-40, Canadian Propaganda Films of the 1940s Reworked (review)

The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) was created in 1939 as a public agency "that produces and distributes films and other audiovisual works that reflect Canada to Canadians and the rest of the world." Over the 66 years of its existence, the NFB has produced an impressive body of work, ranging from documentaries to features to animations to experimental films (consult the Web site: www.nfb.ca). As an aside, the NFB has been important for the history of electroacoustic music in Canada. Norman McLaren, who developed the experimental animation unit, created sound by painting/engraving on the film itself. Maurice Blackburn, a composer, collaborated with McLaren and helped to establish the "Atelier de conception et de realizations sonores," a studio at NFB for experimenting and creating electroacoustic music.

The aim of the -40 project was to open up the archives to new filmmakers and musicians, reworking a set of 20 short documentary films from the 1940s. As the curatorial statement in the liner notes states: "The collected works on -40 are very much a product of their times, while also being part of an enduring cultural conversation about personal and national identities . . . Using the contemporary (de/re)constructive modality of the digital remix to bring the past into sharp focus in an electronically altered present, the artists overlay technologies, new over old; and the global, political and personal interweave."

The project was divided into two parts: ten artists reworked the film (transferred to digital video) while leaving the original audio intact; ten other artists reworked the soundtrack while leaving the original film intact. It would have been particularly interesting to have two artists rework the audio or video of the same film, but in this case, 20 different films were used, a unique one for each participant.

The package includes a CD containing the ten tracks of reworked audio, and a DVD containing the ten reworked videos and the ten original films with the reworked audio. The bilingual (English/French) liner notes include a curatorial statement (no author credited), an essay by journalist Marc Glassman, and film credits with biographies for the 20 artists.

From my perspective, the audio remixes cover a fairly narrow range, generally falling into the beat-oriented, "techno" category. Having said that, different tracks tend more toward one or other of styles such as "ambient," "glitch," "hardcore," etc. Most of them present fragments of the original soundtracks, mostly clips of narration. By far the most experimental of the set is the The Guinea Pig Club (originally titled New Faces Come Back, from 1946) by Venetian Snares (a.k.a. Aaron Funk, from Winnipeg). The film shows officers from various countries at a "club" recovering from reconstructive surgery, many of their faces horribly disfigured. The image of these men attending a piano recital is accompanied here by wildly distorted piano sounds, with both tempo and pitch fluctuating widely. In a sharply ironic way, the music follows the "narrative" of the film closely, and, uniquely, makes no attempt to create a "beat" to dance to.

The other track I found most interesting is You Choo-Choo-Choose Me? (originally titled Trans-Canada Express, from 1944) by Secret Mommy (a.k.a. Andy Dixon, from Vancouver). Original sound material from the film is subjected to various treatments: slicing, looping, distorting, etc. The music adds a disturbing, but playful, tone to the images of trains and related people, technology, and landscapes.

Definitely Not Internment Camps (originally titled Of Japanese Descent, from 1945) by Meek (a.k.a. Mike Baugh, from Montreal), includes enough of the original narration to underscore the—from today's perspective—heartless propoganda which pretended that shipping Japanese Canadian people off to camps in isolated locations "has resulted in the improvement of the general health level." The beat-oriented electronic music that gradually evolves from underneath the narration makes oblique reference to Japanese ethnic music.

Akufen (a.k.a. Marc Leclair...