Studio D was the women's unit of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the world's first publicly funded feminist filmmaking studio. In its 22-year history, it produced over 140 films and won 3 Academy Awards. Cinema Canada once called it the "Jewel in the Crown Corporation."
Many of Canada's most notable women filmmakers passed through Studio D, as employees, freelancers, or trainees, including Bonnie Sherr Klein, Lynne Fernie, and Justine Pimlott. Studio D was also instrumental in training and supporting women in key production roles such as cinematography (including Susan Trow and Zoe Dirse); sound (including Aerlyn Weissman and Jackie Newell); and editing (including Anne Henderson and Ginny Stikeman).
Decades before the #TimesUp movement, Studio D "left an important legacy: a commitment to women's filmmaking and cultural diversity that is now deeply anchored in every studio [at the NFB]."
Shannon leadership (1974–86) Founding Studio D was founded by Kathleen Shannon in 1974. She credits the success of her series, Working Mothers, as well as the En tant que femmes series by Anne Claire Poirier for proving that there was both a market for films about women's issues and women eager for filmmaking careers. The NFB received funding from the Women's Program of the Secretary of State in recognition of the United Nations' International Women's Year, which was split equally between Poirier and Shannon. In the end, Poirier decided against launching a French-language women's unit and the money was used to fund a film already in production. Shannon, however, used the money to launch Studio D. The priorities for Studio D were to provide employment and training opportunities for women, meet the information needs of women, bring women's perspectives to social issues and, as Shannon phrased it, facilitate "exploring our creativity in our own way."
Its first project was a training program for thirty women that resulted in a series of one-minute films woven together as one film under the name Just-a-Minute. It was the first ever "quilt film", a unique genre of collaborative short filmmaking often used by Studio D to stretch budgets and provide training.
At first, Studio D relied on freelancers and the few women already employed by the NFB. The first members were Yuki Yoshida and Margaret Pettigrew, both producers, with Shannon as Executive Producer. Great Grand Mother was the first film released by Studio D, but it had already begun production by independent filmmakers Anne Wheeler and Lorna Rasmussen through their company, Filmwest Associates. A portrayal of early women settlers on the Canadian prairies, it combined interviews, recreations, and voice-over narratives from archival letters and diaries. Shannon recalled, "When we previewed it for the branch program committee, we used some footage of an elder woman, a midwife who also dressed bodies for burial. I thought it was riveting. The head of the committee pronounced it boring."
The films produced in the beginning were very much within the cinema verité tradition of the NFB and its social documentary program Challenge for Change. An emphasis on the recuperation of Canadian's women's history led to the re-release of NFB films from the 1940s and 50s as an educational package called How They Saw Us in 1977. The use of inter-titles to re-contextualize the films from a feminist perspective drew attention to "the evidence of the patriarchal camera eye" of the NFB.
More women joined the Studio, including Challenge for Change veterans Bonnie Sherr Klein (who had left the NFB but returned for the chance to work in an all-woman environment) and Dorothy Todd Hénaut. In 1979, Beverly Shaffer was the first Studio D filmmaker to win an Academy Award for her film, I'll Find a Way, part of the Children of Canada Series. Other early members included Ginny Stikeman, who later became Executive Producer of Studio D, Margaret Wescott, Gloria Demers, Susan Huyke, Margaret Wong, and Signe Johansson. Freelancers who collaborated with Studio D included Anne Henderson, Irene Angelico, Donna Read, Sharon McGowan, and Moira Simpson.
Studio success In 1981, Studio D released its first feature-length documentary film, Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography. Directed by Bonnie Sherr Klein and featuring Lindalee Tracey, it was a foray into various facets of the sex entertainment industry and the intensifying feminist debates about pornography. The film featured interviews with women working at Times Square's notorious Show World Sex Emporium, porn star Marc Stevens ("Mr. "), and Hustler photographer Suze Randall. Critics complained, however, that their voices were drowned out by a cacophony of American anti-porn feminists including Susan Griffin, Robin Morgan, Kate Millett and Kathleen Barry. Many accused the film of being pro-censorship, an irony given that it was censored in both Ontario and Saskatchewan. Not a Love Story was the first Studio D film to receive international theatrical release, including a benefit premiere in New York City for Ms. magazine.
One year later, Studio D again courted controversy with the film If You Love this Planet, directed by Terre Nash. It featured a lecture given by Dr. Helen Caldicott about the immanent dangers of nuclear weapon proliferation. The NFB officer in charge of distribution for the United States warned that the film may harm relations with the Reagan administration, and sought support from Canada's External Affairs office to stop the film's release. The film won the Academy Award for best documentary short in 1982, and its influences can be seen in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.
