Screenings and radio listening series to feature drama, comedy, documentaries, public affairs and news programming, including works by David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Ken Finkleman, Frédéric Back, Don McKellar, Rick Mercer, Kids in the Hall, and Lorne Michaels, among others.

New York and Los Angeles from October 18, 2002, to February 2, 2003

New York Opening Seminar October 17

New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA—The Museum of Television & Radio will salute the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, now celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of television in Canada, with a fourteen-week screening series highlighting exceptional French and English radio and television programs created by or featuring many of Canada’s most important artists. O Canada! A Salute to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation will run from October 18, 2002 through February 2, 2003 in both New York and Los Angeles.

Screening times in New York will be Tuesdays to Sundays at 1:00 p.m., with additional evening screenings Thursdays at 5:00 p.m. and Fridays at 6:00 p.m. In Los Angeles, screenings will be Wednesdays to Sundays at 12:15 p.m., with additional screenings Thursdays at 6:00 p.m. In addition, an opening seminar, CBC/Radio-Canada: A Tradition of Excellence, will be held at the New York Museum on October 17.

The Museum will present over forty programs exploring the diversity of CBC/Radio-Canada’s history. The series will feature a variety of programs from several different genres. Dramas include The Boys of St. Vincent, David Cronenberg's The Italian Machine, Atom Egoyan's In This Corner, and Ken Finkleman's breakthrough series The Newsroom. Seminal news programming such as This Hour Has Seven Days set precedents that are followed to this day. Variety programs dared to feature Sammy Davis, Jr., for the first time in his career, as well as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, and Gilles Vigneault. Comedies such as Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans, The Wayne and Shuster Hour, and the recent Kids in the Hall documentary Same Guys, New Dresses demonstrate the much-emulated Canadian sense of humor in hilarious characterization. Teen shows such as Degrassi High still have cult followings twenty years after their first broadcast. French-language works such as Le Sel de la Semaine: Entrevue avec Jack Kerouac, and documentaries featuring Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, and Serge Gainsbourg, as well as Beryl Fox's Mills of the Gods: Viet Nam, expose their subjects through insightful production. The Museum will also present a sneak preview of experimental filmmaker Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary (scheduled to open theatrically at Film Forum in Spring 2003.)

A wide range of Canadian radio programming will also be featured in the Radio Listening Rooms, under the themes "The CBC and 9/11"; "Science, Culture, and More"; "Arts and Entertainment": "Radio-Canada (French-Language Radio)"; and "News and Public Affairs."

The opening seminar in New York, CBC/Radio-Canada: A Tradition of Excellence, will bring together some of Canada's most distinguished producers, directors, writers, and performers for a discussion of their work, in addition to the Corporation's role in their development as artists. Panelists include Director Ken Finkleman; Daniel Gourd, Acting Executive Vice-President of Television, Radio-Canada; Slawko Klymkiw, Executive Director, Network Programming, CBC-TV; Peter Mansbridge, Chief Correspondent, CBC Television News; Harry Rasky, director, The Song of Leonard Cohen, Stratosphere, Homage to Chagall; and Mark Starowicz, Executive Producer, Network Programming, CBC Television, Canada: A People's History, and creator of the popular Radio call-out As It Happens.

A complete schedule for O Canada! A Salute to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation follows.

Screenings and listening series are included with suggested Museum admission: Members free; $10.00 for adults; $8.00 for senior citizens and students; and $5.00 for children under thirteen. Admission is free in Los Angeles.

The Museum of Television & Radio, with locations in New York and Los Angeles, is a nonprofit organization founded by William S. Paley to collect and preserve television and radio programs and advertisements and to make them available to the public. Since opening in 1976, the Museum has organized exhibitions, screening and listening series, seminars, and education classes to showcase its collection of over 110,000 television and radio programs and advertisements. In 2001 the Museum initiated a process to acquire Internet programming for the collection. Programs in the Museum's permanent collection are selected for their artistic, cultural, and historic significance.

CBC/Radio-Canada is Canada’s independent public broadcaster. Since its inception in 1936, CBC/Radio-Canada has grown to become one of Canada’s largest cultural institutions, providing Canadians from coast to coast with traditional and new media services in French and English, as well as in eight aboriginal languages in the North. It is also the nation’s source for information, sports and entertainment programs that are proudly and distinctly Canadian. Further information is available at www.cbc.ca and www.radio-canada.ca.

