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CBC
02-08-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
The forgotten Canadian film bureaus that cranked out morality tales about being a good worker
The 1922 film Her Own Fault begins with Mamie waking up exhausted in a stuffy room and, as the silent film title card tells us, "starting the day wrong." Things go downhill from there. She doesn't wash, runs late for her factory job, stoops uncomfortably over her work, and spends the evening "seeking excitement" in a crowded dance hall. The result, the film tells us in one of its final title cards, is that she "gets what is coming to her": tuberculosis. The morality tale is one of 15 short silent films currently streaming on "The Moving Past," a website created by Toronto historian David Sobel. Sobel built the site last year to house digitized versions of films made by two short-lived and nearly forgotten government film companies: the Ontario Motion Picture Bureau, and the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau. The two companies cranked out hundreds of films between 1918 and 1929, before sputtering to a stop during the Depression. The Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau was later absorbed and replaced by the National Film Board. "Canada was the first country in the world to have government sponsored films made … and I thought it would be fun for people to be able to go to the website and watch," said Sobel in an interview with CBC Toronto. Less fun, or at least less easy, is the process to get them there, which involves Sobel driving to Ottawa to visit the National Archives and screen the films before paying himself to have them digitized and edited. "I've had some discussions with the Archives where I'm saying, you know, really you should be sending these films for free because I'm promoting you. But we'll see," he said. 'Very particular ideas about class' The result of all that time spent on Highway 401 is a collection of films showing a snapshot of work, life and culture in Ontario and Canada — many of them geared toward providing moral instruction about being clean, healthy and productive. Take Someone at Home from 1925, which introduces us to irresponsible electric utility lineman Jim. "That particular film is actually a safety film, so it gets into how dangerous [that kind of work] was," said Sobel. After suffering a careless on-the-job accident that lands him in the hospital, Jim realizes he should take precautions at work, winning back a fiancee who is on the verge of leaving him for good. Other films in the uploaded collection aim to promote and spread new ideas and innovations, such as purpose-built playgrounds for children. The Educational Playground from 1922 first briefly shows us unsupervised children on the street before laying out the "unconditional success" of playgrounds, where "healthy amusement" can be found in pursuits like baseball, boxing and folk dancing. University of Toronto professor Sarah Bay-Cheng, who studies the intersection of technology and theatre, says these kinds of societal snapshots are rare. "During World War 2, a lot of historical films were melted down for the silver nitrate. So we've actually lost, in Canada, significant film archives," said Bay-Cheng. "So it's great to have some of these." In fact, as Sobel notes on his website, the films were very nearly destroyed in the 1930s, but were bought by a priest to show his congregation and later stored in barn near North Bay, Ont., for three decades before being re-discovered. Bay-Cheng also says the educational intent of the films on the Moving Past website exposes some of 1920s society's most entrenched ideas. "There are very particular ideas about class, particularly related to hygiene. So bathing comes up in a lot of these films. There's a lot of descriptions and depictions of brushing your teeth, of eating well, of [asking] what makes a good worker," she said. Sobel's hope is to continue growing his online collection until it numbers in the hundreds, starting with six new digitized titles set to be uploaded in the fall.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Despite Big Wins at Festivals, Female Crew Members Are Still Underrepresented in French Film Industry, Study Says
Despite significant wins at major film festivals and policies enforced by the National Film Board (CNC) aimed at boosting female representation behind the camera, male crew members still dominate the French film industry. A study conducted by the org Collectif 50/50 teams on 220 titles released in 2024 shows that the proportion of women in key below-the-line positions has remained mostly stagnant compared with 2023, and only rarely rose. More from Variety 'Brand New Landscape' Review: An Architect Has No Design for Family Life in a Quietly Affecting Japanese Drama 'A Magnificent Life' Review: A Treat for Marcel Pagnol Fans, Sylvain Chomet's Animated Biopic Seems Unlikely to Win Over the Uninitiated 1-2 Special Acquires North American Rights for Simón Mesa Soto's Cannes Award-Winner 'A Poet' (EXCLUSIVE) The only two fields where women lead in terms of representation are costume designers and casting directors with 90% and 