Eye Witness (Canadian film series)

Eye Witness was a current events film series, produced by the National Film Board of Canada, which ran from 1947 to 1958. It ran concurrently in Quebec as Coup d'oeil.

In 1940, the National Film Board (NFB) created the morale-boosting propaganda series Canada Carries On, which was funded by the Wartime Information Board. When the war ended in 1945, the series lost its funding from that source, but the NFB continued with it until 1959.

At the time, Canada had a huge theatre-going public, and one theatre show would normally be a cartoon, a sponsored, promotional or informational film, and then the main feature. Canada Carries On was supplied for inclusion in the shows of all Famous Players theatres. In the mid-1940s, with heavy investment from The Rank Organisation of Britain, Odeon Cinemas came into being. It also needed content and, in 1947, the NFB answered with Eye Witness.

Eye Witness was less about propaganda and more about the NFB's mandate to show Canada to Canadians, and foster a greater sense of unity. It was also distributed by Columbia Pictures, which included Eye Witness in its international offerings. The show was issued monthly, with each reel lasting from nine to twelve minutes and, for the most part, containing three distinct stories. They were vignettes covering various aspects of Canadian life, and/or issues that Canadians cared about, and could take place anywhere in the country.

The show's first producer was Don Mulholland, who managed its difficult logistics by dispatching cameramen, rather than entire teams, to film stories. As time went on, and budgets were increased, production could include an entire crew. Until 1952, Lorne Greene was the narrator; from then on, narration was handled, mainly, by Budd Knapp, Fred Davis, Elwood Glover and Geoffrey Hogwood.

By 1958, an ever-increasing number of Canadians had televisions in their homes and theatres were running features. The NFB commissioner Guy Roberge cancelled Eye Witness and replaced it with the short-lived series Candid Eye.