When Canada entered World War II, the National Film Board suddenly had an urgent new mission—and hundreds of women stepped forward, helping to create Canadian cinema as we now know it.

After the screening there will be a Q&A with the filmmaker, Don McWilliams whose work makes use of both live-action and animation techniques. He was inspired to become a filmmaker after meeting Norman McLaren in 1968.

M^cWilliams would later work with McLaren, and this led him to make two films about the acclaimed NFB animator: Creative Process: Norman McLaren (1990) and Norman McLaren: Animated Musician (2014). M^cWilliams’ other films include a trilogy of historical film essays: The Passerby (1995), awarded Best Cultural Documentary at the 1997 Hot Docs festival and selected as one of the 50 best filmic essays by the Vienna Film Festival in 2007, The Fifth Province (2003), and A Time There Was: Stories from the Last Days of Kenya Colony (2009). M^cWilliams also produced and edited Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square, which was nominated for the 1999 Oscar® for Best Documentary Short.

The Writers Guild of Canada has nominated his work twice for a best documentary script award. M^cWilliams has been a part of the NFB Animation Studio for close to four decades and was named Honorary President of the 2016 Ottawa International Animation Festival, a testament to his influence in animation circles.

More information on the film: A Return to Memory – Media Space : Media Space (nfb.ca)