legal). One of the films added in November was Helicopter Canada, a mid-length documentary consisting solely of helicopter shots of the Canadian landscape. The effect is often thrilling, effortlessly creating power shot after power shot of both city and country, but much of why it doesn’t work is as much structural as it is political.
Helicopter Canada was originally commissioned...
- 9/12/2014
- by Derek Godin
- SoundOnSight
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