The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes

Last updated
The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes
Directed by Bill Mason
Written by Bill Mason
Produced by Joe Koenig
Starring Blake James
Cinematography Bill Mason
Edited by Bill Mason
Music by Robert Fleming
Bruce Mackay
Distributed by National Film Board of Canada (NFB)
Release date
  • 1968 (1968)
Running time
17 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes is a 1968 Canadian short film produced by the National Film Board of Canada and directed by Bill Mason. [1] It won the 1971 BAFTA Award for Best Specialised Film.

Contents

Summary

The 17-minute colour film is a humorous geography lesson, in which a canoeist travels abruptly through time as he crosses the Great Lakes, experiencing cataclysmic changes in different eras. The film is narrated in ballad form.

Some animation is employed to show the coming and going of the Ice Age when the lakes were born, but most of the other episodes of lake history are suggested by camera tricks that affect the canoeist and so emphasize the change. There is, for instance, a scene where open water suddenly turns to ice, freezing the canoe in mid-paddle. Then the canoe is left in midair high above the water, illustrating the melting of the ice, and causing the canoeist to crash to the water below. At another point, he is almost run over by a huge freighter, illustrating the befouling of the waters by shipping. Such slapstick effects are employed to mark the major changes in the history of the Great Lakes. At intervals the camera examines surviving evidence of the passage of the Ice Age, such as the striations of the rocks and the folds in the earth of farm landscapes viewed from the air. Toward the end of the film the canoeist seems to be finally safe from violent change. He dips his cup for a drink, but with his second sip discovers that the water has been fouled by human-produced industrial waste.

Production

The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes was created by the NFB for the educational market, with the working title Evolution of the Great Lakes. The film proved so popular with children and teachers in test screenings that it was blown up to 35 mm for theatrical distribution. However, Mason was disappointed when the NFB producer made several changes to his finished work, feeling he had lost creative control. [2]

Awards

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norman McLaren</span> Scottish Canadian animator (1914–1987)

William Norman McLaren, LL. D. was a Scottish Canadian animator, director and producer known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was a pioneer in a number of areas of animation and filmmaking, including hand-drawn animation, drawn-on-film animation, visual music, abstract film, pixilation and graphical sound. McLaren was also an artist and printmaker, and explored his interest in dance in his films.

Roman Kroitor was a Canadian filmmaker who was known as a pioneer of Cinéma vérité, as the co-founder of IMAX, and as the creator of the Sandde hand-drawn stereoscopic 3D animation system. He was also the original inspiration for The Force. His prodigious output garnered numerous awards, including two BAFTA Awards, three Cannes Film Festival awards, and two Oscar nominations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Lipsett</span> Canadian collage filmmaker

Arthur Lipsett was a Canadian filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada. His short, avant-garde collage films, which he described as "neither underground nor conventional”, contain elements of narrative, documentary, experimental collage, and visual essay. His first film, Very Nice, Very Nice, was nominated for an Academy Award.

Robin Spry was a Canadian film director, producer and writer. He was perhaps best known for his documentary films Action: The October Crisis of 1970 and Reaction: A Portrait of a Society in Crisis about Quebec's October Crisis. His 1970 film Prologue won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary.

Don Owen was a Canadian film director, writer and producer who spent most of his career with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). His films Nobody Waved Good-bye and The Ernie Game are regarded as two of the most significant English Canadian films of the 1960s.

Colin Archibald Low was a Canadian animation and documentary filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was known as a pioneer, one of Canada's most important filmmakers, and was regularly referred to as "the gentleman genius". His numerous honors include five BAFTA awards, eight Cannes Film Festival awards, and six Academy Award nominations.

Boyce Richardson, was a journalist, author and filmmaker.

Hugh O'Connor was a Canadian director and producer who worked for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). His best- known film is the ground-breaking In the Labyrinth (1967), but his promising career ended shortly after that film's release when he was murdered while filming in Kentucky.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grant Munro (filmmaker)</span> Canadian animator, filmmaker and actor

Grant Munro LL. D. was a Canadian animator, filmmaker and actor. In 1952, he co-starred with Jean-Paul Ladouceur in Norman McLaren's Neighbours. His film, Christmas Cracker, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1965.

Joseph Bernard Devlin was a French-Canadian film director, producer, and writer who played an important role in the development of French-language film production at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

<i>Blake</i> (film) 1969 Canadian film

Blake is a 1969 Canadian short documentary film produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). The film was directed by Bill Mason, and his fellow filmmaker Blake James, who pilots his own aircraft and lives by a unique code. Blake is Mason's cinematic testimonial to his friend and his "hobo of the skies" lifestyle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Daly (filmmaker)</span> Canadian film producer, film editor and film director

Thomas Cullen Daly was a Canadian film producer, film editor and film director, who was the head of Studio B at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Koenig</span> Canadian entrepreneur (born 1930)

Joseph (Joe) Koenig is a Canadian filmmaker and entrepreneur who was the founder and president of Electronics Workbench.

John Spotton C.S.C. was a Canadian filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada.

John Kemeny was a Hungarian-Canadian film producer whom the Toronto Star called "the forgotten giant of Canadian film history and...the most successful producer in Canadian history." His production credits include The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Atlantic City, and Quest for Fire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Kish</span> Hungarian-Canadian documentarian/filmmaker (1937–2015)

Albert Kish was a Canadian documentarian/filmmaker.

Robert Verrall is a Canadian animator, director and film producer who worked for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) from 1945 to 1987. Over the course of his career, his films garnered a BAFTA Award, prizes at the Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival, and six Academy Award nominations.

Julian Biggs (1920–1972) was a director and producer with the National Film Board of Canada and its first Director of English Production. Over the course of his 20-year career, he created 146 films, two of which were nominated for Academy Awards. His film 23 Skidoo (1964) received two BAFTA nominations, including the BAFTA United Nations award.

David Bairstow (1921-1985) was a Canadian producer and director and one of the most prolific filmmakers at the National Film Board of Canada.

John Howe was a Canadian director, producer, and composer with the National Film Board of Canada. He is best known for his films Do Not Fold, Staple, Spindle or Mutilate and Why Rock the Boat?, and for his handling of the NFB’s 1969 Austerity Crisis.

References

  1. ↑ "The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes". onf-nfb.gc.ca. National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  2. ↑ Ohayon, Albert. "Point of view". NFB.ca. National Film Board of Canada . Retrieved 22 March 2010.
  3. ↑ "The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes". onf-nfb.gc.ca. National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.