Year: 1947
Language: English
Runtime: 23 min
Director: Grant McLean
Producer: Tom Daly
Writer: Tom Daly, Grant McLean
Cinematographer: Grant McLean
Editor: Tom Daly, George Brandt
Music: Louis Applebaum
: Budd Knapp
Production Company: National Film Board of Canada

This documentary portrait of China during the struggle between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Mao Zedong’s Communists was photographed by Grant McLean in 1946 and produced in collaboration with the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Association. Some of McLean’s footage was used in newsreels and to produce another NFB film – China’s Need (1947) – designed to support the drive for relief funds.

One of the last examples of the NFB’s wartime style, The People Between was denied major release because of objections by the Department of External Affairs to the film’s depiction of two governments in China. It received only a modest release in Europe and was never officially listed by the NFB in its catalogues.

By: Peter Morris