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The Museum of Television & Radio in New York, located at 25 West 52 Street in Manhattan, is open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 6:00 p.m., until 8:00 p.m. on Thursdays, and Friday evenings until 9:00 p.m. (theaters only). The Museum of Television & Radio in California, located at 465 North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, is open Wednesdays through Sundays from noon to 5:00 p.m. and until 9:00 p.m. on Thursdays. Both Museums are closed on New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Suggested contribution: Members free; $10.00 for adults; $8.00 for senior citizens and students; and $5.00 for children under thirteen. Admission is free in Los Angeles. The public areas in both Museums are accessible to wheelchairs, and assisted listening devices are available. Programs are subject to change. You may call the Museum in New York at (212) 621-6800, or in Los Angeles at (310) 786-1000. Visit the Museum’s website at www.mtr.org.

O CANADA! A SALUTE TO CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

Opening Seminar in New York:

CBC/Radio-Canada: A Tradition of Excellence

Thursday, October 17 at 6:30 p.m.

This seminar will bring together some of Canada’s most distinguished producers, directors, writers, and performers for a discussion of their CBC work, in addition to the network’s role in their development as artists. Panelists will include Ken Finkleman (The Newsroom, More Tears, Foolish Heart, Foreign Objects), Daniel Gourd (Acting Executive Vice President of Television, SRC), Slawko Klymkiw (Executive Director, Network Programming, CBC-TV), Peter Mansbridge (Chief Correspondent, CBC Television News), Harry Rasky (The Song of Leonard Cohen, Stratosphere, Homage to Chagall), and Mark Starowicz (Executive Producer, Network Programming, CBC Television, Canada: A People’s History, As It Happens). Additional panelists to be announced. Tickets are $15 ($12 for Museum Members).

Screenings (* indicates program is in French with English subtitles):

Troubadours

New York & Los Angeles: Friday, October 18 to Sunday, October 27, 2002

The Song of Leonard Cohen, directed by accomplished documentarian Harry Rasky, delves into Cohen’s background and creative inspiration and follows him on his 1979 concert tour. In Daryl Duke’s documentary, the then-twenty-four-year-old American Joan Baez holds court on such issues as nonviolence and Bob Dylan’s electric music, but lightens up with impersonations of Ringo Starr and George Harrison. The third program in the screening is a revealing discussion with French singer-songwriter/enfant terrible Serge Gainsbourg.

·Rasky’s Gallery: Poets, Painters, Singers and Saints: The Song of Leonard Cohen (1980; 85 minutes)

·This Hour Has Seven Days: Document 18: Joan Baez (1965; 55 minutes)

·Appelez-Moi Lise: Entrevue avec Serge Gainsbourg (Call Me Lise: Interview with Serge Gainsbourg) (1974; 20 minutes)*

The Boys of St. Vincent/The Boys of St. Vincent: 15 Years Later

New York: Tuesday, October 29 to Sunday, November 3, 2002. Special evening screening times: Thursday at 4:30 p.m., no Friday evening screening

Los Angeles: Wednesday, October 30, and Friday to Sunday, November 1 to 3, 2002

One of the most controversial programs in CBC history, this miniseries explores the physical and sexual abuse of boys at a fictional Catholic orphanage in Newfoundland. At the time of its premiere, several Brothers were on trial for similar crimes at a real-life Newfoundland orphanage, and the CBC was prohibited from airing the miniseries in Ontario and western Québec for fear that it would prejudice the outcome, despite a disclaimer describing the program as a work of fiction. These programs contain adult language and content.

·The Boys of St. Vincent (1993; 95 minutes)

·The Boys of St. Vincent: 15 Years Later (1993; 95 minutes)

Sneak Preview:

Opening Night: Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary

New York: Friday, November 1, 2002 at 7:00 p.m.

Los Angeles: Thursday, October 31, 2002 at 7:00 p.m.

Internationally acclaimed experimental filmmaker Guy Maddin, “invoking his self-proclaimed ambition to redeem the name of melodrama,” brings his gothically surreal cinematic style to this dazzling black-and-white, silent adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, based on the Royal Winnipeg Ballet production. Writing in the New York Times, film critic A.O. Scott said: “It’s characters may be undead, but the film itself is crazily, passionately alive.” Also included is an interview with Maddin. (2002; 110 minutes)

Dracula will open theatrically at Film Forum in spring 2003.

