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CANADA: Early movies
CANADA: National Film Board
CANADA: Hollywood as a problem
CHINA: Movies and government
INDIA: Booming domestic industry
UNITED STATES: Foreign-language films
CANADA
EARLY
MOVIES
Probably the first movie shot in Canada was in Manitoba in 1897. Many other short movies followed. The first Canadian feature film wasn't made until 1913. Evangeline was a five-reel film produced by the Canadian Biograph Company of Halifax. Based on a poem by Longfellow about the flight of the Acadians, it was shot on location in the Annapolis Valley. Evangeline featured an American cast and turned a profit. The Canadian Biograph Company was never able to match the success of Evangeline. The same was true of other early Canadian movie-makers. Only about 70 Canadian feature films were produced before 1939.
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CANADA
DATABANK
Population
28.1 million
Literacy
97 percent
Television sets
1 per 1.7 people
Gross Domestic Production
$22,760 per capita |
Adapted from The Media of Mass Communication, Canadian edition, by John Vivian and Peter Maurin (Allyn & Bacon Canada, 1997).
© 1999, by John Vivian, Route 1, Box 32, Lewiston, Minnesota USA 55987-9706 |
CANADA
NATIONAL
FILM BOARD
The National Film Board was created by the Canadian Parliament in 1939 to "interpret Canada to Canadians." The board's first commissioner, John Grierson, a British documentary filmmaker, advocated a strong national movie industry. He wanted to make movies that celebrated Canada's geographic and social diversity. Grierson acknowledged that Canada would have a hard time matching Hollywood's glamour but should not give up having a national movie industry. Grierson felt short, inexpensive films about Canadians and their experiences could complement more expensive Hollywood fare. In short, Grierson felt, Canadians could have a cinematic voice. Grierson also believed that films should tackle social issues and that filmmakers should try to produce films that make a difference.
During the World War II, the National Film Board produced two popular propaganda films. The World in Action and Canada Carries 0n, both narrated by Lorne Greene. A 1941 feature, Churchill's Island, won the National Film Board its first Oscar award. During the war, the National Film Board didn't make just propaganda films. There was also Alexis Tremblay: Habitant (1943), which examined the mythical lifestyle of rural French Canadians. Eskimos of the Eastern Arctic (1944) portrayed Inuit life. A consultant on Eskimos was Robert Flaherty, who had created the pioneering documentary Nanook of the North in 1924.
After the war, Grierson returned to England, but the National Film Board continued to make successful documentary films. During this time, it became known for a style called cinéma vérite, which roughly translated means "truth in cinema." For the National Film board, cinéma vérite has meant documentaries by Canadians about Canadians.
The National Film Board became known for animation after Norman McLaren arrived in 1941. Although McLaren made 59 films for the National Film Board, including the propagandist V for Victory (1941) and Keep Your Mouth Shut (1944), animation was his first love. His best-known, Neighbours, an eight-minute antiwar film about two neighbors fighting over a flower, won a 1953 Oscar. The dispute escalated into tribal warfare. The film used live actors, but they were animated with the same techniques used to animate puppets and drawings.
In 1950 Parliament passed the National Film Act, which expanded the National Film Board's mandate to producing, promoting and distributing films in the national interest. In the National Film Board's early days, it sent projectionists from town to town to show its latest offerings in arenas, community centers and even open fields. These films were also shown in movie houses and eventually on television. National Film Board films were distributed by public libraries, schools, universities and colleges -- and still are. Today, the National Film Board films appear regularly on television.
Like other government agencies, the National Film Board has faced budget cuts in the 1990s. Its 1994 budget was $75 million, down from $81 million in 1993.
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CANADA
DATABANK
Population
28.1 million
Literacy
97 percent
Television sets
1 per 1.7 people
Gross Domestic Production
$22,760 per capita |
Adapted from The Media of Mass Communication, Canadian edition, by John Vivian and Peter Maurin (Allyn & Bacon Canada, 1997).
© 1999, by John Vivian, Route 1, Box 32, Lewiston, Minnesota USA 55987-9706 |
CANADA
HOLLYWOOD
AS A PROBLEM<
The Canadian feature film industry remained largely dormant until the 1960s when Don Owen's Nobody Waved Goodbye and Gilles Groulx's Le Chat dans le sac rejuvenated the industry. Both films were National Film Board productions in the documentary tradition and featured regional themes without the glamour of Hollywood movies. Better-known films from the era include Goin' Down the Road (1970), Mon Oncle Antoine (1971), Paperback Hero (1973), Between Friends (1973) and the classic The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974).
