The National Film Board took one step forward and one step back this past weekend, with the grand opening of NFB Mediatheque, a $1.5-million storefront operation in Toronto that tests the limits of the latest digital technologies while, it is hoped, returning the venerable organization to its roots by bringing together Canadians and their movies.

‘The goal is to bring films to the people and people to the films, in ways we haven’t been able to since the 1996 budget cuts,’ says spokesperson Janice Kaye. ‘People should be able to see a film if they come to the NFB.’

The main floor of the NFB building, located in the heart of downtown Toronto’s entertainment district, has been heavily redone. Gone is the institutional and under-used reception area and in its place are 14 interactive high-definition viewing stations with on-demand access to 400 digitized NFB films. The board plans to have its entire library, some 10,000 movies dating back to the 1940s, available by this time next year.

‘We want to be part of the street. A lot of people come in here every day and ask if they can see films and all we’ve been able to do is give them reading material,’ says Kaye.

It’s all part, explains NFB chair Jacques Bensimon, of the board’s efforts to undo the damage done by budget cuts in the 1990s. ‘The cuts forced the organization to concentrate on production and less on distribution,’ he says, ending the board’s previously close ties to the public. Film libraries were closed and screenings by traveling projectionists, in church basements and community halls, stopped. He hopes bringing the public into NFB Mediatheque, and possibly other locations, can get Canadians, especially young ones, watching and talking about their own movies.

The NFB’s renewed interest in distribution was also made clear last month at MIPCOM 2002, when the board introduced plans to acquire non-NFB and even non-Canadian films, most notably social-issue documentaries and experimental animation. Bensimon hopes to eventually produce more dramas, such as last year’s much-praised Atanarjuat – The Fast Runner, an NFB/Igloolik Isuma Productions coproduction.

‘When you go to Famous Players or some place like that you experience film, but as a consumer. I want people to experience cinema as Canadian citizens, and as participants in the process,’ he says. Technology isn’t the only answer, he says, but it helps.

Bensimon couldn’t ask for a better location. The NFB’s Toronto offices are surrounded on all sides by busy street life, most notably since the 1999 opening of the Paramount, the flagship multiplex of Famous Players, directly across the street. The NFB Mediatheque also shares the intersection of John and Adelaide Streets with the massive headquarters of CHUM/Citytv and several nightclubs.

The Toronto site is loosely modeled on the NFB Robotheque in Montreal, which offers similar services and brings in roughly 100,000 people per year. Bensimon hopes the new location will be even more popular.

‘It’s very important that the next generation of filmmakers feel the NFB is the place they want to work, and we’re investing as much as possible on emerging and developing filmmakers,’ he adds. The NFB recently established Cineroute, a digital system similar to that used by the Mediatheque, that delivers more than 1,000 rights-free NFB films on-demand to Canadian universities and secondary schools. The board is currently talking to potential partners in a home video-on-demand system, says Bensimon, and is in ‘very advanced stages’ of launching a French-language specialty channel. ‘In the meantime, on VisionTV we have a timeslot dedicated to NFB films and we’ve entered negotiations with the CBC and Astral to have an NFB presence on those networks.’

The Mediatheque’s opening celebrations were scheduled to run around the clock from Nov. 22-24, encouraging the public to come in and watch popular favorites such as The Cat Came Back and The Sweater. Other events included a screening of the new doc Asahi Baseball by Jari Osborne, panel discussions and an animation workshop for kids.

But the main attraction is the snazzy viewing stations by the Montreal firm Toboggan Design. Each includes an interactive touch screen, a flat 16 x 9 cinema display, and can instantly access a seven terabyte hard drive array in the NFB basement, on which the movies are stored in MPEG-4 format. Movies are streamed at DVD quality at 3.5 megabits per second. By the spring, customers will also be able to burn movies onto DVDs.

-www.nfb.ca