Patterns of Cultural Authority: The National Film Society of Canada and the Institutionalization of Film Education, 1938-41
Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 10 (1):
2--27 (2001)Abstract
The movement of private activities into the public realm characterizes the emergence of dominant ideas about Canadian film. Such was the case in the relationship between the private, voluntary National Film Society of Canada and the public, state-funded National Film Board of Canada. It was a relationship that demonstrated the fragmentary and incomplete nature of hegemonic discourses. The NFS served a crucial function by coordinating access of films to schools and public life, often on behalf of the NFB. Assisting this coordination was an obscure and short-lived organization, the Canadian Film Committee. The CFC and the NFS helped to tilt the idea of national film projects toward an educational discourse, one that highlighted issues of citizenship over other alternatives for national film culture.