Grant McLean

Who was Grant McLean?

Grant McLean, CM was a Canadian film director and producer. For most of his professional career he worked with the National Film Board of Canada, serving as its acting Commissioner for a period during the 1960s.

McLean was born in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. His father Allan Grant McLean was a grain commissioner and Liberal Party politician, and his uncle Ross McLean also served as chairman of the NFB.

McLean studied at the University of Toronto, before joining the NFB in 1941 as a cameraman. One of the notable productions he worked on during World War II was the documentary Target Berlin for the Canada Carries On series, which showed the building of the first Lancaster bomber to be made in Canada, with McLean later flying in the plane to capture footage of a bombing raid over Berlin in Germany. He became a film director in 1947, with his first production in this capacity being The People Between, a documentary about the Chinese Civil War. For this film he became the first Western cameraman to film Mao Zedong. He later claimed that he had not liked Mao, although he had been friendly with Zhou Enlai, whose support had been vital in enabling him to travel freely across China in the making of the film. However, The People Between was banned by the Canadian government, under pressure from the Government of the United States, due to its balanced portrayal of Communism. Some of the footage was used in the NFB documentary China in Need, and the film itself received a limited release in Europe.