Discover Movies

A BAFTA award nominated documentary exploring what isotopes are and what they can do.

Every summer, thousands of people go to Sainte-Anne de Beaupré to celebrate the feast of the patron saint of the sick and disabled. Notes on the Sacred paints a picture of the event, presenting the tourists, pilgrims, clergy and information media.

"Vanilla" takes you through the everyday ordinary life of a disabled senior citizen living in Ottawa, Canada: a portrait of aging and the loneliness of those suffering in silence.

Collage of insults in different languages said to the filmmaker and several of her LGBTQ2S friends in Montreal. A representation of homophobia/transphobia, no matter where you come from on the planet.

As part of an experiment on climate change, NASA dropped 90 yellow rubber ducks into holes in Greenland’s glaciers. More than a decade later, scientists are still trying to locate the ducks, which they hoped to find scattered across the globe. Stray Ducks is the surreal and epic tale of these cute yellow toys and their mysterious disappearance. Anonymous, bobbing across the oceans, they observe human behaviour the world over. With a keen sense of irony and absurdist humour, this film takes an artistic as well as a critical perspective on social injustice and the climate crisis. (Programming Collective)

After the pandemic forced the cancellation of events worldwide, Brett Kissel set out to bring live music back to Canada. In this documentary, Kissel shows how the drive-in concept became a reality—from video calls to socially-distanced rehearsal to finally being back on a stage, separated from his band with plexiglass. 8 sold out shows over 2 days, this was the beginning of the return of live music in Canada. This is the story about how music brought everyone together.

For Alex Abbott, a winning dirt bike freestyle rider, the moment of truth came when his dirt bike landed on his head and broke his neck and became an incomplete quadriplegic. During the months he laid immobilized in hospital, the notion of ever getting back on his bike seemed so remote he barely gave it any real thought. But ten years later, with the help of friends and family, Alex is on the verge of finding his way back onto two wheels. 257 Down is a documentary film about patience, endurance and courage. It is a story that will inspire people of all abilities to follow their dreams, no matter how inaccessible they might seem.

A documentary about opioid deaths in Canada.

This hand-processed 16mm film reflects on botanical animism. It is a song written for night-crawlers, compost, and shadows, inspired by human flower-lust. Water, fire, earth and air are interwoven with the garden's creature crew. The work draws a parallel between the photographic alchemy of cinematic experiments and the photosynthetic processes of plants.

Meditations in an emergency. A short film by David Humphreys

Created by Anishnabe Videographer Joe Beardy and trainee Darlene Naponse, Aboriginal Radio Waves Part II is the second part of a two part series about community radio. In Aboriginal Radio Waves II, Joe Beardy and Darlene Naponse detail the steps involved in obtaining a station, from procedure of applying for grants, the start up of the station, to radio programming are covered within the video, and respond to community concerns related to funding and autonomy.

Wander is a film primarily experimenting with the effects of superimpositions to play with surreal sensations, as a poetic dialogue floats along the way. No incarnation of the subjects exists inside, only the two's voices hovering over the dynamics like extraterrestrial creatures drifting away from the Earth. The atmosphere is dangerous. And the fluid exhibition of sceneries spans from Asia to North America with chaotic velocity, which may relive a spiritual diaspora after fragmentary experiences here and there. In this visual space, the past is unrelentingly flooded away in the fading memory.

As an activist in the underground LGBTQ community in Syria, Danny Ramadan faced imminent persecution by the Syrian regime that led him to escape Damascus and eventually make his way to Vancouver. Danny shares his experience as a newcomer, delving into racism and privilege within the queer community, and offers his views on how we can be allies to Syrian refugees.

"Over and over I am mesmerized by Jeanne Moreau's presence in cinema. Enigmatic, gutsy, provocative, she defines the true female avant-garde artist." - Lise Beaudry

The NuWest Steambath is a historical short-documentary, first screened at Vancouver’s Queer Film Festival, which investigates the life of The NuWest Steambath, the Vancouver region’s first suburban gay sauna, through the account of its owner, Dennis.

Is crisis pushing us toward a leap in consciousness? Can we live from an inner truth? Can we participate in the evolution of our own consciousness? Inspired by the work of Sri Aurobindo, Conscious: Fulfilling Our Higher Evolutionary Potential asks about our potential to achieve a transformation in consciousness, which might be both inevitable and essential at this juncture in our development if we are going to continue the human journey within the cosmic advance.

The image of a young Asian man kissing 63 different men is superimposed over vibrantly colored flowers with their official names. The men talk about their first gay Asian kiss.

An experimental short exploring the absences and buried histories that follow the act of leaving home, filtered through the many routes that leaving home takes for a "Canadien" daughter of Yugoslav immigrants: cultural displacement, assimilation, mother/daughter histories, sexuality and memory. Childhood and recent Super 8 footage is intercut to create a repository for family portraits, cultural memories of the balkans, immigration history, and personal reflection.

