Key Moments in NFB History 

Churchill’s Island by Stuart Legg wins an Oscar^®, the first to be awarded to a Canadian film.

Norman McLaren’s pixillation masterpiece Neighbours receives the Academy Award^® in the Best Documentary (Short Subject) category—the second Oscar^® for an NFB production.

The etched-on-film animated short Blinkity Blank is another testament to McLaren’s creative genius—winning the NFB its first Palme d’Or (Short Film) at the Cannes Film Festival.

The NFB moves from Ottawa to Côte-de-Liesse in Montreal, into a state-of-the-art motion picture studio with full production facilities, where filmmakers and artisans will bring so many of the NFB’s classic works to life, over the next 63 years.

The NFB is at the leading edge of developments in documentary cinema. Quebec filmmakers Michel Brault, Marcel Carrière, Gilles Groulx and Pierre Perrault make important contributions to the Direct Cinema movement with such iconic films as Les raquetteurs (Gilles Groulx and Michel Brault, 1958), whose aesthetic is considered a precursor to the Direct Cinema style. The film establishes a new way of representing reality and foreshadows the approach taken by the NFB’s French filmmaking team, which will be deployed in the 1960s, in the heat of an emerging Quebec cinema and assertion of identity. Iconic films are made during this period, including Pour la suite du monde (Of Whales, the Moon and Men) by Pierre Perrault, Michel Brault and Marcel Carrière, La Lutte (Wrestling) by Michel Brault, Marcel Carrière, Claude Fournier and Claude Jutra, Golden Gloves by Gilles Groulx, Bûcherons de la Manouane by Arthur Lamothe and À Saint-Henri le cinq septembre (September Five at Saint-Henri), a group project by the NFB’s French team led by Hubert Aquin, as well as the fiction film Le chat dans le sac (The Cat in the Bag) by Gilles Groulx, which uses Direct Cinema techniques.

The NFB produces Universe, a short documentary by Roman Kroitor and Colin Low, which explains the workings of the universe and, a few years later, is included in the American astronaut training program.

The film was also a key source for Kubrick’s vision of space in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Pour la suite du monde (Of Whales, the Moon and Men) by Pierre Perrault, Michel Brault and Marcel Carrière (produced by Fernand Dansereau) is the first Canadian feature film to be screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

The NFB releases its first English-language fiction feature: Drylanders by Don Haldane.

The NFB’s French Program is created. Up until then, French productions had been developed and managed within the English production unit. This confirms the institution’s commitment to establishing a distinct identity for francophone cinema at the NFB. The same year, the NFB releases its first French-language fiction feature, Le chat dans le sac (The Cat in the Bag) by Gilles Groulx.

The NFB’s Challenge for Change program—whose French-language counterpart Société nouvelle would be launched in 1969—sparks a whole new kind of participatory cinema experience for communities.

The NFB takes immersive storytelling to a new level with its landmark multi-screen experience In the Labyrinth, shown at Montreal’s Expo 67, which in turn leads to the birth of the IMAX^® format and a string of giant-screen firsts. The experimental film by Roman Kroitor, Colin Low and Hugh O’Connor draws more than 1.3 million people.

The NFB launches a training program for Indigenous filmmakers, in collaboration with the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.

The NFB presents two works created for the Canada Pavilion at the Osaka World’s Fair: the spectacular short documentary Canada the Land, by Rex Tasker and Jean-Claude Labrecque, on Canada’s geographic wealth; and The City, by Kaj Pindal, an animated fantasy about the country’s urbanization.

Claude Jutra creates his masterpiece Mon oncle Antoine for the NFB, which garners a Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival and First Prize for Feature Films at the Canadian Film Awards.

Studio D is created within the English Program. It’s the first studio dedicated to films made by and about women, from which would emerge such landmark works as Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography by Bonnie Sherr Klein (1981) and If You Love This Planet by Terre Nash (1982). Three films from the studio would earn Oscars^®: Beverly Shaffer’s I’ll Find a Way (1977), If You Love This Planet and Cynthia Scott’s Flamenco at 5:15 (1983).

The NFB blazes a trail in computer animation when René Jodoin produces one of the first short films made solely using computer animation, Peter Foldès’s La faim (Hunger), which wins a Jury Prize, short film category, at Cannes and receives an Oscar^® nomination.

The NFB produces the official film of the XXI Olympiad, under the supervision of Jean-Claude Labrecque (32 teams, 168 people, 100,000 metres of film).

J.A. Martin photographe (J.A. Martin Photographer) triumphs at Cannes. Monique Mercure receives the award for Best Actress, and the film wins the Prix du jury œcuménique. The same year, the film wins the award for Best Feature Film at the Canadian Film Awards.

The Sand Castle, by Co Hoedeman, wins the Oscar^® for best animated short film, one of nearly two dozen awards it earned.

The animated short Special Delivery, by Eunice Macaulay and John Weldon, wins an Oscar^®.

