Colin Low doesn’t think of himself as an auteur. The still-dynamic, 74-year-old National Film Board veteran has rarely been placed front and centre in his films or, for that matter, in publicity releases. Instead of adopting a persona and sticking with it, as so many directors have done over the years, Low has kept a profile fully in keeping with his name while pursuing a wide range of filmmaking possibilities.

In the 55 years since he left the ranch lands of Alberta for the relative sophistication of central Canada, Low has been an animator, a documentarian, a creator of brilliant installations at international world’s fairs, a community-based, "no-budget" filmmaker, a bureaucrat who fought for decentralization and a visionary artist who directed the first IMAX 3D and HD films. He has received more than 100 film awards, given advice to Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey and accepted the Order of Canada and the Prix de Quebec (Prix Albert-Tessier).

Down south, in the United States, he was a guest filmmaker, employed by the U.S. federal government during the mid-’70s; there, he has also received praise from such disparate luminaries as Ralph Nader and Ken Burns for his innovative directorial techniques.

It’s been quite a career. Given his predilection for anonymity, the signal honor given to him is as ironic as it is appropriate. Colin Low is one of the two people who went up to receive the Academy Award for the accomplishments of the NFB in 1988. There, in front of millions of watchers, Low got to accept an accolade not for himself, but for a group of filmmakers who informed and inspired generations of audiences in classrooms and theatres in Canada and abroad.

Low entered the NFB under auspicious circumstances.

In 1945, the teenaged Albertan was invited to join the fledgling animation department of the NFB in Ottawa. The young art student had been chosen by the brilliant animator Norman McLaren to work on graphics for the board.

"He was a little nervous as a teacher," recalls Low, "but when he got on to the subject of how to do something, and particularly when you got into experimenting with him, he was wonderful. You had to look at what you had on film and not what you imagined you had on film. McLaren was unique. He could be exacting, and in some stubborn way, demanding. Most of the people who worked with him or for him became very fond of him."

By 1950, Low was running the NFB’s animation department. At that time, the board mainly used animation to create graphics and titles for its live-action shorts. Apart from McLaren’s exceptional work, not much else was being created by the department. That began to change with the funny and very successful short Romance of Transportation in Canada. Using truncated characters placed against a minimalist backdrop, the film adapted the revolutionary animated style of the American studio UPA to make an amusing and informative short.

"I made a rough storyboard of the chronology of transportation," Low remembers. "It was a really ugly and rough storyboard. I thought it could be crudely illustrated. We knew how to do cel animation. But Wolf Koenig and Bob Verrall were keen to present the lighter way of looking at things. Wolf did a storyboard based on the theme, using the things I had researched, like the ox cart, the bateau, the canoe, but always putting them in a humorous context."

The film turned out to be a delightful piece that effectively conveyed a message without sacrificing its artistry.

A year later, Low headed out west to his family’s ranch in Cardston, AB with Koenig in tow. The idea was to make a film about a Canadian cowboy.

"Grant McLean was in charge at the time," recalls Koenig, "and he didn’t want to give us a camera. We had to rent one from Budge Crawley [the Ottawa independent filmmaker] for $5 a day – cheap."

Low and Koenig spent the money wisely, filming Wally Jensen, a true cowboy, as he slowly tamed a horse. The results were so lyrical, and complete, that even Stanley Jackson, the NFB’s resident script doctor and narrator, felt no voice-over was necessary. Corral went on to win first prize at the Venice Film Festival.

Three years later, Low, along with a team that included Koenig, Roman Kroitor, Jackson, producer and editor Tom Daly, composer Eldon Rathburn and writer Pierre Berton, created another masterpiece.

City of Gold is a meticulously researched account of Dawson City during the height of the Yukon gold rush in 1898. Using a series of glass plate negatives miraculously preserved from the period, Low and his group were able to transport viewers into the sepia-toned past. A technique devised by Kroitor with the animation department allowed the photos to be panned, scanned, accelerated and zoomed in on, creating a multitude of motion picture effects.

The graphic style used so poetically in City of Gold influenced Ken Burns, which he gracefully acknowledges, and a generation of historically based documentary filmmakers. The film itself was so beautifully rendered that it ended up winning 21 international prizes.

In 1960, Low teamed up with Kroitor, Koenig, Jackson, Rathburn and Sidney Goldsmith to make the visionary documentary Universe. Again using the graphics expertise at the board’s animation department, Low was able to create a sense of the cosmos – of the movements of stars and planets – in this film. Revolutionary for its time, Universe garnered even more prizes than City of Gold, 23 in all, including one from the Cannes film festival.

Among the devotees of Universe was Stanley Kubrick. The maverick director first heard about the film through Arthur C. Clarke, the science-fiction writer whose book, Childhood’s End, served as an inspiration for 2001. Kubrick traveled to Montreal to talk to Low about Universe and his own project.

"Kubrick wanted to achieve the same things we had done on Universe," recalls Low, "but we were on to Labyrinth and I couldn’t go to work with him."