After a devastating realization that she was an abuser, Sam Sarra produced this film about mental and physical abuse in lesbian relationships. Using revealing interviews, the film depicts the all too common repetitive patterns of abuse that more often than not go unnoticed or are simply not talked about.

Diamond’s grainy experimental film is the first in a series that tackles issues of sexuality with a fearless approach. Navigating the psychological manifestations of a hybrid gender identity, Diamond explores issues of body and mind capturing the complex nature of his topic.

Molly Starlight Morin from Enoch Rez, Alberta, appeared on a Reform Party list of dubious Canada Council grants. The ensuing furore earned her national press coverage and mentioned on This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Royal Canadian Air Farce.

A candid home video capturing a transgender sex worker in a very sticky situation.

This video presents a number of women telling stories about their body.

Eleven lesbians share their personal stories of longing and lust in this fast-paced documentary.

Two-Spirited director Michelle Sylliboy asks another Two-Spirited woman to express her views on the land Issue.

Andy Fabo's short video on his diagnosis with AIDS.

Fleeting Super-8 images of island and family life, her father, Catholic school and family idiosyncrasies.

Poetic and surreal, Remotely In Touch explores what we perceive as an image; what is 'real'; what is constructed or science fiction; and what are our new codes of signification created by systems of information. Remotely in Touch uses images created by remote digital signals — sent via satellite or robotic camera — and juxtaposes these with analog video images encapsulating a 'visceral moment' or an 'embodied movement'.

Conspiracy of Lies speaks of alienation and minorities, consumer culture, urban isolation, and the fine balance between mental order and chaos. The tape begins with a voice recounting the story of the discovery of a series of diary entries and lists written by an anonymous author. Through the use of twelve different narrators, an attempt is made to destabilize pre-existing assumptions concerning the voice of the author.

The footage was collected at AIDS fundraisers held at the time in Vancouver East Side, Canada from 1994 to 1996. The Body Remembers chronicles Francisco Ibanez-Carrasco's struggle to make drag into a form of artesania (not art) that heals. Drag allows us to present our damaged selves to others when we are disfigured and ugly by conventional standards. Ibanez-Carrasco struggled with Kaposi's Sarcoma and other AIDS-related opportunistic infections at that time and drag shows were a way to bring his extended family around him and to create awareness about AIDS.

French Kiss, Vancouver's jet-setting glamour girls, are profiled in this documentary short.

"Surviving Memory" is a film about the role of loss in the formation of identity. It is a narrative intercut with documentary fragments of political actions, which connect the various characters to event through collective memory. Through autobiographical spoken texts, the narrator relays fragments of a relationship between two Jewish women.

"The Quoddy Fold" is an intimate interaction between a woman and a derelict coastal house. In this one-hour film Phillips dismantles and studies the movement from wood to dust, damp paper to mold, and ponders the house folding back into the land and sea. Phillips' performance constantly seeks evidence of dissolving boundaries, thingness, history and intersubjectivity of space, place and species. Through the poetics of the ruin "The Quoddy Fold" is an interrogation of dwelling and landscape giving space to entertain the ecological, cultural and societal anxieties surrounding impermanence.

An inspirational portrait of two Vancouver men living with AIDS.

A campy docudrama about what makes some of the kids at Toronto's schools happy and gay.

The Hundred Videos is a project undertaken by prolific video artist Steve Reinke, including 100 video works made from 1989-1996. Discussing death, sex, the body, philosophy, and contemporary art, The Hundred Videos defines a unique style of video-essay for the end of the 20th Century. This volume includes videos 31-54: Lonely Boy, I Love You Too, Charming Mutt, Ice Cream, Instructions for Recovering Forgotten Childhood Memories, Request, Jason, Experiment, Editorial, Understanding Heterosexuality, Pioneer, My Personal Virus, Vision (With Birds), Self Help, My Erotic Double, Sleep, Dream Work, Artifact, Monologue (with Provocation), Child, Windy Morning in April, Love Letter to Doug, Three Plays, and Screen Saver.

The Hundred Videos is a project undertaken by prolific video artist Steve Reinke, including 100 video works made from 1989-1996. Discussing death, sex, the body, philosophy, and contemporary art, The Hundred Videos defines a unique style of video-essay for the end of the 20th Century. This volume includes videos 1-14: Excuse of the Real, Family Tree, Watermelon Box, Family Planning, Eleven Dreams, Emergence of Democratic Memory, Speculative Anthropology, Why I Stopped Going to Foreign Films, I Am Not Like You, Barely Human, ROOM, Michael & Lacan, Joke (Version One), and Joke (Version Two).

Two young gay Asians banter about the West Coast queer Asian experience.

