Movies and Memoranda. An Interpretative History of the National Film Board by David Barker Jones (review)

544 LETTERS IN CANADA 1982 linguistic means to register them. The quality of the writing is uneven, in some cases raw and imprecisely integrated, but as a whole it has a promising, sharply felt quality to it. In view of the fact that since the Second World War exile has been a devastating experience for millions of people and that Canada is a country inhabited by many individuals afflicted with a sense of exile, the volume deserves to be widely read for its insight into the emigre sensibility. Unfortunately, it has to be stated that the translations are by no means always sensitive or even accurate. One wonders what quality control was exercised over the numerous translators who contributed to the anthology. Translating poetry is a losing battle, but it need not be disastrous. This is what has to be said about the translation of one of the finest poems in the book, Carlos Duran's 'Trlptico.' Here past tenses appear as English present tenses, and a whole line is left out, giving a truncated, blurred effect to a poem notable for its lucidity. There is no question that Pablo Urbanyi has been much better served by his translator, who has done a fine job of capturing the nervous, quirky, colloquial style of the original. The Nowhere Idea and Chilean Literature in Canada are testimony of the intellectual initiative of Latin Americans in Canada, specifically of two of the most dynamic and enterprising national groups, the Argentinians and the Chileans. Both works give vigorous creative voice to the Hispanic presence in the Canadian mosaic. (ANTHONY PERCIVAL) David Barker Jones. Movies and Memoranda. An Interpretative History of the National Film Board Deneau/Canadian Film Institute 1981. 240 Although Jones's history of the National Film Board was published over a year before the Applebaum-Hebert Commission brought down its report, it makes ironic reading now, since the historical model it proposes foreshadows the end of the NFB'S film production role proposed by 'Applebert.' In the introduction, Jones states that he originally had planned a 'structural-functional' analysis of the operations of the NFB, but as he engaged in his extensive rounds of readings, viewings, and interviews, he found himself drawn even deeper into historical and aesthetic considerations . However, the interest of the book still lies primarily in the account that Jones gives of the tensions which underpinned the development of the NFB as an institution, rather than in the analysis of particular landmark films which it produced. As a historical work, it is marked by two particular modes of thought. One is an entropic model of institutional history, which traces the everincreasing devolution of power and diffusion of purpose. The other HUMANITIES 545 consists in a set of polarities which offer axes across which the changes in the NFB can be viewed as a series of random fluctuations. Overarching these two models stand the scriptures and sayings of the Board's creator, john Grierson. Often reduced to pithy remarks, they represent an abiding blueprint for the two historical patterns. The various stages of entropic development become the chapters of the book. The first three chapters respectively introduce Grierson in the context of the British documentary movement of the thirties, the Motion Picture Bureau as the ordered bureaucratic tool of the Department of Trade and Commerce, and Grierson's successful appropriation of power into the NFB as its first Commissioner, in liaison with the Government. With Grierson's departure after the War, jones traces the devolution of power first to the Director of Production (chapter 4) and then, with the development of the Unit System of production first established by Grierson in 1944, to the executive producers at the head of each Unit. This stage is represented by the case of first the intellectual Unit B which produced the award-winning Candid-Eye documentaries (chapter 5), and second the two French Units associated with the heyday of cinemadirect (chapter 6). In 1964, the Unit system was dissolved on the English side into the more fluid Pool system which effectively transferred dayto -day power down to the pool of filmmakers themselves (chapter 7), while on the French side, the progressive democratization of...