Associated Screen News: Associated Screen News

Associated Screen News Dept: And it has. The site was a major centre of film production in Canada for much of the 20th century, starting in the 1920s. Then, Canadian Pacific Railway created Associated Screen News, which built the main structure facing what is now de Maisonneuve. The company produced short documentaries about life and travel in Canada, films promoting the military, royal visits and immigration to Canada, Canadian newsreel content for foreign distribution and industrially sponsored films celebrating such things as petroleum and the worldwide spread of large-scale agriculture. It was Canada biggest film producer in the 1930s, and in 1936, because of a Shell Oil-sponsored film featuring a service station attendant and his wife, Associated Screen News had the money to build a 6,000-square-foot soundproof filming studio that adjoined its first building and faced Northcliffe, according to Montreal Gazette. In the late- 60s, after four decades of use by Associated Screen News, Panavision began sharing the building with Montreal Greenberg brothers, who d recently launched the precursor to Astral Media photo labs and film production studios that were at the time under the name Bellevue Path . Harold Greenberg bought the building from Associated Screen News, and opened the lab there, Hoppenheim explained. I had the rest of the building for studios, shooting, makeup, wardrobe and equipment rooms and There something eye-catching about the off-white art deco building on de Maisonneuve Blvd., between Decarie Blvd. and Northcliffe Ave. The 1926 poured concrete structure, facing the train tracks at the southeast edge of Notre-Dame-de-Gr ce, has large column windows that hint at gloriously sunny, south-facing loft apartments. Over the former main entrance, a logo bearing the name Associated Screen News and the profile of a native man in a headdress suggests a history worth knowing certainly a history different from its current residential use. Chipped paint and an unkempt landscape give the impression the building has seen better days. It was our Hollywood, said Mel Hoppenheim, who founded Panavision Canada Ltd. in 1965 and who owns Mel Cit du Cin ma and co-owns movie equipment rental company Locations Michel Trudel. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.