This thesis explores the National Film Board's Cultural Diversity in Action Initiatives (1997-- ) whose aim is to redress the under-representation of filmmakers of colour in the English Program's documentary film production streams. Focusing on how these strategies and objectives have broadly tried to promote racial diversity (for instance, one way is through the goal of having one of four filmmakers be a person of colour), this thesis proposes that these initiatives represent the NFB's most prominent and socially progressive raison d'etre for the late 1990s and the new millennium.

The Canadian government introduced its Multicultural and Employment Equity policies in a series of attempts to induce federally-controlled institutions to reflect the racial diversity of the Canadian population in their programs and workforces. This is a case study of one institution's response to these policies. It examines the implementation of the six-year New Initiatives in Film (NIF) program begun in 1990 by the now-defunct women's filmmaking unit, Studio D of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and exposes the fault lines along which the goals of the NFB's various constituent parts clashed and meshed with the diverse goals of various parties in NIF's target communities (i.e. "emergent aboriginal and 'of colour' women filmmakers"). I argue that because the NIF program was structured according to the politics of identity ("race" in this case), "artworld" issues of unfair hiring and funding practices in the Canadian film industry, became distorted and expressed as issues of identity. Obfuscating the professional dynamics in the world of Canadian filmmaking by using "race" as an organizing principle did not, in the long-term, assure the sustained inclusion of excluded groups within mainstream institutions. A more effective strategy, the data suggests, would have been for underrepresented groups to cultivate alliances with professionals in the filmmaking industry based on concrete occupational, rather than hypothetical race-based interests.

The present thesis represents the first major Canadian study to examine images of women in film. It concentrates on a body of film which was produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in its first decade (1939 to 1949). It is postulated here that the images of women in these films will reflect the position of women in the larger socio-economic context. We begin by looking at the status of women in Canada during World War II and the post-war years (1939 to 1949). Since there has been so little research on women during this period of Canadian history, and since the NFB is a government agency, we examine the House of Commons debates of this era as an index to women's status. We then examine the role of women in the NFB itself, with particular emphasis on the influence that women had in film production during the 1940's. Finally, we examine the images of women in the NFB films. We find that there are distinct differences in the films made by men and those made by women. The major difference is characterized by the fact that the images of women in male-produced films clearly reflect the patriarchal values of the society in which the films were produced, while the female-produced films do not.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 114-116). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.Arch.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 144-147). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

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. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

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. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

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