The cinema of Canada dates back to the earliest known display of film in Saint-Laurent, Quebec, in 1896. The film industry in Canada has been dominated by the United States, which has utilized Canada as a shooting location and to bypass British film quota laws. Canadian filmmakers, English and French, have been active in the development of cinema in the United States and cinema in the United Kingdom.
Films by Thomas A. Edison, Inc. were some of the first to arrive in Canada and early films made in the country were produced by Edison Studios. Canadian Pacific Railway and other railways supported early filmmaking including James Freer, whose Ten Years in Manitoba was the first known film by a Canadian. Evangeline is the earliest recorded Canadian feature film. George Brownridge and Ernest Shipman were major figures in Canadian cinema in the 1920s and 1930s. Shipman oversaw the production the most expensive film up to that point. Brownridge's career led to Carry on, Sergeant! and its failure caused a decline in the film industry.
The Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau was formed in 1918, and expanded to sound and 16 mm film in the 1930s before merging into the National Film Board of Canada. The NFB expanded under the leadership of John Grierson. The Canadian Cooperation Project between the government and Motion Picture Association of America from 1948 to 1958, negatively affected Canadian filmmaking. Internal divisions between English and French Canadians within the NFB starting in the 1940s led to the creation of an independent branch for French language productions by the 1960s. The government provided financial support to the film industry through the Capital Cost Allowance and Telefilm Canada.
History Film Arrival of film
Louis Minier and Louis Pupier showed the first films in Canada using a cinematograph in Saint-Laurent, Quebec, on 27 June 1896. Prior to the discovery of this showing by Germain Lacasse in 1984, it was believed that a showing of Thomas A. Edison, Inc. films conducted by Andrew M. Holland in Ottawa, from 21 July to 28 August 1896, was the first. The Saint-Laurent showing was overlooked as English researchers did not search through French sources. Léo-Ernest Ouimet stated that he attended the showing and he was used as evidence of it until Lacasse found newspaper coverage of the event in La Presse.
R.A. Hardie and F.H. Wall also presented films in Winnipeg from 18 to 25 July 1896. Marie Tréourret de Kerstrat and her son Henry de Grandsaignes d'Hauterives were some of the first French people to display films to French Canadians and projected hundreds during their tours from 1897 to 1906. They showed 8,000 feet of hand-coloured film done by Georges Méliès, which is the earliest known colour film shown in Canada.
The development of a Canadian film industry was hampered by the country's low population density, it had six million inhabitants with only Toronto and Montreal had more than 100,000 people in 1905, and the lack of domestic vaudeville as most of the acts came from the United States, United Kingdom, and France. Andrew Holland was critical of Canada as a place for the film industry due to the quality of its films, distance between major urban areas, and different electrical systems. Early films were used to as promotional material for companies, promote immigration, or displays of scenic locations including Niagara Falls. The Edison Company created some of the first films in Canada by documenting the Klondike Gold Rush, Canadian soldiers leaving to fight in the Second Boer War, and George V, the Duke of York, arriving in Canada in 1902.
James Freer is believed to have been the first Canadian to produce films. He started filming agriculture activities and Canadian Pacific Railway trains in 1897. He toured the United Kingdom with the sponsorship of the CPR in 1898, and a second less successful tour was sponsored by Clifford Sifton in 1901. His second tour was the first time that the government was directly involved with film. British and American filmmakers were selected as they could guarantee the distribution of their films unlike Canadian filmmakers.
The CPR enlisted Charles Urban and his company to travel and film Canada to promote settlement in the western areas. This group, the Bioscope Company of Canada, filmed in Quebec to Victoria from 1902 to 1903. The film, Living Canada, was premiered at the Palace Theatre in 1903, with High Commissioner Donald Smith in attendance. A total of 35 Living Canada films were released by 1904, and were edited into Wonders of Canada in 1906. Urban's success led to him gaining contracts with the government of British Columbia and the Northern Railway Company. The Grand Trunk Railway entered the industry by hiring Butcher's Film Service in 1909. The CPR hired the Edison Company to film in Canada and they sent nine people, including J. Searle Dawley, Henry Cronjager, and Mabel Trunnelle, in 1910. They were provided a specialized train and the RMS Empress of India and produced 13 films.
Creating an independent film industry
The first recorded feature film created in Canada was Evangeline. There were multiple attempts to create an independent film industry in Canada in the early 20th century. Thirty-six companies meant for film production were created between 1914 and 1922, but the majority of the companies did not produce any films.
Silent films used intertitles in English and French, but sound films were mostly produced in English. The Palace was the first theatre to transition to showing sound films when it presented Street Angel on 1 September 1928.
