From Documentary to Digital: The Role of the National Film Board of Canada
in Transnational Knowledge Transfer, Twentieth–Twenty-First Century
John W. Bessai
Independent scholar
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ORCID: 0009-0003-2755-6623
Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 1 (2026): 116-145 DOI 10.38145/2026.1.116
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.
Keywords: National Film Board of Canada, transnational knowledge transfer, cultural diplomacy, Challenge for Change, participatory documentary, interactive digital storytelling
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