National Film Board of Canada
nfb.ca
nfb.ca
https://www.canada.ca/en/services/culture/arts-media/film-vi...
Film and video tax credit: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/funding/...
Canada Music Fund: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/funding/...
Funding available generally: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/funding....
I think there's some kind of distinction to be made about what actually makes it out of Canada because we make it cheap for things to be filmed here, and what is created here regardless and aided by financing. My hunch is that music and film are somewhat different in this respect
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW39zufHfsuGgpLviKh297Q/vid...
What business does government have to choose the culture you experience? This is like the idea that it is perfectly fine that government funds all science research. It's this really what government is there to do?
It's great that you like it, but what if I don't like the culture/science it spends my tax dollars on? How can I like something that people are forced to pay for, whether they like it or not?
I think government is already terrible - spending other people's money inefficiently on pensions, wars, surveillance, mis-education, big pharma, etc - I don't think the arts are anything it should be funding. What is the difference between funding the arts and propaganda? How is this not simply about driving whatever agendas government is promoting?
I have so many issues with the idea that government is a benefit to us, the idea of it sponsoring the arts is only indicative of the already massive overreach it has. And then to cheer it's actions, happy that government forcibly extracts more from the people it purports to serve! It boggles the mind.
Art is awesome and brittle. It's very hard to make a living from art. Public funding of it is essential to a healthy society. And, i don't think that art that is funded publicly has to be popular. The goal is the opposite. Commercial art has to be popular enough to survive. The idea of funding it is to free the artists from those constraints.
Democracy is where you choose, or at least input into, the decision-making process.
Forcible extraction of wealth, to be invested as the government sees fit cannot be justified by the fact that art is brittle. Art is awesome I agree, I don't want propaganda as art.
I totally get that and invite you to take a look at the art films sponsored by the film board of Canada. I have been unable to see any pro-government narrative in anything I’ve seen made with government money. It’s usually films which are just non-commercial and would otherwise not have been made.
I absolutely want my tax dollars to go for that.
It's kinda cheap to be willing to spend other peoples' money on something. If you want to support such art, buy a ticket to see it.
1. provide enforcement of peoples' rights
2. provide for the common defense
3. enforce contracts
4. protect common areas (like national parks)
Pretty much what the US was for well over a century.
Re seeing a government narrative - how would you know? Do you see any films in support of trump, against the military, against government, promoting traditional Arab values, castigating Israel for taking no refugees, etc? These aren't causes I agree with btw, I mention them as blindspots in the presentation of reality that is provided, and that is a type of propaganda for the long game.
Canadians especially (though Scandinavians are similar) have high level of trust and tolerance in government - where any external authority of your money, actions, etc is unwarranted. There is no agreement that we signed to allow for such unfettered control.
Wrong. This is the same kind of error as calling copyright infringement theft.
'You want to take 40% of my life's efforts? Take 60%, but make sure you give tax exemptions to the film studios with some of that money!'
If you think a democracy, regardless of form, asking for taxes is tyranny you lack even the slightest trace of history or civics. And you show clearly, that you simply are not willing to participate, and take even the smallest responsibility, in modern society. True authoritarians, fascists and wannabe tyranns are happy to use that attitude to erode democracies.
Standing by nodding while your government provides weapons, propaganda and conducts other immoral actions with their immorally extracted wealth from those all around you, is selfish. Why do you condone theft? You wouldn't think it was OK if those around you stole, or is a corporation stole, but it's OK that the government does it.... How? Which other mafia protection rackets do you like?
Put simply, if it is not voluntary, if it is forced, it cannot be justified, regardless of how the party doing the forcing justifies of actions. It doesn't matter how many people are doing the forcing, what they call themselves, how many books they write to justify their actions (law, civics), how must they tell you it's for the greater good, etc. To think it is right is to suffer from Stockholm syndrome - you are justifying your abuser's actions. You wouldn't think it was alright for a husband to take his wife's money, or boss not to pay his workers, or a neighbour to take money from the old couple next door... so why do you think it's OK that government does this?
