Movie Showman

Movie Showman

| 29 min
Free
streaming

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This short film portrays the NFB's itinerant projectionists during the ’40s and early ’50s who travelled throughout Canada, bringing films and discussions to rural communities. The film uses a mix of dramatic re-enactments with archival footage and interviews with veterans of the movie circuit to shed light on an important period in Canadian film history.

Manifesto Point # 10: Support the community partner in distribution and outreach. Spend 10% of the time making it and 90% of the time getting it out into the world. And just “showing it” is not necessarily a political goal unto itself. Work with the partners to harness the project’s momentum to effect real participation and real political change. As part of Grierson’s vision, the NFB spent its first two decades not only producing films, but vigorously distributing and projecting films across the country and animating discussions after the screenings. Movie Showman (1989) tells this charming story of the Board’s early itinerant projectionists, who travelled the country, showing films in townhalls, church basements, and animating discussions about the war effort and the future of agriculture throughout the 1940s and ’50s. Directed by Harvey Spak, this film is constructed from documentary footage as well as dramatized sequences set in northern Alberta.

Katerina Cizek
From the playlist: Manifesto for Interventionist Media - because Art is a Hammer

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Movie Showman, Harvey Spak, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

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Credits
  • director
    Harvey Spak
  • script
    Harvey Spak
  • producer
    Jerry Krepakevich
  • executive producer
    Graydon McCrea
  • cinematography
    James Jeffrey
  • sound
    Peter Svab
  • editing
    Peter Svab
  • re-recording
    Hans Peter Strobl
  • narrator
    Gord Marriott
  • music
    Roger Deegan
  • cast
    Glenn Beck
    Jim DeFelice
    Kent Gallie
    George Highsmith
    Steven Hilton
    James Iwasuk
    Orest Kinasewich
    Bob Koone
    Maureen Rooney
    Wilf Rowe

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