The project that kept Low in Montreal was Labyrinth, the NFB’s contribution to Expo 67. Footage was shot for it across the globe by three directors – Kroitor, Low and Hugh O’Connor. Inspired by Theseus in Greek mythology and several long talks with eminent Canadian professor Northrop Frye, the work is anthropology mixed with poetry, a curious and effective combination of documentary with experimental film. Using 35mm and 70mm film projected simultaneously on multiple screens, it turned out to be the precursor to the IMAX format.

The theme of Expo 67 was Man and His World. "We knew that man and his outer world was going to be shown by everybody else, everywhere as big and bold as you could," recalls Daly, Low’s producer. "There were several of us that were really interested in trying to do the equivalent inner thing."

Among them were Kroitor, O’Connor and Low.

"Colin’s designing, there was something quite wonderful about it," says Daly. "He wouldn’t be satisfied with just the best there was if he could see how to make it better."

Right after Labyrinth, Low shifted gears completely and moved to Newfoundland. There, he worked in tandem with Memorial University on the NFB’s new Challenge for Change project. Low went to Fogo Island and worked among fishers who were threatened with removal to the mainland. By simply shooting their stories, screening them in town hall meetings all over the island and then showing them, with the villagers’ approval, to the provincial legislature, Low and his crew helped to change people’s perceptions about Fogo and, eventually, to revitalize the island.

Seeing the potential in the Challenge for Change idea, the U.S. government’s Office for Economic Opportunity asked Low to make films in communities in the States. This time Low did leave Montreal; unfortunately, after creating two successful community projects, the funding was cut for this startling use of media in a democracy.

Returning to the NFB in 1972, he was made executive producer of Studio C, the board’s major documentary unit at the time. During this period, Low began to work with young filmmakers in Alberta.

With a number of filmmakers, Tom Radford had formed a company called Film West. Anne Wheeler, the director of Better Than Chocolate, was part of Film West then and recalls Low’s interest in the company.

"I suppose Colin personally identified with us because he was from Alberta and had come back to do a number of projects there. He was always incredibly encouraging, coming out to visit us, watching our cuts, talking about film. He started to have this dream that the Film Board should have regional offices across Canada, not just in the large centres, and at that time [an office] was being formed in Toronto and then in Vancouver. Until that time it had just been in Montreal. We started becoming an example of what could happen in the regions."

In 1976, Low became the first director of regional production at the NFB. For a natural filmmaker like Low this was a frustrating period in his life. But during that time, he and others spent a lot of time nurturing young filmmakers.

Peter Starr, now a producer at the board, says, "Colin had a wonderful vision, not only for his own projects and subjects but for the new generation of filmmakers that were being informally trained at the NFB. He and Tom Daly had created the greatest post-graduate film school in existence and they would often visit the editing rooms to screen sequences, discuss our progress and provide insight that I still use to this day."

Says Wheeler: "It was the only school I ever had. It was a privilege to spend time with those guys."

Starting in 1979, Low returned to full-fledged directing with the large-screen project Atmos. He had another dream, to create the first IMAX 3D film. Over the years since Imax Corp.’s formation, Low had often stepped in, unofficially, to work with the large-screen producers.

Presenting images in three dimensions began to fascinate Low, and he did a series of experiments with large formats throughout the ’70s and early ’80s. Eventually, he was able to convince CN, a major sponsor of Vancouver’s Expo 86, to pay for a 3D IMAX. Transitions proved to be an updated Romance of Transportation in Canada in concept, but the execution was far different. When Low’s 3D railroads ran at audiences, the effect was intended to echo the awe caused by the Lumiere brothers nearly a century before. Crowds flocked to the film.

Low continued with the large-screen spectacles Emergency and Momentum, both of which attracted enormous public acclaim.

With his most recent piece, Moving Pictures (2000), he once again revealed a new face, this time that of Colin Low.

"When I started out to make this last film," Low admits, "I started out simply wanting to make an art film without really knowing the full range of [artist Jacques] Callot’s work. Mark [Zannis, his producer] was the one that pushed me into the foreground. He said, ‘When you are talking about it, it is interesting; when it becomes objective, I go to sleep.’ So he said, ‘You have to do it.’

"I had never done anything like that before. I had never done a Donald Brittain; he was a master of the verbal art and had developed his own style. I went into it cautiously, slowly building up this persona, or having my persona built up by Gerry Vansier, the editor. It’s the kind of film as it goes up in intensity, it crosses over itself, spiraling and rising at the same time."

He warns, "Moving Pictures is not an autobiography because it only occupies a certain part of my preoccupations."

That last statement certainly will be no surprise to anyone familiar with Low. What film could possibly encompass all of his preoccupations?

Trying to identify Low’s many personas is difficult; drawing conclusions about his career is nearly impossible. Certainly there’s a love of Canada and a desire to express its values to the country and the world. As a documentary filmmaker, he can be compared to the best – Flaherty, Maysles, van der Keuken, Joris Ivens.

A final irony: Low is a maverick who has quietly pursued his own dreams and also the embodiment of the NFB and its ideals. * -www.nfb.ca