David Cronenberg/Atom Egoyan/French-Canadian Cinema

New York: Tuesday, November 5 to Sunday, November 10, 2002

Los Angeles: Wednesday, November 6 to Sunday, November 10, 2002

Famously provocative, David Cronenberg (Crash, The Fly, Dead Ringers) and Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica) are among the many internationally known Canadian film directors who cut their teeth at the CBC. Cronenberg’s The Italian Machine (which he also wrote) ruminates on the meaning of art as it tells of a biker’s obsession with a rare Italian motorcycle. Egoyan’s In This Corner, written by Paul Gross (future star of the television series Due South), draws parallels between a Canadian boxer and an Irish gunman; it aired on the anthology series For the Record (1977-1985), renowned for using filmmakers from Canada’s “direct cinema” movement, which produced low-budget films using documentary techniques developed at the National Film Board. Cine Boom looks at French-Canadian new-wave filmmakers of the 1960s, including Claude Jutra.

·Teleplay: The Italian Machine (1976; 25 minutes)

·For the Record: In This Corner (1986; 60 minutes)

·Festival: Cine Boom (1965; 60 minutes)

Four by Finkleman

New York: Tuesday, November 12 to Sunday, November 17, 2002

Los Angeles: Wednesday, November 13 to Sunday, November 17, 2002

One of Canada’s most brilliant television auteurs, Ken Finkleman has been dissecting human foibles with slicing wit and existential angst since 1995, when his first CBC series premiered. His breakthrough series was the internationally acclaimed Newsroom (1996-1997), an acidulous behind-the-scenes look at the production of a fictional television news program. More Tears (1998) plumbed similar ground, while in Foolish Heart (1999) Finkleman turned his attention to love, though in typical fashion depicted it as an all-consuming monster that brings “anguish and ambiguity and contradiction.” Finkleman’s latest creation, Foreign Objects (2001), is a six-part anthology series that focuses on an ethically pliable documentary maker while tackling such weighty issues as the collision of human desire with rigid social conventions. This package contains adult language and content.

·The Newsroom: “Unity” (1997; 25 minutes)

·More Tears: “Victims” (1998; 25 minutes)

·Foolish Heart: “The Program” (1999; 30 minutes)

·Foreign Objects: “Chaos & Order” (2001; 25 minutes)

Teen Angst

New York: Tuesday, November 19 to Sunday, November 24, 2002

Los Angeles: Wednesday, November 20 to Sunday, November 24, 2002

Among the CBC’s most renowned programs, the Degrassi trilogy (The Kids of DeGrassi Street, Degrassi Junior High, Degrassi High, all created by Linda Schuyler and Kit Hood) aired from 1979 to 1991 and were shown abroad, including the United States. The two older-skewing series in particular fearlessly tackled controversial issues like abortion and AIDS. Following in the Degrassi tradition was Straight Up (1996 to 1998), much acclaimed for its uncompromising exploration of urban teen life in the 1990s. Created by documentarians Janis Lundman and Adrienne Mitchell, Straight Up won Geminis (Canada’s equivalent of the Emmy) for director Jerry Ciccoritti (Paris, France) and star Sarah Polley (Go, The Sweet Hereafter).

·Degrassi Junior High: “It’s Late” (1987; 30 minutes)

·Degrassi High: “Bad Blood,” Parts 1 and 2 (1990; 50 minutes)

·Straight Up: “Mortifying” (1997; 25 minutes)

The Coroner’s Report

New York: Tuesday, November 26 to Sunday, December 1, 2002

Los Angeles: Wednesday, November 27 to Sunday, December 1, 2002

Curiously, two of the CBC’s most acclaimed drama series have centered on crusading big-city coroners, even though they premiered thirty-two years apart. Years before CSI: Crime Scene Investigation or even Quincy, M.E., John Vernon starred in the moody, glamourless Wojeck (1966-1968), a ground-breaking show that embodied 1960s liberalism by tackling issues like racism and homosexuality. The gritty Da Vinci’s Inquest (1998 to present), a three-time Gemini Award-winner for best dramatic series, tracks the personal and professional lives of Vancouver medical examiners.

