The Museum of Television & Radio Presents "O Canada! A Salute to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation"

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

New York and Los Angeles from October 18, 2002 to February 2, 2003New York Opening Seminar October 17.

New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA-The Museum of Television& Radio will salute the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, nowcelebrating the fiftieth anniversary of television in Canada, with afourteen-week screening series highlighting exceptional French andEnglish radio and television programs created by or featuring many ofCanada’s most important artists. O Canada! A Salute toCanadian Broadcasting Corporation will run from October 18, 2002through February 2, 2003 in both New York and Los Angeles. An openingseminar, CBC/Radio-Canada: A Tradition of Excellence, will be held atthe New York Museum on October 17. For complete schedule of screenings,visit the Museum’s website at www.mtr.org or call the Museum in New York at (212)621-6800, or in Los Angeles at (310) 786-1000.

Some interesting facts you may not know about Canadian publicbroadcasting:

* Documentarian Beryl Fox's "Mills of the Gods: Viet Nam" wasseminal in its time, in that it was the first to develop a documentaryby shooting first, letting the subject and their stories dictate whatgets shot, and weaving the story in the edit room after all materialwas gathered. It seems “normal” now, but prior to herprecedent-setting style, documentaries were shot from scripts whichwere followed exactly to the word.

* African-American musicians flocked north in the 1950s and early1960s because of limited television opportunities at home, includingDuke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat “King” Cole, MarianAnderson, Sammy Davis, Jr. (in his first television special ever), andSarah Vaughan, who performs—and holds hands with—white CBChost Wally Koster.

The Museum will present over forty programs exploring the diversityof CBC/Radio-Canada’s history. The series will feature avariety of programs from several different genres. Dramas includeThe Boys of St. Vincent, David Cronenberg's The ItalianMachine, Atom Egoyan's In This Corner, and Ken Finkleman'sbreakthrough series The Newsroom. Seminal news programming suchas This Hour Has Seven Days set precedents that are followed tothis day. Variety programs dared to feature Sammy Davis, Jr., for thefirst time in his career, as well as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, andGilles Vigneault.

Comedies such as Rick Mercer's Talking to AmericansThe Wayne andShuster Hour, , and the recent Kids in the Hall documentary SameGuys, New Dresses demonstrate the much-emulated Canadian sense ofhumor in hilarious characterization. Teen shows such as DegrassiHigh still have cult followings twenty years after their firstbroadcast. 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 ofthe Gods: Viet Nam, expose their subjects through insightfulproduction.  The Museum will also present a sneak preview ofexperimental filmmaker Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages From a Virgin'sDiary. (scheduled to open theatrically at Film Forum in Spring2003.)

A wide range of Canadian radio programming will also be featured inthe 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 ofExcellence, will bring together some of Canada's most distinguishedproducers, directors, writers, and performers for a discussion of theirwork, in addition to the Corporation's role in their development asartists. Panelists include Director Ken Finkleman; Daniel Gourd, ActingExecutive Vice-President of Television, Radio-Canada; Slawko Klymkiw,Executive Director, Network Programming, CBC-TV; Peter Mansbridge,Chief Correspondent, CBC Television News; Harry Rasky, director, TheSong of Leonard Cohen, Stratosphere, Homage to Chagall; and MarkStarowicz, Executive Producer, Network Programming, CBC Television,Canada: A People's History, and creator of the popular Radiocall-out As It Happens. 

About MT&R
The Museum of Television & Radio, with locations in New York andLos Angeles, is a nonprofit organization founded by William S. Paley tocollect and preserve television and radio programs and advertisementsand to make them available to the public. Since opening in 1976, theMuseum has organized exhibitions, screening and listening series,seminars, and education classes to showcase its collection of over110,000 television and radio programs and advertisements. In 2001 theMuseum initiated a process to acquire Internet programming for thecollection. Programs in the Museum's permanent collection are selectedfor their artistic, cultural, and historic significance. Furtherinformation is available at www.mtr.org.

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

###

Press Contact: Judith Keenan 917-796-7182 judith@jkc-hype.com