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 |
|
Running time | 17 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
William Weintraub was a Canadian documentarian/filmmaker, journalist and author, best known for his long career with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
Michael Dattilo Rubbo is an Australian documentarian/filmmaker.
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.
John Feeney was a New Zealand-born director, photographer and writer.
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.
City of Gold is a 1957 Canadian documentary film by Colin Low and Wolf Koenig, chronicling Dawson City during the Klondike Gold Rush. It made innovative use of archival photos and camera movements to animate still images, while also combining narration and music to bring drama to the whole. Its innovative use of still photography in this manner has been cited by Ken Burns as the source of inspiration for his so-called Ken Burns effect, a type of panning and zooming effect used in video production to animate still images.
Cosmic Zoom is a 1968 short film directed by Robert Verrall and produced by the National Film Board of Canada. It depicts the relative size of everything in the universe in an 8-minute sequence using animation and animation camera shots.
Hugh O'Connor was a Canadian television journalist and documentary filmmaker, who worked for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was murdered while filming in Kentucky in 1967.
Blackwood is a 1976 Canadian short documentary film about Newfoundland artist David Blackwood, directed by Tony Ianzelo and Andy Thomson and narrated by Gordon Pinsent.
Magnus Isacsson was a Canadian documentary filmmaker whose films investigated contemporary political issues and topics in social activism.
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.
Albert Kish was a Canadian documentarian/filmmaker.
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.
John Howe was a Canadian filmmaker and composer with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). 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.