From Documentary to Digital: The Role of the National Film Board of Canada in Transnational Knowledge Transfer, Twentieth–Twenty-First Century

Bessai, John W. (2026) From Documentary to Digital: The Role of the National Film Board of Canada in Transnational Knowledge Transfer, Twentieth–Twenty-First Century. HUNGARIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW: NEW SERIES OF ACTA HISTORICA ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARIUM HUNGARICAE, 15 (1). pp. 116-145. ISSN 2063-8647

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Abstract

This article examines the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) as a state-supported cultural institution that enables transnational knowledge transfer through public-facing media. It traces how NFB productions circulate interpretive frames across borders and across media forms, connecting Cold War cultural diplomacy, participatory documentary practice, and twenty-first-century interactive storytelling. The analysis centers on three case studies: Neighbours (1952), Norman McLaren’s internationally circulated anti-war short aligned with postwar peace discourse; Winds of Fogo (1970), produced through the Challenge for Change milieu and linked to community development practice through the “Fogo Process”; and Circa 1948 (2014), an interactive historical project that stages memory work through navigation, interface design, and archival assemblage. Me­thodo­logically, the article uses close institutional reading and hybrid thematic analysis across film texts, production contexts, and official documentation, supported by interpretive reflection on how form shapes public engagement. The findings show that the NFB’s public-service mandate takes procedural form through circulation infra­structures, participatory address, and interface governance, while the Canadian aporetic condition remains visible in the institution’s ongoing negotiation of national authority, uneven development, and contested belonging.

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