By the late 1970s government incentives and tax breaks for producers investing in Canadian feature films created a glut of product -- some good, some bad. Films like Why Shoot the Teacher? (1978), Outrageous (1979), Atlantic City (1980), Scanner (1981) and the largest-grossing Canadian movie of all time, Porky's were all produced during this period.
How successful were government tax initiatives in stimulating the Canadian film industry? It's difficult to measure. Some years were better than others. However, the recent success of Whale Music, Exotica, Louis 19, King of the Airwaves and Thirty-Two Short Films about Glenn Gould is evidence that Canadian movie-making has come a long way since Porky's. Pay-television services like TMN and Moviepix offer Canadians a chance to see Canadian movies that they might not otherwise see.
Scholar Garth Jowett points out that Canada has always been dependent on Hollywood for movies: "From the outset, Canada because of its geographic situation was considered to be merely one of the many marketing areas designated by the American film industry." Also true is that Canadians have always preferred Hollywood movies to British or Canadian films.
One problem for Canadian productions is screen time. Canada's two largest movie-house chains, Famous Players and Cineplex Odeon, have arrangements with Hollywood to show U.S. movies. Scant time is left for Canadian movies. The estimated screen time for Canadian movies in Canadian movie houses is 2 percent.
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CANADA
DATABANK
Population
28.1 million
Literacy
97 percent
Television sets
1 per 1.7 people
Gross Domestic Production
$22,760 per capita |
Adapted from The Media of Mass Communication, Canadian edition, by John Vivian and Peter Maurin (Allyn & Bacon Canada, 1997).
© 1999, by John Vivian, Route 1, Box 32, Lewiston, Minnesota USA 55987-9706 |
CHINA
MOVIES
AND GOVERNMENT
If you want to make a movie in China, you will need to stick with safe subjects and themes or you will find yourself in trouble with the government. What's officially unacceptable? The government is hypersensitive to criticism and even frowns on the slightest negative historical reference. A strong moralistic strain discourages many themes that explore the human condition. Most social criticism is off-limits.
The government is serious about controlling what people are permitted to see. Chinese movie-makers risk being black-listed, having their careers stunted, or worse, for straying into forbidden subjects and treatments. The result: Mostly dull, antiseptic movies.
Despite the heavy-handed government role, an occasional exceptional movie emerges. In 1990, Jou Dou somehow made it through production and onto the screen. Critics called it artistically exceptional. Set in a remote village in the 1920s, Jou Dou dealt with a tragic family situation. It was beautifully filmed and a passionate treatment. Despite its artistic virtues, the movie made officialdom uneasy because the underlying theme was adultery. That, said the government, wasn't "a true picture" of China.
When Jou Dou was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign film, the government tried to withdraw it from consideration.
In the mid-1990s authorities banned a film because it sidestepped the official line and negatively portrayed Mao Tse-tung, the official national hero who brought communism to China after World War II and ruled the country for almost 30 years. Only the elite could see the movie and only in small, private showings.
The government sees movies as powerful tools to support official projects and programs and to project a favorable image abroad. There is a fundamental hypocrisy in this, as Professor Judith Marlane of California State University discovered when she was asked to help judge documentaries in the Shanghai International Television Festival. The eight judges, Marlane and seven from China, screened and discussed 74 entries from different countries over 10 days. Recounting the experience in Feedback, a publication of the Broadcast Education Association, Marlane wrote:
"My Chinese colleagues were able to respond positively to films with emotional impact based on universal themes that transcended political philosophies, except when it came to their own country.... The Chinese judges chose as their winning entry a documentary with ordinary production values that dealt with a dating service for the elderly. They bypassed a superior film with a major emotional impact that told the story of a poverty-stricken couple that raised abandoned children. No amount of heated discussion could convince the majority of Chinese judges that this depiction of family love and caring far transcended the negative implications of abject poverty and the reality that children sometimes are left abandoned on the streets. This was not a reality in China that was deemed suitable to be seen and shared."
Marlane attributes such an official mindset for the fact that most Chinese documentaries, and also feature films, are "distant, unemotional and even clinical."
In 1996, Disney ran afoul of official Chinese policy with its movie Kundun on the life of Tibetan religious leader Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama and all Tibet were treated badly in 1950 when Chinese troops took over the country, which was part of the movie's story. China sent a message that Disney's future in China, including possible theme parks, would be in jeopardy if the movie were released. To the applause of U.S. film critics, Disney executives proceeded with the movie.
