Protección contra caídas de altura de personas u objetos

When John Grierson (see Fig. 11) accepted the

invitation of CMPB to review their organization, it seems their commercial aims of promoting tourism and trade were not as interesting to Grierson as was the genre’s ability to affect social change, as the films of Freer and the OMPB had done earlier.

Philosophically, Grierson believed that film could do much more and be used to manipulate the masses to cause progressive social change.

Grierson’s own education reveals the source of his proclivity towards this aim. His sociological ideologies were established in his graduate work at the University of Chicago where he was first introduced to the study of social sciences. The university was the first to introduce the social sciences to academic studies in America when it formed its Department of Sociology and Anthropology in 1892. In fact, “Chicago’s was the first sociology department anywhere in the world” (Druick, 49). On a Rockefeller scholarship, Grierson pursued his Master’s degree in sociology there in the mid-1920s and the subject of his thesis was “immigration and its effects on the social problems of the United States” (Druick, 49).

Figure 11 John Grierson, 1944.

One of Grierson’s greatest influences at the University of Chicago was his supervisor, Charles E. Merriam, author of American Political Ideas. In it, Merriam argued for the need for civic education and social scientific study of the population “to assess loyalty and devise plans for building national sentiment” (Druick, 52). Grierson used these theories to convince Canada to use films for the purpose of public education as a means of producing Canadian unity among its social binaries (French/English, male/female, urban/rural, East/West, native/immigrant) and create a sense of distinction from the United States. Merriam’s influence was so strong, a copy of his book was reportedly always within Grierson’s reach “until the end of his life” (Druick, 51).

His other supervisor, Robert Park, was similarly influential with respect to the

philosophies Grierson brought to the National Film Board of Canada. Park focussed on “social groups” rather than individuals in his study of social problems within society, particularly urban centres. He found that “all social problems turn out finally to be problems of group life” and concluded that culture “perpetuates social life through education” (Druick, 53).

Just as “the invasion of an alien species” can disrupt a community of plants, so too can foreign ideas and customs disrupt a social community, he argued. While this may sound somewhat racist today, the focus of Park’s conclusions was based on environments of social differences, not the essential qualities of the individual. Education, he therefore asserted, can be an effective control mechanism to develop healthy social cultures for all.

These social theories shaped Grierson’s vision on how film can be used to reach the masses and, despite the socio-political-geographical-ethnic-economic differences of the Canadian people at the time, deliver messages via film to all. The goal would be to forge a single, unified, national, social culture.

This study served him well in helping the Canadian government develop a program to assist in its governance of the people of Canada through film. Upon graduating from the

University of Chicago in 1927, Grierson returned to England, intrigued with the idea of applying his socialist theories and Robert Flaherty's film techniques to the common people of Scotland. He first sold his idea of documentary storytelling to the Empire Marketing Board, to make his first film, Drifters, in 1929 (Winston, 37). This silent film featured the harsh life of fishermen in the North Sea.

At this time, he began giving lectures at the London Film Society detailing his new visionary approach to the way the documentary film can be used as an educational tool to help shape social cultures. At one of these lectures, Ross McLean, a secretary to the Canadian high commissioner Vincent Massey, heard one of Grierson’s lectures and was inspired to write a report to Massey recommending a government film service modelled after Grierson’s social reform theories (Druick and Williams, 107).

As a result, Grierson received an invitation from the Canadian government to evaluate the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau in 1930. Grierson’s initial report of the Bureau was harsh and critical of the films it produced, claiming they misrepresented “the real Canada” by only showcasing beautiful scenery and “people on holidays” (Hardy, 94). He also didn’t make any friends at the Bureau when he suggested it be staffed with non-Canadians. One of his most controversial recommendations was that “the best associate producers available in Great Britain or the United States should be sought to begin with, preferably from Great Britain.” (Nelson, 60).

This created an irreparable antagonism between Grierson and the CMPB’s director at the time, Frank Badgley (Nelson, 61).

According to film scholar Joyce Nelson, “Grierson’s primary interest was in stark contrast” (Nelson, 61) to the types of films being made by the CMPB at the time. In Grierson’s report, he recommended “a central organization” that would co-ordinate the mutual goals of Canadian nationalism and British imperialism (Druick and Williams, 108).

Grierson made many public and official assessments of the films of the CMPB. This representative sample is typical of his opinion:

“I have seen many Canadian films and most of them were about National Parks and people on holidays. I didn’t, so help me, believe that Canada could be just the big innocent, baby-hearted holiday haunt it pretended to be in its pictures. I thought maybe somebody did some work once in a while and that Canada’s work might just conceivably have something to do with the real Canada. That in fact is my interest in the world. I would like to see more and more films about real people.” (qtd. in Hardy, 94)

With reports such as this, Grierson’s ultimate recommendation was to establish “a central organization which would co-ordinate demands and through which the Canadian Government and the British and Dominion film interests could work” (Druick and Williams, 108). It was this recommendation that eventually led to the formation of the National Film Board of Canada by the Department of Trade and Commerce in 1939. After his assessment of the CMPB, Grierson would be invited back as the first commissioner of the NFB. In this capacity, Grierson articulated that the aim of the documentary is to “bring about positive social change” (qtd. in Rosenthal, 6).