The Woods Gordon Report, Accountability, and the Postwar Reconstruction of the National Film Board of Canada

Abstract

Historical accounts of the postwar National Film Board (NFB) typically begin with the purges of NFB staff against the backdrop of the Red Scare. This article revisits this period by situating the Film Board within a context of postwar economic reconstruction. It focusses on an administrative review of the NFB by the consulting firm Woods Gordon. This article suggests that the report was part of a broader effort to redefine cultural agencies in economic terms. It also represented the emerging influence of accounting discourses in producers of “accountability” within government affairs. In conjunction with a new National Film Act, the Woods Gordon report was part of a series of measures that placed the NFB on the sidelines of two major developments: the distribution of movies to television and shifts in federal film policy priorities towards feature films and the development of the cultural industries.