People are confused - this is not a political issue it is a moral one. Politics ought to come after we agree the morals. It is fine for people to form free, voluntary associations, build roads or whatever. It is not right to force this association, and it can never be made right. It is wrong. Stealing, initiating violence, threatening violence is wrong. Might is not right, and can never be made right.
You are just one voice. Take a moment to image a world filled with people exactly the same as you, carbon copies. In that world, which ones of you is happy, which one of you is sad, or do you all live a meager solitary existence because of your lack of willingness to accept what the present you accepts as selfishness and so seek out your utopia of the individual.
Political answers are one solution, as you say. Tribalism is another. Neither are right to me.
What an actual answer could be like, I don't know. I tend to think that conscious adults do not need to be guided like children. Eg in a social setting you do not need the police - people are capable of managing themselves - in fact they will better manage things without a 'management class'. The self acclaimed authorities are actually the worst of us, parasites on the work of others. The basis of government authority too has no moral basis.
Might I point out too, that normalising theft, force and infantilisation of the masses will not lead us to utopia either. Calling immorality 'right' or 'good' while it is plainly not, is also not a right or good action in itself - it is to embrace an illusion. These actions hasten dystopia, right?
So, in the first place individuals need to understand what basic morality is (the golden rule: do not treat others as you would not want to be treated) and then live their lives accordingly. It is not what the law, your teacher, a judge, a priest, or whoever says - you know what is right already, innately. Don't initiate violence or harm (eg lying) in others.
If more people lived according to their consciences, the change would tranformative. That means police, army, teachers, medical staff, etc would need to reflect on their actions and stop initiating violence and harm. Don't code the dystopian control grid of the future. As I see it, any progressive future change has to come from each individual acting according to their conscience. And in the first place these means that one should not justify immoral acts, even if it is the government undertaking them.
Consider merging onto a highway. At some point you merge ahead of a car, and at some point you merge behind a car. There is some epsilon around around this point where you lack the perfect behaviour to make the objectively correct decision due to limited human processing capacity. Suppose an accident occurs, then subjectively both yous feel you did the moral thing. Is someone at fault, yes, the person who was within epsilon wrong. Pragmatically you may say no one was at fault, accidents happen. At which point the question becomes how big is an acceptable epsilon. And so on and so on, more questions upon questions. Which need to have answers, which provoke disagreement. Which is why I say you are right in a vacuum, but we don't exist in a vacuum.
A criticism of my argument would be that reality does not work that way and that everything is deterministic, and then we're back to desiring a machine that we can build that will say yes and no and right and wrong. If that machine can exist, we don't have it yet, and if we did I promise at least one person will say it's broken.
If you must, find one thing that is broken in your life, and try and devote your energies to fixing it for the next generation. If the ideas you are promoting are that, so be it. But this road is very long and very difficult and the majority are like me, too lazy, and mostly just coping. A quicker buck is made selling snake oil and using that wealth to buy leisure and hire lawyers. Morals be damned.
I understand your example - I don't know that I have a clear answer - at any rate let us accept that there is an ambiguity there. How does the current system help resolve this?
Perhaps you will say there are laws, judges, etc that will do it. In which case, it would be surely be possible to find a solution without that system, by simply finding someone acceptable to both parties to arbitrate, no?
I certainly don't think like is deterministic - not sure why you're bring that into it.
One can certainly choose a hedonic lifestyle ("morals be damned"). Or one can choose to uncover and learn about oneself more deeply. Or something else. For me, there's only one path that has value of meaning personally. But, even the hedonist that can apply reason, ought to be able to agree that initiating harm is a wrong, not a right.
FWIW, "direct democracy" has somehow acquired the status of a mystical saviour. It is usually flaunted by those who feel a lack of control and harbor the unproven assumption that they are part of a (silent) majority. I'm not saying that's the case with the OP. But the idea seems to be everything would be better because you would be involved in all decision making.
