Overview

John Grierson was a trailblazer who created the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and shaped Canadian documentary film. Born in Scotland, he was descended from lighthouse keepers. He had piercing blue eyes and a flamboyant manner. His passage to manhood was swift, for at the age of 17 he joined the Royal Navy and saw men blown to pieces by enemy submarines during the First World War. The young Grierson was convinced he must do something with his life to help make peace more exciting than war. He completed a master's degree and in 1924 went to the U.S. on a Rockefeller fellowship to study mass media. He worked as a journalist, met Hollywood stars and directors, and gained another sort of education. In 1927 he returned to Britain with the goal of using film to illuminate 'drama that resides in living fact'. He began making documentaries and building the documentary film movement. Grierson became a visionary who preached that effective mass communication could enrich individual lives and perhaps even end humans' tendency to ldll off each other in war. That message, in the form of moving images in a brand new medium, became his life's work. Prime Minister Mackenzie King invited Grierson to Canada and appointed him first Commissioner of the NFB in 1939. Grierson, who had invented the word 'documentary', was called upon to supervise the distribution of wartime information. The newspapers called him Canada's Propaganda Maestro. This ""Scotsman's"" contribution to Canada was profound, not just during the Second World War, but also years afterwards, when he returned to teach at McGill University and advised the federal government on the best path to follow in the dawning new world of global electronic communication.

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9781894852159

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Gary Evans, author of ""The National Interest: A Chronicle of the National Film Board of Canada from 1949 to 1989"" (1991), has published extensively on the history of media and communications. A former student of John Grierson, Evans completed his degree in history at McGill and currently teaches at the University of Ottawa. Since 1975 he has also worked as a consultant and writer for the NFB.

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