Chainsaw Massacre on Canadian Documentary
Below there is a posting on the upcoming HotDocs documentary film festival in Toronto and the budget cutdown of legendary NFB, National Film Board. Realscreen makes a follow-up on the story that also involves the broadcaster CBC’s documentary commitment as well as the Telefilm Canada, the federaæ agency for support of Theatrical documentaries. In the Realscreen article – written by Adam Benzine – read the whole article, link below, the director John Kastner expresses the anger like this:
““Canadian documentaries are on the critical list these days, as one broadcaster after another retreats from the documentary business. What was desperately needed here was the most delicate surgery to resuscitate a great Canadian art form, one that is hemorrhaging badly. What we got was the ‘Tory Chainsaw Massacre.’
“Why should the Canadian public care? Canadians face a challenge unique in the world: the overpowering cultural influence of U.S. television and movies. Perhaps no other country’s national identity is threatened this way as we are. The danger posed by the cutbacks is not just that broadcasters will air fewer Canadian TV shows and the NFB make fewer Canadian films, it is that our children will end up behaving increasingly like Americans because American life is mostly what they will see on our TV and movie screens.”
It is kind of back to the start of the NFB that was set up to make films on Canada for the Canadians. And which brought us great works by Pierre Perrault, Michel Brault, Colin Low, Roman Kroitor and Wolf Koenig. Photo from “Lonely Boy” (about Paul Anka) by Kroitor & Koenig.
