Canada Vignettes are a series of short films by the

National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary f ...

(NFB), some of which aired on

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV) is a Canadian English-language broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster. The network began operations on September 6, 1952. Its French-l ...

and other Canadian broadcasters as

interstitial program In television programming, an interstitial television show (or wraparound program or wraparound segment) refers to a short program that is often shown between movies or other events, e.g. cast interviews after movies on premium channels. The ter ...

s. The vignettes became popular because of their cultural depiction of Canada, and because they represented its changing state, such as the vignette ''Faces'' which was made to represent the increasing cultural and ethnic diversity of Canada. ''

The Log Driver's Waltz The Log Driver's Waltz is a Canadian folk music, folk song, written by Wade Hemsworth. ''The Log Driver's Waltz'' is also a Canada, Canadian animated film from the National Film Board, released in 1979 as part of its Canada Vignettes series. Song ...

'' directed by John Weldon set to the recording of the song by Kate & Anna McGarrigle with, and as part of, The

Mountain City Four The Mountain City Four were a Canadian folk music group, based in Montreal and active from 1963 to 1967. The group consisted of Jack Nissenson, Peter Weldon, Kate McGarrigle and Anna McGarrigle. They are primarily remembered for popularizing a numb ...

is one of the most-requested items contained in the collection by the

. A similar series was later produced in the 1990s, however the name was changed to

Heritage Minutes ''The Heritage Minutes'' is a series of sixty-second short films, each illustrating an important moment in Canadian history. The ''Minutes'' integrate Canadian history, folklore and myths into dramatic storylines. Like the Canada Vignettes of t ...

Conception

The idea for ''Canada Vignettes'' began in early 1977, when CBC's children's programming department at the CBC approached the NFB about producing short films, five minutes in length or less, to use as interstitial programming. When Secretary of State for Canada John Roberts announced in the fall of 1977 that $13 million would be given to federal cultural agencies to help promote national unity, the NFB was allocated $2 million to produce films for broadcast on the CBC, similar to CBS's ''

Bicentennial Minutes ''Bicentennial Minutes'' was a series of short educational American television segments commemorating the bicentennial of the American Revolution. The segments were produced by the CBS Television Network and broadcast nightly from July 4, 1974, unt ...

'' in the United States, the previous year. The French-language service of the CBC also agreed to broadcast the series.

Production

Eighty filmmakers from across the country worked on the project over a three-year period. Many of the films were

animation Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...

vignettes offering amusing portrayals of

Canadian history The history of Canada covers the period from the arrival of the Paleo-Indians to North America thousands of years ago to the present day. Prior to European colonization, the lands encompassing present-day Canada were inhabited for millennia by ...

, while others were produced from excerpts of NFB documentaries. The NFB decided that no

film credits Two types of credits are traditionally used in films, television programs, and video games, all of which provide attribution to the staff involved in their productions. While opening credits will usually display only the major positions in a pro ...

would be included, only a title.

Broadcast

The CBC's children's department subsequently informed the NFB that it could not show films longer than two minutes as their needs had changed in the time that it took to produce the series. A quarter of the vignettes were more than two minutes long. As a solution, the CBC main network agreed to make the longer and shorter films available to their

network affiliate In the broadcasting industry (particularly in North America, and even more in the United States), a network affiliate or affiliated station is a local broadcaster, owned by a company other than the owner of the network, which carries some or a ...

s. ''Canada Vignettes'' were shown on both in

prime time Prime time or the peak time is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for a television show. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...

and during children's programming slots. The most popular film in the series to air on Canadian television was ''Canada Vignettes: Faces'', an animated short that depicted the faces of Canada, including that of then Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Other Canadian television networks to broadcast the films included CTV, Global,

TVOntario TVO Media Education Group (often abbreviated as TVO and stylized on-air as tvo) is a publicly funded English-language educational television network and media organization serving the Canadian province of Ontario. It is operated by the Ontario ...

, and

TVA The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina ...

. The series was also sold to international foreign broadcasters in such countries as

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

, Italy,

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...

, Norway and the United Kingdom.

List of Vignettes

References

{{Reflist

External links

Canada - Images of a Country, Vignettes
at the

Canada Vignettes
listing at National Film Board of Canada

The Big Cartoon Database The Big Cartoon DataBase (or BCDB for short) is an online database of information about animated cartoons, animated feature films, animated television shows, and cartoon shorts. The BCDB project began in 1997 as a list of Disney animated featu ...