But I've got bad news for you, so would be all the others. Those, who disagree with you. Those, who are following the liars with easy answers to hard problems. Those, who are smart enough to form a party and steamroll individuals. Those, who have more influence beyond the decision-making process. Those, who don't care. Those, who are not well informed on the topic (this includes all of us most of the time, BTW.) But that's just the obvious stuff.
There are other hard questions: What will be decided directly? On what level? On what level of detail? Who would decide what to decide today? How do we decide? Who would decide how we decide? Who would phrase the questions? Who would provide the options? Who would count the answers? Who would implement the decisions? Who would be accountable? And so on.
At least in Germany there is a large body of literature about this topic and the general consensus seems to be that the central problem is not who makes decisisons, but the last one, accountability. You alluded to this by saying a representative could change their mind and their pension would not be at risk. Direct democracy is unlikely to solve that problem, or if it does, you could port it to representative democracies just as well.
People however suffer from Stockholm syndrome and want to defend their abusers, so mine is not a popular opinion.
I think maybe some introspection is required here.
Don't tell me what I'm thinking, thank you. But for the record I thought your argument looked pretty much like a No True Scotsman and I wanted to make you aware of this.
Furthermore, I offered a perspective on the troubles direct democracies as a form of legislative process have and why they are not less, but more, susceptible to manipulation. I probably should have let out the second paragraph, it did not add anything to my argument, but too late. I am afraid this is not going to change a thing, because I'm probably already sorted into the "sheeple" or "hostage" bin, but claiming to make a moral argument instead of a political one, does not reinforce your earlier statement.
So, here is the strongest version of your new argument I can come up with, but first an assumption: You write "government" but seem to mean "executive". The executive is a different branch of government than the legislative we talked about earlier. The legislative makes the laws (by direct vote, through representative, by the will of God, whathaveyou), but does not enforce them. The executive enforces the laws, but does not make them.
Anyway, now the arguments. I can actually see two: 1) An executive threatening force to enforce laws (i.e taxation) is morally wrong, because threatening force is morally wrong. Why? 2) An executive threatening force to enforce laws (i.e taxation) is morally wrong, because taxation is equal to stealing and therefore morally wrong, because stealing is morally wrong, because... why?
I think 1) is the much stronger argument but the line of argument breaks down much earlier. I'm not necessarily against any of these lines of argument but I'm somewhat dangling in the air here. They do not explain why taxation is equal to stealing, and it does not explain why threatening force to enforce the law is morally wrong. I, for one, can think of a few cases where it seems perfectly justified (e.g. arresting an attacker) so this seems at least to be not a universally applicable claim.
But, of course, this depends on what you actually think how moral and ethics work. Are you a deontologist? Or are you more of a teleologist? Are your morals value or virtue based? These are important questions to discuss to understand your argument.
Best regards
A democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
> Public funding of it is essential to a healthy society.
Conjecture.
> i don't think that art that is funded publicly has to be popular. The goal is the opposite.
If it has value, people will pay to experience it. Government art stands out as art that nobody would personally pay for.
Its very hard to make a living off bad or average art. Most art/music/text is garbage that people wouldn't be willing to pay for. It's similarly difficult to make a living microwaving hot pockets in a town full of five star restaurants.
If your implication is it's easy to finance good art, I disagree. Where I live, most good theater productions are state funded. Production costs a lot. People aren't lining up around the block. Those who are lining up aren't willing to pay that much. A new wave of art marketing is improving things, but not enough. End of the day, art isn't very popular. The options are to subsidize, or let the industry die. If the art industry is as good as the money it brings in, then let it die. If its value to society is more than that, subsidize it.
The commercial or non-state-funded theater productions (where I live) generally have little artistic value. They're populist and safe. Their priority is to be easy to market and to be a safe investment (think marvel movies).
Art that doesn't move people isn't good art. You can argue all day long how great a show is but if nobody wants to see it (or at least enough to cover the cost of creating it), it isn't. (Sometimes things are discovered posthumously sure, but that's a rare exception)
We would never subsidize a restaurant that served food nobody wants to eat, why subsidize art that nobody wants to see?