An NFB production wins the Oscar^® for best animated short film for a third consecutive year; this time it goes to Every Child by Eugene Fedorenko.

Premiere of River Journey, by John N. Smith, the first IMAX^® film produced by the NFB for a world’s fair (Louisiana, New Orleans); the film is a striking journey down Canada’s rivers.

Produced by the NFB for the Canada Pavilion at Expo ’86 in Vancouver and made using the IMAX^® process, Colin Low and Tony Ianzelo’s Transitions, the first full-colour IMAX^® film created entirely using stereoscopic computer animation, draws 1.7 million viewers at Vancouver’s world exposition.

The French Program animation studio opens the Centre d’animatique to continue to push boundaries in the emerging field of computer animation. The team includes Daniel Langlois, founder of Softimage.

The NFB receives an Honorary Oscar^® for overall excellence in cinema.

Launch of the CineRobotheque, a centre for cutting-edge media technology, comprising a videotheque and a movie theatre. It contains the first large audiovisual server in Canada, capable of responding to some 50 requests simultaneously from both inside and outside the centre. Kodak Canada awards it the Prix Livernois, underscoring the NFB’s innovative leadership in the field of imaging. The CineRobotheque serves as the model for the creation of the NFB Mediatheque in Toronto in 2002, establishing the NFB’s position very early in the dawning era of digital film distribution.

The first film in IMAX^® HD (48 frames per second), Colin Low and Tony Ianzelo’s Momentum is the centrepiece of the Canada Pavilion at the world’s fair in Seville, Spain. The film reveals Canada’s immensity and diversity in a completely immersive and captivating fashion.

Alanis Obomsawin completes her landmark work, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, which receives 15 international awards, including the Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association and the Award for Best Canadian Feature Film from the Toronto Festival of Festivals (now known as TIFF).

Bob’s Birthday, by Alison Snowden and David Fine, wins the Oscar^® for best animated short.

Ryan, by Chris Landreth, wins the Oscar^® for best animated short, along with some 60 other awards.

The animated short The Danish Poet, by Torill Kove, wins an Oscar^®.

Filmmaker-in-Residence, a long-term collaboration with multimedia documentary maker Katerina Cizek, earns the NFB the first of its Webby Awards.

The NFB launches NFB.ca | ONF.ca, its acclaimed online screening room, the first fully bilingual and bicultural audiovisual site. The NFB also launches the first in a family of popular mobile apps, the NFB Films app for iPhone, which was named one of the top apps of 2009 by iTunes Canada and hailed by CNET as “ingenious” and “pure iPhone gold.”

The NFB launches the web documentary Waterlife, which earns the organization its second Webby, for Documentary: Individual Episode, as well as many other honours, including Best Multimedia Feature Presentation at the Online Journalism Awards.

The NFB creates its two award-winning digital studios, one based in Vancouver, the other in Montreal.

Created for the Canada Pavilion at Expo Shanghai, Glimpses, by Jean-François Pouliot, depicts 24 hours in the life of an imagined city–a composite that draws on all Canadian cities. This short film is projected onto a semi-circular screen 21 metres wide and 5 metres high, with a curvature of about 150 degrees.

Home of the largest collection of Inuit films in the world, the NFB releases the landmark compilation Unikkausivut: Sharing Our Stories.

Sarah Polley directs Stories We Tell at the NFB. The film breathes new life into the doc genre and becomes one of the biggest critical and commercial successes of all time in Canadian documentary, earning 11 awards and honours.

Two NFB films earn Oscar^® nominations: Patrick Doyon’s Sunday and Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis’s Wild Life.

During the NFB’s 75th-anniversary celebrations, NFB.ca | ONF.ca and its partner platforms topped 50 million views, and NFB interactive productions and digital platforms were showered with more than 100 awards, including 10 Webby Awards.

The NFB announces that its headquarters will be moving to Îlot Balmoral in downtown Montreal’s new Quartier des Spectacles.

Created in collaboration with Google’s Chrome and VR teams, the IDFA DocLab, and Sound and Vision, Bear 71 VR was shown by the NFB as a VR installation at the IDFA DocLab, and by Google at the 2017 Sundance Festival’s New Frontier VR Bar.

The NFB announces a firm commitment to gender parity, with the goal of having 50% of its productions directed by women and 50% of its production budget devoted to films made by women by 2019. The results of its gender-parity initiative will be made public and shared each year.

Theodore Ushev’s Blind Vaysha is a hit, receiving 28 awards and honours, in addition to an Oscar^® nomination.

The NFB takes another step forward in its commitment to gender parity, aiming for parity by 2020 in key creative positions for animated, documentary and interactive works in production.

The NFB announces the implementation of its Indigenous Action Plan, which includes a series of commitments to support more productions directed by Indigenous artists, while creating protocols and guidelines for the production, distribution and use of archives.

Expo 67 Live, by Karine Lanoie-Brien, is an innovative experience on giant screens, consisting entirely of archival treasures, made to mark the 375th anniversary of Montreal and the 50th anniversary of Expo 67. More than 18,000 people attend presentations of this work at the Place des Arts Esplanade in Montreal.