In 1983, Studio D won its third and last Academy Award for Flamenco at 5:15. Directed by Cynthia Scott, it was a marked departure from the controversy that had swirled around the studio. The film showcased the instructors and senior students in a master class in Flamenco at the National Ballet School of Canada. The New York Times praised it as "a small jewel of a documentary" that demonstrates the leap from studying dance to becoming an artist.
Behind the Veil, a sprawling documentary "which seeks nothing more than to examine critically the history of women in the Christian church of the Western world," provided a rare glimpse into the lives of cloistered and apostolic nuns. Abortion: Stories From North and South was the first Studio D film with an all-women (instead of majority) crew. Documenting women's stories about accessing abortion services in Canada, Columbia, Ireland, Japan, Peru, and Thailand, the film won the Grand Prize at the San Francisco International Film Festival.
Despite such successes, Studio D was not without its critics - including from the wider feminist film community. Its heavy-handed social realism was seen as overly didactic and out of touch with the experimental and political advancements in feminist film theory. In her review of Not a Love Story, Susan Barrowclough outlined the formulaic approach to filmmaking by Studio D: "realist narrative, cinema verité, and underlying moral didactism, claim and counter-claim all sewn up and closed with a reassuring voice-over." Critics frequently referenced its "standard meta-narrative of women's oppression." Janis Cole and Holly Dale recalled Shannon insisting that their film, Hookers on Davie, focus only on women forced into sex work and cut out trans workers. Their refusal to conform to Studio D's "bourgeois norms" and victim narrative resulted in them pulling the film from the studio and completing it independently.
Studio D's training and internship programs helped build women filmmakers in all areas of production. In 1984 it brought 20 women age 18-25 for a nine-month intensive residency funded by the Secretary of State's International Youth Year Secretariat. The films Beyond Memory (dir. Louise Lamarre), First Take Double Take (dir. Paula Fairfield), and Thin Dreams (dir. Susie Mah) were produced by this program. A year later, a new internship program made possible films such as D.E.S.: An Uncertain Legacy (dir. Sidonie Kerr), The Impossible Takes a Little Longer (dir. Anne Henderson), and Spirit of the Kata (dir. Sharon McGowan).
Smaller budget films were produced within Studio D by the Federal Women's Film Program. Launched in 1980, it was a unique partnership with various federal government departments to produce documentaries about women's issues that were identified as government priorities. These included women's labor participation (Women and Work Series), Indigenous women's leadership (Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief), gender-based violence (The Next Step Series), women in agriculture (Gathering Strength Series) and women and aging (When the Day Comes, The Power of Time, and Pills Unlimited). The program was the only one in the studio to require versions of the films in both official languages (English and French). In 1986, the newly formed Regards de femmes program in the NFB's French studio joined the initiative.
Budget reductions By the mid-eighties, Studio D was receiving a budget on par with the other studios, but it was still not enough to respond to the steady requests from women across the country for more training and financial support. It didn't help that other studios – including regional offices – sent women to Studio D to protect their own budgets. Furthermore, while other studios within NFB could rely on in-house crew members, Studio D had a heavier contract budget in order to hire more women. In 1980, only 30 women held full-time technical positions within the NFB. By 1986, the number shrunk to 23, compared to 130 men.
Despite Shannon's lobbying for more funds, it was the only English filmmaking studio to have its budget cut in 1984. Its overall share of the NFB budget dropped to 6% in 1986. The Federal Women's Film Program was cancelled two years later. However, NFB's five-year plan promised to "allocate increased resources to women's filmmakers and … maintain its support of Studio D, the women's film unit, enabling it to meet a national mandate." That, coupled with recently passed legislation enshrining employment equity, prompted a public study. Equality and Access: A New Social Contract was the first of what was to be many studies on the lack of opportunities for women at the NFB. It showed that there were more than two times as many men filmmakers as women, and that slightly more than half of all women employed at the NFB were in support staff roles. The newly appointed Employment Equity Director at the NFB also drew attention to the lack of racial, ethnic, and Indigenous diversity within the NFB. However, NFB's Commissioner, François Macerola claimed that he was "not ready for an employment equity program involving the disabled, natives and visible minorities" and would maintain focus on women for the foreseeable future. At the same time, he criticized Studio D in his report to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Culture and Communication, and declared that he was deliberately holding back funds to them. "First of all, I think Studio D is very important. Nevertheless, it is presenting only one point of view. What I am planning to do is really to open the place to women at the NFB. I want to have more and more films produced by women for women. [What] I mean by that [is] that I will not give all the financial resources to Studio D."