80%, respectively. The org 50/50 says these 'jobs are historically perceived as feminine' and are therefore 'still overwhelmingly occupied by women. These are followed by editors with 50% of women, set designers with 47% (compared with 41% in 2023), music composers with 12% (compared with 8% in 2023), cinematographers with 13% (compared with 18% in 2023), music composers with 12% and sound engineers with 11%. While modest, the biggest year-on spike was seen in special effects where the number of female heads of department rose from 11% to 17% between 2023 and 2024. In above-the-line roles, women made up 26% of filmmakers (down two percent on 2023), 27% of producers and 34% of screenwriters (on par with 2023). The study also reveals that larger budgets are systematically allocated to men, even in fields that are mainly occupied by women. For instance, projects on which men are tapped as costume designers have 27% more budget, and projects on which women work as cinematographers and music composers have budgets 38% and 27% lower, respectively. The National Film Board has put in place, since 2019, a scheme to incite producers to hire female filmmakers, cinematographers and/or heads of production by giving them a bonus, on top of the regular subsidy that they receive from the CNC. But while the scheme sparked an uptick in female jobs in the first years after it launched, the proportion has since stagnated. Another recent study, presented by Annenberg's Dr. Stacy L. Smith and Katherine Pieper, for the 10-year anniversary of Kering's Women in Motion program showed that the number of women behind the camera had in fact skyrocketed from 8.3% in 2015 to 32.3% in 2024. In the U.S. it went from 8% to 16.2%, and in France it grew from 14.4% to 25.9%. Aside from these numbers, French female directors have highly visible at prominent film festivals in the last few years, with Julia Ducournau and Justine Triet winning the Palme d'Or, Coralie Fargeat winning best screenplay 'The Substance.' This year's Cannes festival was another strong showcase of female talent. The 78th edition kicked off with Amelie Bonnin's 'Leave One Day,' while Ducournau was back in competition this year with 'Alpha,' alongside with Hafsia Herzi's 'La Petite dernière' which saw rising actor Nadia Melliti receive the best actress award from Juliette Binoche's jury at Cannes. The festival also played films by Rebecca Zlotowski, 'Vie Privée,' playing out of competition, and Josephine Japy's 'The Wonderers' playing in Special Screening. The Collectif 50/50 has had a crucial role in getting international film festivals to sign a gender parity and diversity pledge starting with Cannes in 2018. As many as 156 festivals have now signed the of Variety All the Godzilla Movies Ranked Final Oscar Predictions: International Feature – United Kingdom to Win Its First Statuette With 'The Zone of Interest' 'Game of Thrones' Filming Locations in Northern Ireland to Open as Tourist Attractions
Montreal Gazette
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Montreal Gazette
Drimonis: Montreal's festival season is what culture looks like without the politics
It's that time of year again when Montreal's spring and summer festivals are either announcing their lineups or already in full swing, and the city is humming with cultural activity in French, English and a few other languages too. June in Montreal always finds me trying to fit into my schedule as many fun events, shows, concerts and culinary pop-ups as I possibly can, while still functioning responsibly as a working adult and getting my required seven hours of sleep. The Fringe Festival, Les Premiers Vendredis, the Mural Festival, and Le Théâtre de Verdure at La Fontaine Park have already launched festival season, with tons of free or affordable outings spread out across Montreal. The city's pedestrianized streets are back in full force, providing plenty of people-watching opportunities and car-free urban summer living. Pro tip: Head to Verdun's Wellington St. on Fridays to take in Salsa Bachata & Ice Cream outside of Crèmes Boboule. Sexy Latin beats and ice-cream on a hot summer night? Don't mind if I do! This weekend alone, Montrealers have a choice between the final weekend of Fringe (celebrating 35 years of laughter, crying, contemplation and, occasionally, utter chaos and confusion); the glitz and glamour of the Formula One Canadian Grand Prix; the Francos de Montréal; and the Festival sur le Canal. Even if you're like me and don't quite get the appeal of race cars going around in circles, there's no denying our city comes alive this weekend, as tourists and locals alike take in the F1 happenings. Just for Laughs and the International Jazz Festival are just around the corner, including free performances, while Film Noir au Canal is starting up again in July, if, like me, you enjoy femme fatales, private eyes and low-key lighting in your movies. And if non-fiction's your thing, last week I watched a documentary about celebrated Quebec singer Pauline Julien as part of the National Film Board's series of free screenings of NFB documentaries at the Alanis Obomsawin Theatre in Quartier des Spectacles. As a resident of the Sud-Ouest borough, I have a special