It can take a generation or several for this kind of work to matriculate into greater culture. Their value is immeasurable and uncapturable. Artistic and cultural works precede market economies by tens of thousands of years.
A restaurant meal has an audience of 1 and is gone forever a half hour after it has been made.
I've seen his films, were they made without funding? Of course not, so what you are really saying is Orson Welles didn't have a unlimited bucket of money to do anything with.
> Van Gogh never sold a painting
Van was profoundly mentally ill. It's not surprising he wasn't able to make a living doing anything let alone art.
> Mozart was near broke most of his career.
This was a long time ago prior to industrialization. The alternatives available to Mozart would've been much worse and paid much less. Poverty was much higher back then, Mozart did well.
No. He's describing tyranny of the mob. Which is worse than an autocracy. At least in an autocracy you know you are being fed a pile of bullshit.
> Public funding of it is essential to a healthy society.
No it's not. It's called government propaganda.
> The idea of funding it is to free the artists from those constraints.
No. It's to constrain artists to agenda.
What you are really saying is I agree with the government propaganda and hence support it. That's all you are saying.
In a democracy, government should be apolitical. People like you prove that democracy is actually a bad idea. It's funny how the foundation of modern democracy ( US ) was created on distrust of government and elites, but the 'democracies' that worship british royalties was founded on slavish worship of authority.
> tyranny of the mob
You know that just means the perils of being a minority in a democracy, right?
> pile of bullshit
> propaganda
> agenda
> propaganda
> distrust of government and elites
> british royalties
> slavish worship of authority
What on earth are you talking about?
I'm not mad at ya. Just your stupidity.
> You know that just means the perils of being a minority in a democracy, right?
Hence why the US is a republic.
> What on earth are you talking about?
'It's funny how the foundation of modern democracy ( US ) was created on distrust of government and elites, but the 'democracies' that worship british royalties was founded on slavish worship of authority.'
Or you can play your silly and childish games.
Boo hoo? What if I don’t like the spending on fighter planes and fossil fuel subsidies?
My options are the same as yours: move to a country that doesn’t fund this stuff, or vote for politicians who will cut the funding.
> “How is this not simply about driving whatever agendas government is promoting?”
A valid question that is at the core of how funding for arts and sciences is structured in the West. There are many levels of indirection in place exactly to avoid direct interference from elected officials and to have experts in each field making the decisions on what deserves funding.
Why should I move? Can I state the fact that this is a tyranny? Must I love the tyranny? Can I say that government is far, far beyond whatever use it may have served? Can I say, that it is no longer the servant, but the master? It chooses my art!
But if it’s a democracy, then you can always go start a political party yourself if nobody else has taken up this cause.
In most countries, voters don’t seem to love the idea of eliminating funding for arts and sciences. It’s a very small part of the total budget for any state, and it tends to have appeal that connects with the purpose of having a nation in the first place (“who’s going to make movies in our language if we don’t?”)
To be fair, the people are just doing what they’re incentivized. There is no malaise here, but the nature of government is to expand endlessly.
Canada’s government worries me deeply, it’s becoming more totalitarian by the day.
Sitting in a small country, another argument for these types of programs is to promote the country/culture abroad.
In the same way, a country might host the Olympics, etc. Or – more directly – set up some sort of "come work/invest in country x" promotion program.
Fwiw, I saw NFB stuff as a kid and maybe that worked. I lived/worked in Canada for 15 years.
As far as wastes of tax dollars go, government funding is a minor problem, it's the hollowing out of the arts to be the crap that we have that's the bigger concern. Look no further than the fact that every good Canadian artist immediately goes to the US if they get some success. It's the same with startups/tech. The lame ones stay in Canada and mooch off the government, anyone remotely good gets out. Yes I know shopify is a counterexample.
Without taking a side, I have an anecdote that might be able to shed some light on why that's the case.
While living in Canada, I met a woman in charge of administering publicly funded contemporary visual art grants. She said those grants only go to successful artists. "Why do already successful artists need the grants?" I asked. Her answer was that the point was to raise their profile – and Canada's – internationally.