Eva Cvijanović’s Hedgehog’s Home (2017) wins 32 awards and honours, including the Telefilm Canada Prize for the most internationally awarded film at the Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma’s Prends ça court Gala.

Launch of the Indigenous Cinema web page on NFB.ca, which features films by and about Indigenous creators. The NFB has also adopted the Indigenous Materials Classification Schema to catalogue these works, the largest online collection of Indigenous-directed films in the world.

Alison Snowden and David Fine’s animated short Animal Behaviour receives an Oscar^® nomination, the 75th for an NFB production or co-production.

The NFB moves into Îlot Balmoral. This state-of-the-art headquarters features the Alanis Obomsawin Theatre and a street-level Public Space, for screenings and events in the heart of Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles.

Women in Governance awards the NFB Platinum Parity Certification, the organization’s highest gender-parity certification level.

The NFB again receives Platinum Parity Certification from Women in Governance.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of views on NFB.ca | ONF.ca reaches a record high of nearly 1.5 million, an increase of more than 95% compared to the same period the previous year. The NFB also launches The Curve, a collection of projects by over 40 creators and filmmakers exploring the pandemic, accessible online and produced by all of its studios across Canada.

Distinguished documentarian Alanis Obomsawin is awarded the Glenn Gould Prize, presented once every two years to recognize a unique lifetime contribution that has enriched the human condition through the arts.

The NFB presents its 2020–2023 Strategic Plan—a catalyst for the future of the NFB, which places creation and audience engagement at the heart of the organization’s objectives.

The NFB receives Women in Governance Platinum Party Certification for the third consecutive year.

The NFB announces its diversity, equity and inclusion commitments, laid out in a plan that contains concrete goals and measures aimed at making significant and lasting changes in the organization.

The feature film Les Rose (The Rose Family), by Félix Rose, becomes the first documentary to win the Audience Choice award at the Gala Québec Cinéma, following a very successful theatrical and online release.

The interactive installation TRACES is unveiled at Expo 2020 in Dubai. Created by the architectural collective KANVA, with art director and multimedia designer Étienne Paquette, it offers a poetic vision of an uncertain future, and a reflection on our present.

The animated short film Affairs of the Art, by Joanna Quinn and Les Mills is nominated for an Academy Award^®.

In 2022, six years after making its initial commitment, the NFB continues to meet its gender-parity goals, both for the number of productions directed by women and for production budgets allocated to women. It has also met or exceeded its goals in most creative positions (screenwriting, editing and music composition), with a significant improvement in cinematography.

Five years after the launch of its Indigenous Action Plan, the NFB continues to set priorities and maintain its goals and commitments to support First Nations, Inuit and Métis perspectives.

The Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin presents The Children Have to Hear Another Story – Alanis Obomsawin, an exhibition tracing Obomsawin’s artistic activism over the last five decades.

The Children Have to Hear Another Story – Alanis Obomsawin is presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Art Museum at the University of Toronto.

Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby receive their latest Academy Award^® nomination, for their animated short The Flying Sailor. The animation duo of Forbis and Tilby now share three Oscar^® nominations. Tilby was also nominated for her first film with the NFB, Strings.

The NFB announces its commitment to ensuring that more than 30% of its productions and co-productions are directed by filmmakers who identify as Black and People of Colour.

Launch of the 12-disc DVD box set Alanis Obomsawin: A Legacy.

The Montreal and Vancouver interactive studios close in January.

The NFB launches Innovation Lab, an experimental research accelerator for NFB projects and productions.

Nisha Pahuja’s To Kill a Tiger is nominated for an Academy Award®—the 78th Oscar^® nomination for an NFB film.

The NFB restructures its production units.

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles showcases legendary NFB animation.

The Children Have to Hear Another Story – Alanis Obomsawin is presented at the Musée d’art contemporain in Montreal.

The NFB marks 50 years of French-language production in Acadia.

13 groundbreaking Norman McLaren compositions are brought together for the first time in Rythmetic: The Compositions of Norman McLaren, released by Phantom Limb (UK/EU) and We Are Busy Bodies (US/Canada/world), in collaboration with the NFB.

The NFB enhances support for independent filmmakers across the country with the return of its FAP and ACIC initiatives.

50th anniversary of the pioneering women’s studio, Studio D.

Launch of the NFB’s Stream Canadian campaign, promoting free access to 7,000 Canadian works on NFB.ca.

Launch of the NFB’s 2025–2028 Strategic Plan, entitled Sharing Our Past, Shaping Our Future, Stories for Today.

During CRTC hearings, the NFB advocates for the integration of cultural elements into the definition of Canadian programming and emphasizes the importance of including documentaries as “programs of national interest.”

The Children Have to Hear Another Story – Alanis Obomsawin is presented at MoMA PS1 in New York.

7th Peabody Award for the NFB, for Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee’s feature documentary Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story.