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Not a Love Story: A Film about Pornography (1981) is one of the National Film Board of Canada's (NFB) most controversial films, reflecting the high-tide mark of feminist anti-pornography sentiment. NFB director Bonnie Sherr Klein and a professional stripper, Lindalee Tracey (who would go on to become a noted journalist and documentary filmmaker), interviewed porn actors and sex workers about the trade and enlisted anti-porn pundits such as Kate Millett and Margaret Atwood to discuss their thoughts about the industry and its effects on society.
Not a Love Story is an intelligent, sympathetic film about the growth of an industry that (at the time of the film's making) generated $5 billion annually in North America alone; however, while fuelling the ongoing debate - and allowing the intelligentsia to battle it out - the film also became popular among porn enthusiasts who flocked to see its graphic imagery. The NFB was publicly criticized for making a film on the subject. Another irony occurred when the Ontario Board of Censors, because of the film's pornographic content, banned it.