From the government's perspective, it's a bid for soft power, like funding athletes who have a shot at winning an Olympic medal.
Is it overreach to build a bridge to a community that's only reachable by boat?
Check out the book the creative economy for more depth on this phenomenon.
The Internet started as ARPANET a US Government military program. You seem OK using it.
The Cat Came Back https://www.nfb.ca/film/the-cat-came-back/
The Big Snit https://www.nfb.ca/film/big_snit/
Neighbours https://www.nfb.ca/film/neighbours_voisins/
and of course, can't forget this one that used to be shown between shows every once in a while: Log Driver's Waltz https://www.nfb.ca/film/log_drivers_waltz/
oh yeah, almost forgot about this one, so Canadian hahah: The Sweater https://www.nfb.ca/film/sweater/
• To Be: https://www.nfb.ca/film/to_be/
• Special Delivery: https://www.nfb.ca/film/special_delivery/
• Spinnolio: https://www.nfb.ca/film/spinnolio/
BTW here's a version of the Log Driver's Waltz with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfQ64vQZPo
"The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places – the school, the church and the skating rink – but our real life was on the skating rink."
The Hockey Sweater was my favorite book growing up. I hope Canadians continue to enjoy it for generations to come.
https://www.nfb.ca/film/data_for_decision/
This short documentary is a portrait of the early era of computing and the process and implications of the digitization of large amounts of information. Examining the arduous work of assessing and documenting the geographical landscape, including sampling and analysis of soil, forestry, timber, wildlife, resources, industrial sites, and many other aspects, we see that human beings alone couldn't handle the vast amount of information that is collected. A new kind of computer (an “instant library”), the Canada Land Inventory Geo-information System, was developed to help manage and develop Canadian land. This film examines the workings of this new and mysterious machine.
[0] https://development.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/bl...
They are some of the earliest BoC tracks and probably sound the most like the namesake.
I used to just skip to “Why don’t you just join some shake’n’rock’n’roll band?!!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upsZZ2s3xv8
Wade Hemsworth was a national treasure. So many great folk songs.
https://www.nfb.ca/film/waiting_for_fidel/
> This feature-length documentary from 1974 takes viewers inside Fidel Castro's Cuba. A movie-making threesome hope that Fidel himself will star in their film. The unusual crew consists of former Newfoundland premier Joseph Smallwood, radio and TV owner Geoff Stirling and NFB film director Michael Rubbo. What happens while the crew awaits its star shows a good deal of the new Cuba, and also of the three Canadians who chose to film the island.
Films on this site can be streamed free of charge, or downloaded for your personal use for a small fee.
They just omit/forget/ignore the fact that you (I guess) have to be in Canada for that to work? Sometimes it feels like people don't understand the "Inter" part of Internet. Much annoying, "The Colour of Ink" seemed really awesome but all I get in nasty distant Sweden is the trailer. Sigh.
There's no irony or shame in their presentation, they are upfront about their motive to educate. Despite that, they were very popular and widely quoted.
Some ones that stuck in my mind:
https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/jacques-c...
https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/inukshuk
https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/agnes-mac...
https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/john-mccr...
https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/sitting-b...
https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/halifax-e...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinterland_Who%27s_Who
[1] https://youtu.be/H-aoWSpFor0
Edit: Canadian Wildlife SERVICE, not Foundation
Nice selection, too. Nature's engineer.
IIRC: Doug and Bob's [1] "Coo loo coo coo, coo coo coo coo" [2] was a parody/homage to the opening of Hinterland's opening.
The Devil's Toy : https://www.nfb.ca/film/devils_toy/
"This short 1966 documentary dedicated "to all victims of intolerance” depicts the dawn of skateboarding in Montreal."
Carts Of Darkness is a fantastic film sponsored by these guys.
My favourite of theirs is a short documentary on Doug Rogers, the first Canadian to win a medal at the Olympics in judo.
Growing up in California, our public TV station would often fill the bottom of the hour with shorts. Many of them were from the NFB.
In random moments, I have often thought about trying to find some of those shorts.