Founded in 1966 at McMaster University by avant-garde filmmaker John Hofsess and future frat-comedy innovator Ivan Reitman, the McMaster Film Board was a milestone in the development of Canada's commercial and experimental film communities. McMaster's student film society quickly became the site of art filmmaking and an incubator for some of the country's most famous commercial talent - as the well as the birthplace of the first Canadian film to lead to obscenity charges, Hofsess's Columbus of Sex.

In Hamilton Babylon, Stephen Broomer traces the history of the MFB...