·Wojeck: “The Last Man in the World”(1966; 55 minutes)

·Da Vinci’s Inquest: “Pretend You Didn’t See Me”(2002; 45 minutes)

News/Public Affairs: Benchmarks

New York: Tuesday, December 3 to Sunday, December 8, 2002

Los Angeles: Wednesday, December 4 to Sunday, December 8, 2002

Unquestionably the most famous public affairs program in Canadian history, This Hour Has Seven Days (1964-1966) was a stimulating brew of filmed essays, interviews, audience participation, song, and satirical sketches. The program’s controversial cancellation led to a nationwide protest and a parliamentary investigation. Designed by producers Patrick Watson and Douglas Leiterman to push the boundaries of television journalism by eschewing neutrality for advocacy, Seven Days defiantly tackled issues like politics, sex, and religion, provoking repeated battles with network and government officials. The program screened here includes a famous confrontation between two costumed members of the Ku Klux Klan and an African-American civil rights activist. The hard-hitting magazine show the fifth estate, modeled on 60 Minutes, has aired on the CBC an astounding twenty-seven years (from 1975 to the present) and has featured many of Canada’s top news personalities, including Adrienne Clarkson, now Canada’s governor general. Famous installments include John Zaritsky’s Just Another Missing Kid, the story of a family’s Kafka-esque search for a missing nineteen-year-old college student, which won an Academy Award for best feature-length documentary.

·This Hour Has Seven Days (1965; 60 minutes)

·the fifth estate: “Just Another Missing Kid” (1981; 90 minutes)

Popular Arts: Infinite Variety

New York: Tuesday, December 10 to December 15, 2002

Los Angeles: Wednesday, December 11 to Sunday, December 15, 2002

From the BC archives, Buried Treasures (from the weekly performing arts program Opening Night) assembles early performances by African-American musicians who flocked north in the 1950s and early 1960s because of limited television opportunities at home, including Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat “King” Cole, Marian Anderson, Sammy Davis, Jr. (in his first television special ever), and Sarah Vaughan, who performs—and holds hands with—white CBC host Wally Koster. In Je vous entends chanter, famed chansonniers perform the songs of French-Canadian icon Gilles Vigneault, whose music captures the heart and soul of the Québec experience.

·Opening Night: Buried Treasures (2002; 60 minutes)

·Je vous entends chanter (I Hear You Sing) (1980; 90 minutes)*

Comedy: On the Edge – Rick Mercer and Don McKellar

New York: Tuesday, December 17 to Sunday, December 22, 2002

Los Angeles: Wednesday, December 18 to Sunday, December 22, 2002

Rick Mercer and Don McKellar are two of Canada’s youngest and edgiest comic auteurs. Mercer came to television with the venerable news satire program This Hour Has 22 Minutes (1993 to present), and his “Talking to Americans” segment often poked fun at Americans for their ignorance of Canadian issues and customs. Mercer’s special Talking to Americans earned two Gemini nominations, which the comedian rejected in the aftermath of September 11, saying “this is not a time to be making light of the differences between two nations but rather a time to offer our unconditional support to our neighbors, friends, and relatives to the south.” In 1998 he created Made in Canada, a half-hour filmed comedy series that skewers the show-business industry. That same year, McKellar—already acclaimed as a director, writer, and actor in film (including Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould and Last Night)—created the surreal comedy Twitch City, starring McKellar himself as a television-addicted agoraphobe contending with everything from finding a roommate to thwarting a feline plot to overtake the world.

·Rick Mercer’s Talking to Americans: The Special (2001; 45 minutes)

·Made in Canada: “Teamwork” (2001; 25 minutes)

·Twitch City: “The Planet of the Cats” (2000; 25 minutes)

Canadian Comedy: The Lorne Michaels Connection

New York: Tuesday, December 24, 2002, to Sunday, January 5, 2003

Los Angeles: Thursday, December 26 to Sunday, January 5, 2002

Canada’s Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster, a.k.a. Wayne and Shuster, were pioneering television sketch comedians who appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show a record sixty-seven times during a career that spanned five decades. Their erudite but zany humor—parodying Shakespeare one minute to television commercials the next—influenced generations of Canadian comedians, including Lorne Michaels, whose first wife was Shuster’s daughter. Michaels, creator of Saturday Night Live, originally teamed with Hart Pomerantz as Hart & Lorne, hosting several CBC programs, including The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour! In 1989, Michaels signed on as executive producer of a new CBC sketch comedy show, The Kids in the Hall, which carried on that peculiarly Canadian strain of comedy that exalts finely detailed character work over the more satirical, political thrust of American comedy, but pushed it to ever more bizarre, sometimes perverse extremes. The concert documentary Same Guys, New Dresses presents an irreverent and sometimes painfully intimate look at the Kids as they embark on their triumphant 2000 reunion tour, grappling with long-standing resentments, production delays, laser eye surgery, and an uncooperative robot dog. This package contains adult language and content.