place in my heart for the Festival sur le Canal (formerly the Montreal Folk Festival). Is there anything better than stretching out on a picnic blanket with your friends along the banks of the Lachine Canal listening to folk, bluegrass and roots artists? The three-day fest is pet- and kid-friendly and has that perfect laid-back Sud-Ouest vibe I love so much. And once again, the operative word here is 'free.' Over the years, the fest has introduced me to some great local acts — Canailles, Les sœurs Boulay, Calamine, and more. This weekend, I'm looking forward to listening to Caroline Savoie, Jérôme 50 and Geneviève Racette. While the Legault government often appears to think the only way to promote francophone culture is by excessively legislating it, I've always fallen for Québécois music, films, theatre, literature and comedy in an organic way. Word of mouth. Someone saying, 'Hey, read this.' That funny TikTok comedian I stumble upon. Being in a crowd dancing to the pulsating beats of Senegalese-Quebecer Sarahmée (she's playing a free show on June 19 at the Francos!) and leaning into your friend to say, 'Damn, she's really good.' Culture can be contagious — if you allow it to be. Montreal in the summer has so much to seduce us with, but we have to be open to being tempted. Sure, there's always much to criticize. Like any urban centre, our metropolis has its share of challenges and problems. But I suspect that those who constantly complain aren't putting equal effort into actively soaking up the joy that's so easily found in our city this time of year. You know that saying, 'If you're bored, you're boring?' If you're bored in Montreal in the summer, check your pulse.
Winnipeg Free Press
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Sweet bite of life
Animated documentaries are hardly new. The 2008 Oscar-nominated film Waltz with Bashir was a fine early example, a dark and compelling depiction of the 1982 war in Lebanon from the vantage point of director Ari Folman, whose fractured memories of the event suggest a PTSD-induced defence mechanism. Folman's animation was dramatic, dark and surreal, but it also served to put a indelible pictures to events that were largely erased from history. Endless Cookie Ontario Inc. The film bounces between Shamattawa in northern Manitoba and Toronto in the 1980s and '90s. A 'toon documentary in the mould of Endless Cookie, however, is something that feels new. Directed by half-brothers Seth and Peter Scriver, it's a freewheeling trip that bounces between the First Nations community of Shamattawa in northern Manitoba and Toronto in the 1980s and '90s, specifically zeroing in on the funky downtown neighbourhood of Kensington Market. Seth Scriver, who made the animated 2013 road movie Asphalt Watches, was inspired to make the film by his older brother Peter, whom Seth describes as one of the best storytellers in the world. The best storytellers don't always stay strictly true. So it is here, where we see Seth securing funding money from the NFG (it stands not for 'No f—-ing good,' Seth says). The NFB — National Film Board — did not finance the film. The cartoon Seth flies to Shamattawa and attempts to lay down the requisite clean audio track of Peter's various reminiscences. But because Peter shares a house with nine kids and a couple of dozen dogs, clean audio is a dream akin to world peace … or a Maple Leafs Stanley Cup win in our time. They abandon clean audio and a planned two-year timeline and go with the flow. The constant interruptions by the kids become part of the film's loosey-goosey texture. Indeed, the interruptions occasionally play front and centre, allowing Peter's offspring to shine on their own. Endless Cookie Ontario Inc. Peter Scriver travelled to Shamattawa to interview his brother Peter, but getting clean audio was impossible. The process of making the film, almost entirely animated by Seth, ultimately takes nine years. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. The key to understanding the film rests in the Kensington Market, where the brothers' dad operated a funky second-hand shop. This would seem to be the source of the film's hippy esthetic, not just pertaining to animation (reminiscent of underground comic artist Kim Deitch), but to the whole narrative thread, which proceeds in the desultory manner of a stoner on a constantly interrupted mission. And yet, a discipline is at work here. The Scrivers touch on serious themes, especially pertaining to injustices done to Indigenous people, but the tone stays philosophical, funny and affectionate. The two main locales, Shamattawa and Kensington Market, could not be more different. One is remote, one is urban, but they reflect off each other in interesting ways. Each has a cavalcade of colourful characters and each yields a stream of oft-hilarious stories. If a harmony exists between those two places, the film suggests, there is hope for the entire country. Endless Cookie Ontario Inc. It took nine years for Peter Scriver to animate the feature. Randall KingReporter In a way, Randall King was born into the entertainment beat. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
William Watson: Do good pipelines make good nations?