In 1914, Canadian Animated Weekly by Universal Pictures became one of the first newsreels in Canada. Ouimet, who was a pioneer for Canadian newsreels, created Specialty Film Import in 1915, as a distributor, but his newsreel and distribution companies were sold in 1923, and he unsuccessfully worked in the United States in the 1920s. At the peak of Ouimet's career 1.5 million Canadians were watching his newsreels twice per week. Domestic newsreel companies were unsuccessful after branches of American companies, Fox Canadian News and Canadian Kinograms, were established.
Most sound films from Quebec in the 1910s and 1920s are lost. Yves Lever stated that Larente-Homier's 1922 film Madeleine de Verchères was the first truly Québécois fictional feature film. Larente-Homier's work was later destroyed by his son due to orders from the Fire Bureau as the film reels were flammable.
Ernest Shipman established multiple film companies in cities and would produce a limited number of films using local money before moving to another area. Unlike other Canadian filmmakers he sought financial support from the American market. In 1919, incorporated Canadian Photoplays with a financial capital of $250,000 in Alberta. He started production on Wapi, the Walrus, but retitled it to Back to God's Country to capitalize God's Country and the Woman, starring his wife Nell Shipman. The film was a critical and financial success, with it grossing over $500,000 in its first year, and Shipman's investors saw a 300% return on investment. Despite the success of the film Canadian Photoplays did not produce another film and went into voluntary liquidation. He signed a contract with Ralph Connor in 1919, and formed Dominion Films, based in New York, to produce films in Winnipeg. Winnipeg Productions was formed to adapt twelve of Connor's stories, but only five were filmed. Shipman created five companies across Canada in 1922, but only three produced films. He incorporated New Brunswick Films on 23 August 1922, but the failure of Blue Water ended Shipman's career.
Another important early effort in independent feature film production was undertaken by Vancouver cinematographer Arthur D. Kean, who spent almost four years producing and promoting his picture, Policing the Plains (1927). Based on a non-fiction book about the Royal North West Mounted Police by Roderick G. MacBeth, Kean's feature was intended to counteract the sensationalized image of the force as depicted in the Hollywood adventure potboilers of the period. Work commenced in 1924 under Kean's Western Pictures Company (which was unincorporated); in 1925 the project was reorganized under a new company, Policing the Plains Productions Ltd. Kean received extensive cooperation from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police over the long period of principal photography (March 1924–August 1927), but the production suffered numerous delays, as well as chronic financial and logistical problems. Policing the Plains premiered in Toronto in December 1927, but Kean was unable to secure further distribution and exhibition, and the film was shelved. The picture still existed in 1937, but eventually the negative and the sole print were lost or destroyed.Duffy, Dennis J.; Mattison, David (1989). "A. D. Kean, Canada's Cowboy Movie-Maker." The Beaver, 69:1, 28–41.
Trenton, Ontario, despite its small size, was a major film production area and had one of the few studios to last longer than a few years. Canadian National Features, founded by George Brownridge, construction a studio in the town and raised a financial capital of $500,000, with $278,000 coming within the first week, in 1916. However, the company suspended production after spending $43,000 on its first two films, The Marriage Trap and Power, and declared bankruptcy with $79,000 in assets. The studio in Trenton was taken over by the Pan American Film Corporation in 1918, but only released one film before closing. Brownridge founded Adanac Producing Company and released the two Canadian National Features films in 1918. Brownridge shifted production towards corporate sponsorships by displaying products in dramatized films. Brownridge sought a sponsorship from the CPR and John Murray Gibbon saw Power and asked Brownridge to make anti-Bolshevik films during the First Red Scare. Adanac was reorganized in 1919, with Brownridge as its managing director and Denis Tansey, a member of parliament, as its president. The Great Shadow was released in 1920, after being filmed in Canada rather than New York as Brownridge wanted to create a domestic film industry, and was a critical and financial success although the CPR pulled its public support before its release. However, the company went bankrupt with Brownridge blaming Harley Knoles's wastefulness and Selznick Pictures's distribution policy. Brownridge sold the Trenton studio to the Ontario Motion Picture Bureau in 1924, and it continued to be used, with Carry on, Sergeant! as the sole fictional work filmed there, until Mitchell Hepburn ordered its closure in 1934, and it was turned into a community centre.
Motion Skreenadz, incorporated in 1920, conducted the majority of film production in western Canada and brought colour film production to British Columbia. Leon C. Shelly gained control over Motion Skreenadz and Vancouver Motion Pictures from 1936 to 1937. He extended the company to Toronto in 1945, but relocated the company entirely to Toronto in 1946. The company was reorganized into Shelley Films, but production of non-newsreels was ended in favor of focusing on film laboratories.
British Columbia's government agencies used promotional films from 1908 to 1919, before the creation of the British Columbia Patriotic and Educational Picture Service. It was headed by A. R. Baker and mainly distributed films produced under contract by Arthur D. Kean. The provincial legislature passed legislation requiring the display of at least one ten-minute education film or travelogue during all of the programs. The Motion Picture Branch of the Bureau of Publications was created by Saskatchewan in 1924, to produce education films.