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CHINA
DATABANK
Population
1.2 billion
Literacy
82 percent
Television sets
1 per 5.2 people
Gross Domestic Production
$2,500 per capita |
© 1999, by John Vivian, Route 1, Box 32, Lewiston, Minnesota USA 55987-9706 |
INDIA
BOOMING
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY
At 85 cents a seat, people jam Indian movie houses in such numbers that some exhibitors schedule five showings a day starting at 9 a.m. Better seats sell out days in advance in some cities. There is no question that movies are the country's strongest mass medium. Even though per capita income is only $1,360 a year, Indians find enough rupees to support an industry that cranks out 900 movies a year, three times more than American movie-makers. Most are B-grade formula melodramas and action stories. Screen credits often include a director of fights. Despite their artistic shortcomings, Indian movies are so popular that it is not unusual for a movie house in a Hindi-speaking area to be packed for a film in another Indian language that nobody understands. Movies are produced in 16 Indian languages.
The movie mania centers on stars. Incredible as it may seem, M. G. Ramachandran, who played folk warriors, and M. R. Radha, who played villains, got into a real-life gun duel one day. Both survived their wounds, and Ramachandran exploited the incident to bid for public office. He campaigned with posters that showed him bound in head bandages and was elected chief minister of his state. While in office, Ramachandran continued to make B-grade movies, always as the hero.
Billboards, fan clubs and scurrilous magazines fuel the obsession with stars. Scholars Erik Barnouw and Subrahmanyam Krishna, in their book Indian Film, characterize the portrayals of stars as "mythological demigods who live on a highly physical and erotic plane, indulging in amours." With some magazines, compromising photos are a specialty.
A few Indian movie-makers have been recognized abroad for innovation and excellence, but they generally have an uphill battle against B-movies in attracting Indian audiences. Many internationally recognized Indian films, such as those by Satyajit Ray, flop commercially at home.
In the late 1990s, Indian movies developed a cult following in the United States. The major Indian movie export market, however, was in Hindi-speaking parts of the world. In Sri Lanka, for example, whose language Sinhala is closely related to Hindi, the domestic movie industry is overshadowed by imported Indian movies.
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INDIA
DATABANK
Population
952.1 million
Literacy
52 percent
Television sets
1 per 47 people
Gross Domestic Production
$1,360 per capita |
© 1999, by John Vivian, Route 1, Box 32, Lewiston, Minnesota USA 55987-9706 |
UNITED STATES
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
FILMS
In the 1950s when Hollywood was churning out low-brow Doris Day movies, American movie-goers who wanted an intellectual experience turned to foreign-language films. Every major city and a lot of smaller ones had at least one arts house, featuring films from the likes of Sweden's Ingmar Bergman, Italy's Michelangelo Antonioni and Spain's Luis Buñuel. There also was the sensual appeal of some foreign fare, like the Bridgette Bardot and Gina Lolabrigida films -- a kind of sensuality that Hollywood feared to try at the time. By the 1960s, almost 5 percent of the U.S. box-office revenue was from subtitled and dubbed imports.
Some foreign-language films even made the mainstream circuit, among them Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman (France, 1966) and Constantin Costa-Gavras' Z (France-Algeria, 1969). Frederico Fellini's La Dolce Vita grossed more than $80 million in U.S. movie houses in 1961.
Today, foreign-language films are barely a blip in the U.S. movie exhibition industry. Rare is a foreign film that makes the circuit, including even award-winning movies from China's Jiang Wen, Greece's Theo Angelopoulos, Poland's Krzyszrof Kielowski, and France's Patrice Leconte. Foreign films have slipped to less than 1 percent of the U.S. box office.
What happened? Hollywood, in the late 1960s, began treating sophisticated subjects, using many techniques pioneered in Europe. American movie-makers even treaded close to sexual explicitness. This pre-empted some of the appeal of the foreign films, until today it is unusual for even the most acclaimed works from abroad to show up on U.S. screens. Another reason for the decline in foreign-language films on U.S. screens that some of best foreign directors today are pitching in on Hollywood projects, like Germany's Roland Emmerich (ID4), Hong Kong's John Woo (Broken Arrow) and Holland's Jan de Bont (Twister).
The fact remains, however, that U.S. movie-goers don't have access to most of the excellent work being produced in other languages. Also, directors who produce films in other countries are missing out on access to the large U.S. audience. Nobody is better off for these developments.
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UNITED STATES
DATABANK
Population
256.6 million
Literacy
96 percent
Television sets
1 per 1.2 people
Gross Domestic Production
$27,607 per capita |
© 1999, by John Vivian, Route 1, Box 32, Lewiston, Minnesota USA 55987-9706 |
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