Before I built a pipeline, as Robert Frost might have put it, I'd ask to know: who was likely to use it, what would they carry on it, who'd be buying from them and, flinty New Englander that he was, at what price? On this need to do the sums I'm with former climate minister Steven Guilbeault, and that's a sentiment you won't often read here, though I suspect his own sums would never add up to 'Yes.' A pipeline may also be a nation-building project but it's primarily a vehicle for transporting gases and fluids you want to sell. And the idea is that the profit you make from selling is enough to pay for the pipeline. And not just that: building the pipeline should be the most profitable thing you can do with the money. If you're not doing the best you can with the capital, you're wasting it. Markets are appropriately ruthless in making such choices, politicians not. Patriotism being the first refuge of a grifter, there's a tradition as old as poetry in this country of slapping a maple leaf on a thing (or before that a Red Ensign or a Union Jack), calling it nationally important and then spending as much of the public's money on it as you can get away with. It sometimes enriches the nation; it always enriches your associates, political and otherwise. Often it has been done with tax money, or tax money foregone via credits or exemptions. There being no fiscal room for new taxes or tax expenditures, the politico-industrial complex — the crony capitalists and their catalyzers in Ottawa — seem likely to go after pension money, i.e., past taxes. If you think national projects with uncertain returns will provide a better financial foundation for your retirement years than a globally diversified portfolio of conservatively chosen assets, well, you love risk more than I do. It's not just pipelines, of course. Beware high-speed rail, urban transit, ports in unlikely places (I seem to remember National Film Board movies shown to us in grade school long ago about the port of Churchill taking on the world), AI clusters. There's never a shortage of ways to lose money or people willing to help you do it. 'Something there is that doesn't love' a pipeline (as Frost might also have said, having said it of fences). Actually, plenty of things there are that don't love a pipeline: distance, rock, winter freeze, summer heat, forest fires and so on. And also many variants of people. To whom is a pipeline 'like to give offence'? Activists, lawyers, competitors, landowners, regulators, generalized busybodies and many more. Little wonder, as B.C. Premier David Eby reminds us, that companies are not queuing up with investment money. Of course, his saying that is a little like the head of the local protection racket lamenting the absence of new pizza joints to threaten to firebomb. Too much spontaneous nighttime combustion frightens off prospective investors. The big risk in a pipeline is, not the difficult terrain, but the (till now, at least) forever-expanding political minefield that has to be crossed to get to it. When your VP Government Relations is more important than your VP Engineering, that means risk is high. The political class may swear it's giving up its old harassment habits. But how far can you trust them? And can they credibly control the non-politicians who have also made pipeline-building perilous? We may be a nation of law — we are certainly a nation of lawyers, with more graduating every spring. And we have lots and lots of laws that can be used to slow processes down. And a Constitution that, bet on it, will be used to challenge any new federal law saying they must be speeded up. Channelling Mackenzie King on conscription, the prime minister says 'pipelines if necessary but not necessarily pipelines.' I'm with him, too. Pipelines may not be necessary: let markets decide. But once a market has decided and a builder has come forward, is the PM willing to say 'pipelines, notwithstanding?' Or will he let the courts work things out in their usual five or 10 or 15 years? And if he does decide the process will be two years and no more, will he enforce that? Justice Minister Sean Fraser said no one has a veto on the process and then apologized if he'd offended people who think they do. Of course, precedent suggests they're right: they do. It doesn't take much to shut things down in this spread-out country. If a small group of Indigenous protesters closes a main rail line or highway because it doesn't like a nationally important project being started, will the PM call the RCMP away from its important work scouring The New York Times to see if genocide is taking place in Gaza and have them clear the track or roadway? And will they do it if he asks? There is reason enough to doubt both links in that chain. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) used to have the private sector build things and then hand them over to the public sector. With much of the risk of building pipelines or other national projects being small-p political, that may have to be reversed. Only the government can build, even if it will only build as expensively as possible, with every intersectional concern and collective agreement honoured. But once the asset is built, running it may not be so risky. So: Build, government, then sell. William Watson: Economically, COVID was a one-shock stop William Watson: Carney's throne speech ventriloquism was a little too obvious The most famous line in Frost's 'Mending Wall' is 'Good fences make good neighbours,' though Frost's poem challenges that idea. In fact, he compares his neighbour, carrying fallen stones back to the wall, to 'an old-stone savage armed.' Apologies to Trump fans but it's hard to read that line without thinking of this era's most famous fence-builder. I guess we'll be finding out if 'Good pipelines make good nations.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
