So the National Film Board of Canada has flung open the vault to make many national treasures freely available online. Wow. This is such an amazing set of resources, covering the entire range of Canadian culture. Films that helped define who we are.
Documentaries like Being Caribou. Churchill’s Island. Short films like 23 Skidoo. Art films like 21-87. Animated films like Afterlife.
I will now do my best attempt at channeling The Reverend…
One of the crown jewels. Log Driver’s Waltz.
Or, perhaps, Balablok, which still represents tolerance and diversity (and what happens without them) in my mind.
and, of course, The Sweater
The other crown jewel would be *cough* Bambi Meets Godzilla, but that doesn’t appear to be online yet… (but thankfully, there is at least a temporarily available illicit copy on the Tube).
I grew up with the NFB. I love the NFB. And now it’s (at least partially) available online. Gods bless teh intartubes. I could spend days mining this archive, and I probably will…
The Big Snit!
“Shake your eyes here, shake your eyes there. Why don’t you go join some stupid shake and rock and roll band!”
http://www.nfb.ca/film/The-Big-Snit/
Wow, how awesome, I can brush up on some Canadian classics, which is always fun. I think having access to a moment in culture which framed the imagination of a generation is so key, and when we had two or three channels with a extremely limited number of works, they become that much more of the collective imaginary, I wonder if we are moving beyond that now in some way? Maybe not, maybe the same 14 YouTube videos are seen by everyone, but no longer is it so nationalized? I don;t know, but I know this is cool.
yeah, this is some seriously cool youth-reliving here. I remember NFB movie nights, and endless use of these awesome films as filler to crank up cable TV channels’ “Canadian Content” ratio. Great, great movies.
Jim, I wonder what the cultural touchstones will be for our kids. There’s no artificial geopolitical boundaries anymore. Will my son and your kids all be affected by the same media, or will the intarwebs finally fracture into 7 billion isolated channels?