By Alex Zakrzewski

From Churchill’s Island – Courtesy NFB

Churchill’s Island holds the unique distinction of being the first Oscar-winning Canadian film and documentary. Produced by the National Film Board (NFB), it was also until recently, literally rotting away in vaults and archives across North America, forgotten by the generations of filmmakers it unknowingly influenced.

Thanks to the NFB’s commitment to film conservation, Churchill’s Island is in the process of being restored, digitized and preserved in new media formats for film enthusiasts everywhere to appreciate.

A 20-minute newsreel, Churchill’s Island was produced in 1941 during the Second World War as part of two separate NFB film series called Canada Carries On and The World in Action.  Albert Ohayon, curator of the NFB’s English collection, explains film series such as these were screened theatrically before feature presentations and were an important means of informing and mobilizing the Canadian public for the war effort.  Having personally viewed nearly 7,000 films during his 27-year tenure with the NFB, Ohayon says Churchill’s Island “stands head and shoulders above films that were made in that era.”

The film uses captured enemy footage and first-person interviews (both a rarity at the time) to bring home to Canadian audiences the determination of a besieged England.  “The film is very striking visually and the message is very, very strong,” Ohayon says. “England is under siege but the people are working together to counter the threat of the Axis powers.” Even 70 years later, it’s difficult not to feel moved as the booming voice of narrator Lorne Greene reassures audiences that the English people themselves “stand once more at the watchtowers and the bastions of Churchill’s Island.”

Ohayon explains that because of its international focus, The World in Action series also found an audience in the United States.  But as powerful as the film’s message was, people weren’t interested in revisiting it after the war, he says. As a result, Churchill’s Island and other NFB war material was left to languish in vaults and archives. The effort to save the film is part of the NFB’s plan to restore, digitize and preserve on new media formats some 13,000 titles dating back to 1939.
[pullquote]“The film is very striking visually and the message is very, very strong.”
- Albert Ohayon, NFB[/pullquote]
Richard Cournoyer, laboratory and conservation supervisor, explains that the first step in any project is compiling all available film material.   Images captured on 16mm or 35mm film went through a series of processes between the original camera negative and the final version sent to theatres. One of the immediate problems Cournoyer and his team have faced with Churchill’s Island is tracking down all the available material which is spread across the NFB vaults, the National Archives and the Academy of Motion Pictures in Hollywood.

All material is then examined for damage, fungus, and what Cournoyer calls “vinegar syndrome” – acidic molecules that infect the film causing decay detectable by a vinegar-like smell.

The next step is to create a Digital Source Master (DSM).  Each DSM contains a film’s component parts (sound, image, effects) and segments (titles, subtitles, credits) in all existing languages.  Images are digitized using one of two devices, an Arriscan scanner or a Datacine.  The sound is digitized using Pro Tools.  Two separate teams work to treat and restore image and sound separately, and as close to the film’s original state as possible, before synchronizing the components.  The result is a Digital Master (DM), which along with the DSM is saved to the NFB archives and kept should future restoration and improvement be needed.  Once the DM is complete, it’s compressed into a mezzanine file from which the film can be exported onto a range of digital formats including DVD, web download and mobile platforms.

Cournoyer says that the preservation process has come a long way since the NFB’s conservation efforts began in 1991.  He laughs when recalling the initial method for detecting “vinegar syndrome” was a student hired to go around smelling the film cans.  “We stopped that because it might be dangerous,” he says.

The NFB’s film preservation efforts can be at times controversial.  Thomas Waugh, professor of cinema studies at Concordia University and an expert on documentary film, is critical of certain aspects of the restoration and digitization process.   While Waugh agrees that important pieces of Canada’s film heritage should be preserved, he questions the artistic merit of some of their choices – including Churchill’s Island.  “The fact that it won an Academy Award does not necessarily mean it’s a very special and wonderful film,” Waugh says.  “It’s like an everyday film from the NFB and it’s wonderful in that respect but it doesn’t stand out from the others.”

Artistic tastes aside, Waugh says the main problem with the NFB’s restoration and digitization efforts is language.  During the digitization process all language versions of a film are scanned, restored and archived, and then made available to audiences. However, Waugh says that not enough is done to make films originally produced in only one official language available in both, if only with subtitles.  “The restoration activities should be taking a remedial approach to this,” he says. “They shouldn’t be trapped by the original linguistic policy of the NFB.  What they’ve done so far in making up for historical errors is pretty disappointing.”

Cournoyer says it is too soon to say when Churchill’s Island will be fully restored and digitized. Material and technicalities aside, the NFB is also a production house – Cournoyer and his skeleton staff of seven have to split their time between conservation and working on the new productions.  He says it takes his team nine hours of work to preserve just one hour of film.  Despite these difficulties, Cournoyer takes solace in the fact that once everything is digitized, it will be preserved hopefully forever. “It’s going to take us twenty years to do that if there’s no problems, no surprises, no end of funding,” he says.  “Ideally, we need special funding, but nobody has that.”

By Jeffrey Doner

The majestic Canadian territory of Nunavut is rarely associated with video cameras, films, and actors – but a recent program created by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the Nunavut Film Development Corporation (NFDC) has created a buzz in Canada’s Far North.

Stories from Our Land is a workshop designed to teach aspiring Inuit filmmakers about the filmmaking process.  David Christensen, executive producer for the North West Centre, was one of the driving forces behind the development of the workshop.

Christensen hopes the Stories from Our Land program will be a factor in encouraging Canada’s Inuit to get behind the camera and tell their tales.

