The animated film in Canada has come of age and may be regarded as a distinct genre in Canadian cinema. Animated films produced in Canada can now be ranked with the works of other artists, including docudrama films. In this study, we show that, during their formative periods, Canadian authors of animated films shared a number of preoccupations with their fellow Quebec literary and pictorial artists, and cinematographers, the most important of which was a commitment to social protest. / This study is a detailed analysis of some 250 short animated films produced at the National Film Board between 1950 and 1984. In their choice of themes, frequent didactic stance and experiments with image and sound, almost all animated film creators are seen to be engaged in questioning the status quo and/or calling for social and political change. Their films might be best characterized as exploratory, informative and persuasive. The analysis permits us to further classify the films as contributions made by Canadian men or women, English- or French-speaking animators, and foreign guests. / In this study we have paid particular attention to the historical, esthetic and socio-cultural influences on the development of the contemporary animated film in Quebec during the different stages of its evolution.

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This dissertation represents the first major examination of the depiction of the working class in the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) films between 1939 and 1946. It is also the first to focus on studying class as it relates to Canadian cinema. In search of the formative roots of the Board's early discourse on labour and the working class, we first look at the historical development of early Canadian cinematic culture, Canadian working class political and cultural discourse and the NFB's own political and working dynamics. We then examine the films and point out connections between their discourse and the views forwarded at the time by supporters of the Popular Front. The survey of the films is contextualized within three phases marking the rise, the solidification and the eventual descendance of this discourse. / By the late 1930s, the policies of the Communist Party based Popular Front had already assumed a prominent position within Canadian working class politics. This thesis argues that, during a short period after its establishment, the NFB produced a body of film which introduced a new cinematic discourse on the role and the politics of labour and the working class. It concludes that this discourse was closely affected by the developments that influenced the rise and the decline of the counter-hegemonic movement that was instigated by the Popular Front.

This thesis explores the relationship between the National Film Board and its audiences, with particular attention to the ways in which the NFB has tried to respond to the needs of Canadians for media representations of themselves, through the Challenge for Change program (1967-1978) and Studio D (1974-). The focus of this work will be on the progressive aspects of NFB productions, which have frequently taken controversial stands against official government policy. / In the process, the place of the NFB within a politics of representation will be discussed, and its critical contribution to the constitution of a Canadian "national identity" will be examined. Finally, this study is part of an attempt to investigate characteristics of Canadian society, with respect both to the functioning of government and to the democratic use of film as a medium enabling culturally marginalized people to find their own voices.

This thesis provides an historical description and analysis of Labyrinth, the National Film Board of Canada's pavilion at Montreal's Expo 67. The thesis discusses Labyrinth in the context of traditions of multiscreen cinema and immersive artworks; further it relates the pavilion's structure, film content, and role in Expo within the context of Canadian art traditions and the 1967 centennial celebrations. Analysis of the pavilion is grounded in Bruce Elder's treatise on Canadian cinema entitled "The Cinema We Need". The thesis also explains the technological and formal, connections between Labyrinth and the invention of IMAX cinema.

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Social historians have been understandably wary of the contents of motion pictures. Their reticence to use film as a socio-historical document stems from a valid assumption that, since almost every film is to some degree a fictional construction, no film or group of films may be said to accurately reflect a society. In this study, however, a society is presented that a historian may credibly claim to be accurately represented by film since it exists wholly in film. It is the cinematic society created by the film archives of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). 'NFB society' is set in the 8,000 films produced since 1939 under the NFB mandate: "to interpret Canada to Canadians." Anchored physically, socially, and intellectually to the course of Canadian society and the state, this cinematic micro-society possesses a coherent Social history, which can be re-created by juxtaposing, synchronically and diachronically, films with like social scenarios. In so doing, patterns of social life, especially social relations in the micro-society may be observed in transience. NFB children play a significant role in this transience of NFB society, particularly in regard to dramatic changes in family, school, and community life which take place after the 1960s. Key to an explanation of the historical movement that develops within NFB families, schools, and communities are the 'progressive' socializing structures that replace traditional ones in the society in celluloid. Of particular interest are the social outcomes of the mental hygiene movement following its introduction into Film Board families in 1946 and schools in 1953. Over the decades of this study, the authority of NFB parents, teachers, and community leaders over the socialization of children is diminished by their adoption of the principles of mental hygiene, their influence over their children gradually supplanted by the influence of the cinematic state.

For fifty-seven years the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has been interpreting Canada to Canadians through documentary films which have simultaneously reflected and shaped the identity of this country and its peoples. This study is concerned with the NFB's documentary film portrayal of Native Canadians. Over the half century that the NFB has been making films about Canada's indigenous peoples their portrayal has undergone much change. Comparisons are made in this study between three of the earliest examples and three of the most recent examples of such films, with regard to attitude, voice, and technique. The effect these choices have upon representation is also discussed. Changes in technical, artistic, and philosophical aspects of the documentary film genre have also had a significant effect upon representation of Native peoples over the past fifty years, and are considered as well. Educationally, the study considers issues of manipulation of knowledge and hidden curricula. Playing an increasingly important role in education today, the media is a powerful tool both for teaching and for the inculcation of social norms. Suggestions are made as to ways in which this medium can best be used in the classroom.