City Song : A Forgotten Gem from the CBC Vancouver Archives
The UN has declared October 27th World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, intended to function “as a mechanism to raise general awareness of the need for urgent measures to be taken and to acknowledge the importance of audiovisual documents as an integral part of national identity.” In that spirit I’m posting a short essay (see below) that I recently wrote for the UBC film journal Cinephile about a long forgotten film called City Song produced in 1961 by CBUT, the CBC’s first Vancouver television affiliate. The CBUT’s film unit produced a rich catalogue of films that explored regional issues for a local audience, and City Song is particularly potent in capturing the flavour of Vancouver during a time of public self-questioning. City Song provides a wonderful window onto Vancouver’s past, not only through its location shooting and sound recording but in the way that it stages the city according to the particularities of its time. The film has never been released beyond its television screenings, but the Vanalogue YouTube channel has leaked a couple of excerpts to whet your appetite:
City Song is a prime example of the role that audiovisual media must play in the historiography of particular places. Sadly, it’s also a prime example of what is at risk to be lost in today’s climate of increasing regulation of government documents and budget cuts across a number Canada’s main archival institutions including Library and Archives Canada, the NFB, and the CBC. This year’s theme for World Day of Audiovisual Heritage is “archives at risk,” and researchers in Canada are feeling the pinch as access to these important collections becomes increasingly diminished.
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In the depths of the archives at CBC Vancouver with Tim Newman on April 8th 2013.
Without access to the knowledge that people like Colin bring to these archives, their contents risk fading even further into obscurity than they already are. And so I wrote this piece, in part, to call attention to the wealth of material housed in this archive, and to showcase one particular item as an exemplar of the value of this archive for accessing Vancouver’s cultural heritage. Enjoy!
[Click the above image for access to the full essay.]
In: Archives, Film Reviews, Film Sound, Music, Uncategorized, Vancouver on Film, Vancouver Soundscape