“The NFB is really interested in helping to develop filmmaker and creator voices from the North to tell their own stories, ” says Christensen.  “For the longest time it was southerners going up and telling stories from the North.”

The workshop, which took place in Iqaluit last November, gathered 28 participants from all over Canada’s territories. The NFB and the NFDC recruited editors, cameramen, directors, and filmmakers from across Canada with backgrounds in a variety of fields.

Christensen elaborated on the importance and hard work of the mentors.  “[The filmmakers] have somebody there who they can mount ideas off of, they can get help operating the camera, help them edit, help them really know the craft of storytelling and editing and help them pull out a really interesting story.”

[pullquote]“They are sort of off to the races … their survival skills are going to be just fine.”
- Carrie Haber, filmmaker[/pullquote]

Under the guidance of the mentors, the participants were put to task, making a six to seven minute mini-film project.  On the final night of the workshop, the films were screened for all in the community, Christensen says.  The next part of the program was to get the new filmmakers to send in a proposal to make a film.  “The caveat (was) they had to propose a film where they didn’t use interviews and they didn’t use narration,” says Christensen.  It was about telling their stories visually.

The NFB has chosen four films from the group to produce.   “We will fully finance them, work with the directors, and support them as we always do with emerging directors,” Christensen says. Montreal-based filmmaker and editor, Carrie Haber, was one of the mentors in Iqaluit.  Those who participated were “people with anything from a passing interest to really dedicated documentary filmmakers that are coming up into their first professional productions.”

Haber says the whole community was there to talk about filmmaking and their experiences.  “Some of them have made films before, but there are certain skills that you just don’t get from working in a vacuum.”

It’s not just about going up north and teaching people how to edit and use cameras, says Haber – it’s about the bigger picture.  “The goal is to release the responsibility of people from the North to have to come down to the South to edit their films and produce their films, and get lighting people,” Haber says.  “We’re trying to create a self-sufficiency of knowledge and skill level up there that is on par with Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, and Vancouver so that there can be a filmmaking community with a strong skill set.  That’s the real goal.”

Christensen says that Canada’s North will be a significant place for the world in the long term.  “On so many levels; politically, geo-politically, culturally, environmentally, there’s going to be a lot that happens in the North that will determine what Canada does over the next century,” he says.   “If we can be a part of helping to tell some stories and providing a point of view and perspective on this place for other Canadians, I think that’s a great thing.”

Much of what is conveyed to the public of late deals with boundary disputes and global warming. Even so, Christensen says filmmakers have been mostly telling stories about culture and identity.

Nyla Innuksuk, a filmmaker from Iqaluit who participated in Stories from Our Land, was chosen to produce her film in association with the NFB and NFDC.  She says the workshop has helped her make new relationships for future projects.

“It was a really great opportunity to meet all these other people up North who are interested in film and I’m definitely sure I’m going to be working with other people who took part in the workshops in the future on other projects,” Innuksuk says.

Innuksuk is shooting in the small hamlet of Pangnirtung on the northeast coast of Baffin Island, Nunavut which is inhabited by about 1,300 people.  Her film, Inngiruti, is centered around a button accordion player named Simeonie Keenainak.

What makes this story unique is the history behind how the button accordion got to Pangnirtung in the first place. “In the 1800s when whalers were coming from Europe they would stop into these small communities and they’d bring musical instruments with them and play traditional Irish music,” Innuksuk says.  “They brought over the button accordion and some other instruments and they actually also brought over their square dancing.”

Nunavut - Photo courtesy of Carrie Haber

Innuksuk says that because the music and dancing has been in the town for so long, it has become part of the local culture in some small Inuit hamlets and communities.  “This accordion player, Simeonie, he’s one of the last people that are doing this and the town often gets together in the town hall and has square dances where Simeonie and his band play,” she says.

The film will be completely shot in Nunavut over a period of just a few days, which is exactly what the NFB and NFDC hoped would come from the Stories from Our Land program.

Allen Auksaq, a filmmaker from Nunavut, made a five-minute documentary about the cultural significance of the formation and construction of an igloo.   In If You Want to Get Married, You Have to Learn How to Build an Igloo, Auksaq uses the natural sounds and landscape of Sylvia Grinnell Park in Iqaluit to capture the essence of igloo-building. “I grew up knowing that if I wanted to get married, I had to learn how to build an igloo.  That was taught to me at an early age.  I built my first igloo when I was 16,” Auksaq says.

When it comes to the growth of the Nunavut film industry, there is some cautious optimism.  Haber said there is a lot of work to do in a competitive industry.  “I see it as kind of a microcosm of what is happening all over the world,” Haber muses.  Here, as elsewhere, it’s difficult to find funding for independent films.

“Because they are starting from scratch and coming into this model right away, I think that they’re not going to go in with the expectation that they’re going to be selling to these big distributors right away.  It’s just get the things made and seen,” Haber says.

For now, Haber is optimistic about the industry.  “They are sort of off to the races now,” she says. “I think their survival skills are going to be just fine.”

As an Inuit filmmaker herself, Innuksuk says programs like Stories from Our Land are crucial for the younger generation.  “I definitely see programs like this really helping to invigorate this film industry that’s just starting to emerge in the North.”

“I think it was really great for some of these younger people up North that they got a chance to work with these really amazing mentors,” she says.

Auksaq says the growth of the film industry in Nunavut is very important for people to learn more about Inuit culture and identity.  “Film and television is a medium that is being used by everybody in the territory.  There has to be a way for us to influence what they watch and learn through television,” he says.

Christensen concurs.  “You could tell they were just sort of bursting at the seams because they’re just so interested in not only letting southerners know about their story, but actually talking about themselves.”