·The Wayne and Shuster Hour: “Rinse the Blood off My Toga” (1955; 25 minutes)

·Sunday at Nine: The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour! (1970; 50 minutes)

·Same Guys, New Dresses (2001; 90 minutes)

Documentaries: A Storied Tradition

New York: Tuesday, January 7 to Sunday, January 12, 2003

Los Angeles: Wednesday, January 8 to Sunday, January 12, 2002

The CBC and its francophone counterpart, Société Radio-Canada, have played vital roles in the evolution of the documentary, showcasing filmmakers like Allan King, Beryl Fox, Harry Rasky, Claude Jutra, Denys Arcand, and Donald Brittain on such programs as Document, Documentary 60, and Candid Eye. Candid Eye, seminal in the development of esire vérité, was launched in 1958 by Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor of the National Film Board of Canada, inspired by the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson and emphasizing intimacy and spontaneity—the films were shot with no formal scripts and structured in the editing room. Lonely Boy, a portrait of Canadian pop star Paul Anka, is widely considered Candid Eye’s most successful film. Koenig and Kroitor also teamed on two classic films about pianist Glenn Gould, including the intimate Glenn Gould Off the Record, which visits the artist at his lakeside cottage. Beryl Fox’s Mills of the Gods: Viet Nam—“the most insightful document produced while the war was in progress,” according to film scholar Peter Morris—stunned critics with its images of the brutality of war; particularly powerful is her interview with an American pilot jubilant over the napalming of Vietnamese villagers.

·Candid Eye: Lonely Boy (1962; 30 minutes)

·Documentary 60: Glenn Gould Off the Record (1959; 25 minutes)

·This Hour Has Seven Days: Document 17: The Mills of the Gods: Viet Nam (1965; 55 minutes)

Québec: la belle province

New York: Tuesday, January 14 to Sunday, January 19, 2003

Los Angeles: Wednesday, January 15 to Sunday, January 19, 2002

From the vaults of Société Radio-Canada, the CBC’s French-language counterpart, come the following: acclaimed animator Frédéric Back’s metaphorical tale of a rocking chair, which doubles as a symbol of Québec itself; a revealing interview with Beat Generation avatar Jack Kerouac, whose parents were French-Canadian; and episodes of La vie, la vie (Life, Life), the hugely popular contemporary series about five thirty-something friends living in trendy Québec, and The Last Chapter, a six-hour bilingual miniseries about dueling biker gangs.

·Crac (Crack) (1981; 15 minutes)

·Le Sel de la Semaine: Entrevue avec Jack Kerouac (Salt of the Week: Interview with Jack Kerouac) (1967: 25 minutes)*

·La vie, la vie: “Je esire” (Life, Life: “I Desire”) (2000; 30 minutes)*

·Le dernier chapitre (The Last Chapter): The Triple Sixers (2002; 44 minutes)

A Sense of History

New York: Tuesday, January 21 to Sunday, January 26, 2003

Los Angeles: Wednesday, January 22 to Sunday, January 26, 2002

The largest single series ever undertaken by the CBC/ Société Radio-Canada, Canada: A People’s History is a sixteen-part, thirty-hour bilingual exploration of Canada’s past through the testimony of the people who lived it. The episode screened here focuses on Canada’s role during America’s Revolutionary War, including the calamitous siege of Québec, led by Benedict Arnold. In Black October, Terence McKenna uses dramatic reenactments, archival footage, and interviews with key figures to relive the tragic fall of 1970, when Front de Liberation du Québec (FLQ) revolutionaries kidnapped two government officials and executed Québec’s vice-premier, prompting Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to invoke the War Measures Act.

·Canada: A People’s History, Episode 5: A Question of Loyalties (Part 1)

(2000; 55 minutes)

·Black October (2000; 90 minutes)

Performing Arts

New York: Tuesday, January 28 to Sunday, February 2, 2003

Los Angeles: Wednesday, January 29 to Sunday, February 2, 2002

Jon Vickers: A Man and His Music—directed by renowned theater and music documentarian Richard Bocking—is a frank look at Canada’s most famous heroic tenor, whose total commitment to his artistry gave him the reputation of being “difficult” but resulted in revelatory performances that have worked their way into opera legend. Included are extended scenes from such operas as Pagliacci, Fidelio, Peter Grimes, Tristan und Isolde, and Otello.

·Musicamera: Jon Vickers: A Man and His Music (1974; 90 minutes)

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