One Man’s Documentary

McInnes’s memoir of these “days of high excitement” is an insider’s look at the NFB from 1939 to 1945, a vivid “origin” story of Canada’s emerging world-class film studio that provides the NFB with the kind of full-bodied vitality usually associated with the great Hollywood studios in their golden years.

McInnes Graham :

Graham McInnes was arts columnist for Saturday Night magazine and a commentator on CBC radio before joining the NFB in 1939. After leaving the NFB in 1945, he joined the foreign service and eventually became Canada's first ambassador to UNESCO. He was the author of two novels and three volumes of memoirs. Graham McInnes died in 1970.

Walz Gene :

Gene Walz teaches film and film history at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of Cartoon Charlie: The Life and Art of Animation Pioneer Charles Thorson and editor of Canada's Best Features.

“Because of his relative obscurity, as well as the thirty-five-year delay of publication, not to mention the sixty years that have elapsed since the recounted events took place, this memoir has the feel of a time capsule. Innocent of the debates that have ensued in subsequent years about the place of the Film Board in Canadian film history, McInnes writes with an enthusiasm infused by his memories of youth, new technology, and the sense of purpose provided by the war that is often quite engaging. At times his frank assessments of many aspects of the NFB are downright surprising. Take, for example, this admission of ambivalence about Grierson’s watchword, non-theatrical documentary film: ‘Though Grierson was himself a born teacher and evangelist, and though it was an article of faith with him that film, documentary film, was the great teaching and information medium of the future, he could never get us really excited over non-t[heatrical]’ (48, italics in original). Admissions such as these, along with often racy stories about NFB employees and their circle, give a vivid and not entirely positive picture of working at the Board, which seems all the more compelling as a result.”

Robert Fulford:
“Perhaps the most intimate account we have of Grierson … a precious fragment of history, rescued at last.”