Screenings

The three part series, The Dark Years, will be airing on History Television on the following dates:

Part 1
Wed. Dec. 26th, 8pm - 9pm
Part 2
Thurs. Dec. 27th, 8pm - 9pm
Part 3
Fri. Dec. 28th, 8pm - 9pm

How did you come to this project?
The National Film Board and History TV commissioned me to make a documentary about the Depression, already called The Dark Years. I had worked for both organizations in the past and the experience had been positive, so when they offered me the chance to direct this project, I said yes. But I had already done a film set in the Depression years, so I wanted to do something different. We talked about various possibilities, and they encouraged me to come up with a new approach. They were up for it. That’s how the series in its current form was born.

What was behind your decision to make an animated history series?
I’ve made a number of historical documentaries, most of them driven by archival footage, and I’d begun to feel that audiences were beginning to experience what I call archive fatigue. Too often archival footage was being used as a kind of wallpaper behind a radio-style narration, and audiences were no longer responding. Plus, there was very little Canadian footage available from the period in question. I didn’t want to use American footage as a stand-in for Canada, pretending that American street scenes were shot in Toronto.

The images need to be clearly anchored in the story. They need to connect. So I was looking for a new way to storytell history, a new approach to making a historical documentary. We needed great stories and great characters—and we needed the visual elements that connected them to an audience.

When I discussed this with the people at the National Film Board and History TV, it became apparent that both institutions were prepared to try something new and innovative, to take risks. The other arrow in our quiver was the fact that the NFB has this long and important history as an animation producer. So given the shortage of appropriate archival material and the NFB’s expertise in this area, I thought, What would an animated documentary look like? What would it feel like to take doc conventions and put them into an animated film?

What did animation bring to the project?
With animation you’re able to conjure up a world from whole cloth. You can recreate an entire environment from scratch. In a sense, you create your own stock footage. You can make a time machine and take viewers back to a moment in the past

Animation also has the capacity to evoke emotions. You can explore themes, and add emotional colour and feel, in more imaginative ways. In the sequence on Lindbergh’s Atlantic crossing, for example, we were able to put a line of dancing girls on the plane’s wings—something that could not exist in reality. Using animation, we had new ways of capturing the jubilation surrounding the event and the optimism of the twenties, the pre-Depression era. Animation gave us this extra freedom.

Another thing animation can do is make documentary-type content more accessible to an audience. Dealing with the Depression, we were worried about not connecting with viewers. Animation let us work with dark material and still have fun with it. It brings a kind of lightness to the project—an element of fun.

There are some potential pitfalls, and one is that the audience might not believe that the events we depict actually happened. With animation, the images are so clearly manufactured, and we wanted to make sure that viewers would buy it as history. Did animation put too much distance between the audience and the events? Was the story sufficiently anchored in reality? Did it possess enough gravitas? To compensate for this possibility, we cut to stock footage at certain key points.

An interesting and unintended effect was that the animation reinvigorated the stock footage that we did use. Framed by animation, archival images take on a new life, and you see it in new ways. So that was an additional unexpected benefit of animation.

Was there any particular appeal in looking at the ’30s, the Depression years?
The period interests me for a number of reasons. Two of the great conflicts of the 20th century had their roots in the thirties—the Second World War and the Cold War. So many of the issues that would mark our era were sharpened, if not born, during those years.

When the world’s monetary system went into crisis in 1929, there were two main responses—the rise of the left around the world, and the advent of fascism in Western Europe. Both movements would be fuelled and boosted by events that occurred in the 1930s, and the battle lines of the great ideological struggle between fascism and democracy were brought into focus then.

In doing a popular history like The Dark Years, we were exploring new ways of talking about this history. As with my other projects, I went looking for good stories and compelling characters—events and characters that would show the thirties in an engaging way. But this is not intended as a definitive film about the Depression. It is not meant to be encyclopedic. It is just one story, a story told in an unusual way.

How did you decide on the device of the Toronto Daily Star — telling your story through the eyes of its reporters?
The idea of using the newsroom of the Toronto Daily Star as a central narrative device came out of discussions with Barbara Sears, the senior researcher on the series. Barbara had worked as Pierre Berton’s researcher and is one of Canada’s best. She’s the one who suggested the Star as a central element in the mix. Many of the key stories that we wanted to include had been reported by the paper. And the newspaper itself had an interesting history, with so many talented journalists dedicated to documenting everything that was happening at the time.

We realized that it might be an effective device to tie the series together. Up until then we’d been worried that the series would be too episodic, a series of vignettes without a unifying theme. We needed a string to hold all those pearls, and when Barbara suggested the Star, it made so much sense. We went with it.

Steve Lucas, who is one of Canada’s great writers, wove the Star’s reporters throughout the series. He has that rare talent of being able to write for both drama and documentary, and with The Dark Years he gave us three great scripts.

As for the Star itself, it was an important liberal voice within the newspaper landscape of the time, and the series tells something of its history as a vital player in Canadian journalism.

What were the benefits foryourself and Barna-Alper in partnering with the National Film Board?
Both the NFB and History TV were critical in getting The Dark Years made. The series would not have seen the light of day without this kind of institutional support. The whole idea of an animated documentary was new—it had not been done before. It helped enormously when the NFB, with its own remarkable animation tradition, got behind the project. Both organizations took an enormous leap of faith, and it was gratifying to get support from two of Canada’s important cultural institutions, one public and one private. Their support was essential.

How do you situate The Dark Years alongside your other work?
I often find myself drawn to stories about journalists or individuals who bear witness to history in some way. A number of my films feature this type of character. I did a film called Inside Information, about a Canadian reporter dodging bullets on the West Bank, and I directed The Last Just Man, about General Roméo Dallaire’s experience in Rwanda. Right now I’m working on The Bang Bang Club, a film about photojournalists. I identify with people who journey to unusual destinations and who return with unusual stories. That’s their job and it’s a service I provide as well. The Dark Years follows in this general vein.