Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for the invitation to testify and participate in your work.
The NFB is a public producer and distributor of audiovisual works. As such, the issues surrounding the future of the Canadian feature film industry are extremely important to us.
The NFB is not directly involved in funding this industry, which is the first issue that the committee is examining. However, the NFB does fund the production and distribution of its own works, and it collaborates with artists and artisans from every part of the country and is a recognized force for creativity and innovation in the international audiovisual industry.
My presentation today will therefore deal more specifically with the current realities and issues facing the documentary feature film industry. I will discuss the following three issues: the NFB's role in the Canadian feature film industry; the production of documentary feature films by the NFB; and the accessibility of all types of documentary feature films to the Canadian public, which is fundamental.
These issues are central to the NFB's mandate and have a direct impact on all documentary feature productions in Canada.
I would like to review with you the role the NFB plays and its place in the Canadian audiovisual universe.
The NFB was founded in 1939 and has thus been in existence for more than 75 years. Since 1939, it has produced and distributed audiovisual works that show the wealth and diversity of Canadian society.
The NFB is a cultural agency within the portfolio of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and our mandate, as set out in the National Film Act, is to “produce and distribute and to promote the production and distribution of films designed to interpret Canada to Canadians and to other nations [...]”.
The NFB's 10 production studios, located across the country, contribute to the vitality of audiovisual creation throughout Canada. Over the 75 years since its founding, the NFB has become the benchmark for innovative filmmaking in Canada and one of the most highly regarded Canadian film brands on the international scene.
NFB films have won over 5,000 awards, including 5 Palmes d'Or awards at Cannes; 73 NFB films have been nominated for Oscars in Hollywood, and 12 have come home as winners. It is thus with humility that I now manage the destiny of this legendary organization.
Our role is to produce works dealing with issues that would otherwise not be addressed in Canadian films. The NFB really plays a complementary role with regard to commercial cinema in Canada as a whole. It allows artists and artisans here to produce works that reflect a diversity of points of view and perspectives on Canadian society and to experiment with new narrative and audiovisual forms.
The works that the NFB has produced over the years now constitute one of the largest and most important audiovisual collections in the world: over 13,000 moving pictures, 500,000 still images, and a substantial sound archive. Dating back to the 1940s, this collection represents a priceless heritage for all Canadians. Hence one important role that the NFB now plays is to preserve this collection and make it accessible to the public and the world community, and especially to future generations.
As the dean of cultural institutions in Canada, the NFB has in a sense been the cradle of the Canadian film industry. We have had a major impact on its development from the end of the Second World War to the present day, and have played a fundamental role in the emergence of an exceptional Canadian filmmaking tradition, as it is now known in all of its forms of expression.
When it was created, the NFB was located in Ottawa. After moving its head office to Montreal in 1956, it began attracting talent from all over the country and contributed to the birth of a genuine film industry in Canada.
By opening French-language studios that produced films such as Claude Jutra's Mon oncle Antoine, the NFB helped give birth to fiction cinema in Quebec. All of the great Quebec and Canadian cinematographers we have known over the past years were trained at the NFB or are the successors of the great cinematographers who began their career at the NFB. I would be remiss if I did not mention such mythical films as Drylanders, directed by Don Haldane and Nobody Waved Goodbye, by Don Owen.
Starting in 1965, the NFB's studios produced as many documentary feature films as they did fiction feature films and animated short films. By the late 1970s, the NFB began concentrating on the documentary features because the Canadian fiction feature film industry had grown strong enough. The Canadian Film Development Corporation,now known as Telefilm Canada, was created. So the NFB started producing fewer fiction features and concentrated on documentaries and animation, especially documentary features that have thus become the key pillar of the NFB's English and French production programs.
The NFB has played an important role in the Canadian documentary tradition, so much so that some have even argued that the documentary should be officially recognized as Canada's national art form. Canadian documentary features are renowned all over the world. The NFB today focuses its production efforts on documentaries, auteur animated films, and on interactive works designed for new media.
To get back to the topic of your study, I will add that NFB works reflect a wide range of Canadian realities and experiences from coast to coast, thanks to our presence everywhere in the country. There are producers in every region of the country and artists and directors can reflect their specificity.
We tell the stories of people and communities whose voices are often underrepresented on the commercial media landscape. We also fulfil a mandate to experiment with new technologies and different storytelling forms and approaches. It is in this framework that the NFB is involved in all of the Canadian feature film industry in Canada, especially in documentary feature production.
As you know, our industry is undergoing major change. Traditional media now coexist with digital media. The variety of distribution platforms is growing constantly and the various genres and technologies are evolving rapidly. In short, the entire audiovisual universe is being transformed.
In the documentary feature film industry, the number of players has decreased because of the convergence of production companies, fragmentation of audiences, and the erosion of revenues from traditional media outlets and their migration to digital platforms.