A dyke mother questions a recent trend of romanticizing motherhood and family within lesbian relationships - and does not bother to soften her vehement opinions. A fast, hard rant.

Rice queens, muscle queens, bananas and other afflictions. GOM is a funny, funky, experimental take on what it is to be Asian and gay.

This videotape provides electronic, metaphorical images which, in part, illustrate theories of the disappearing body as a result of social controls, social silencing and oppression. The tape is a response to the inability to feel, touch and express in a culture that denies desire as well as non-desire. The struggle to escape the restraints of social regulation is explored through layered images, appropriated from stock biology lab films, and layered narrated sequences. Images of contemporary body decoration practices, such as piercing and tattooing depict the ability of the postmodern body to integrate the power that exists in ones own body.

A woman sits in front of her refrigerator and lists the different ways she loves her body. Two women, one fat, one thin, make love in an empty warehouse.

How do girls learn about the hair that mysteriously appears on their bodies during puberty? This tape takes an irreverent look at the stereotyping that surrounds body hair for women. It mixes historical research, a little personal testimony, ad-copy, and the voices of “hair experts” to create an informed analysis. Body Hair closes, in time-honoured feminist documentary style, with a radical call to action.

A short film portraying clips of different artificial items being constructed, while the scene gradually becomes more and more grim and insane.

Gaia is a non narrative film documentary exploring our relationship with earth, religion our habitats around the world and the environment. It took 3 years to make the movie and the producers traveled to Greenland, Jerusalem, Jordan, Canada, NYC, Peru, Argentina, Brazil and many other places to capture our societies and nature. —Jennifer Athena Gaatis

Trails in Motion is an international segment racing film tour offering an approximately 90-minute selection of the best short and mid-length trail running films from around the world.

With changes in society leading to a fall in marriage and rise in divorce, is it possible that the institution has outlived its function? We investigate the marriage industry and costs of divorce against a backdrop of government incentives, the arrival of gay marriage, rise in sanctioned infidelity and alternate relationships.

Testimonies from people who spend their lives helping to the survival of memories from nazi concentration camps.

In 1962 Ernesto De Martino travelled to the South of Italy for his ethnographic research and shot "La Taranta". A study around women who were poisoned by a Trantula bite while harvesting in the fields. The remedy against the deadly poison was a folk dance called Taranta. The women danced the poison out of their bodies with the help of local musicians and priests. Studies around this phenomenon have highlighted that, in the majority of cases, these women were suffering severe mental illness and hysteria due to sexual abuse and poverty. In present-day Italy a similar dynamic has resurfaced, uncovering the stories of groups of immigrant women (mostly from Romania) who were victims of agricultural and sexual exploitation in Ragusa, Sicly. I reapprorpiated the 1962 archival footage to propose a different angle of the story surrounding these women. Not from the point of view of a man who has undertaken to observe them, but from the point of view of a woman from the South of Italy. (FF)

"In another virtuoso turn, the artist brings her exemplary camera eye to Moldova, home of her grandparents, before they were driven out along with their Jewish comrades, thousands of them killed. Fragments of survivor testimonials mix with archival photographs and objects, along with present-day city celebrations (what is being forgotten in these civic rites of memory?). Haunted natural scapes grow over the dead, the abandoned graveyards and stones mark the places where culture and community used to be performed. This is a synoptic act of grieving, but also: a summoning of the present, a conjuring of the thousand ways that the betrayals of neighbours and friends marked out the Jews who had lived peaceably amongst them for generations, newly caught now in a terror of state oppression and greed."- Mike Hoolboom

On July 8th, 2019, the New Democracy government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis assumed power in Greece, after campaigning on a promise to ‘clean up’ the central Athens neighborhood of Exarchia, and ‘take it back’ from the anarchists. Since then, the Greek state has launched a renewed attack against the anarchist and self-organized migrant movements, targeting squats and promising future raids. Against this threat, Greek anarchists have responded with characteristic resolve and determination.

Patkau Architects is a design research studio based in Vancouver, Canada. The practice was founded in 1978 by Patricia and John Patkau. They deliver a wide variety of project types, ranging in scale from art installations, to custom homes and major urban buildings. Over the years, the office has been recognized with numerous awards for excellence in design.

Once Upon a Sea is a poetic, interactive XR documentary telling the tragic tale of the legendary Dead Sea. Through a physical exploration of the sea’s forbidden, moonlike landscapes, to intimate encounters with local characters, the user gets a rare glimpse into one of the world’s most dangerous,soon to be extinct, wonders. Centuries of human intervention and political neglect have turned the Dead Sea into a precarious place. Its water levels have dropped dramatically, leaving behind sinkholes and collapsing beaches. The experience offers a deep insight into the complexity and very human impact of this ecological and geopolitical crisis. Once Upon a Sea is our call to action.

1933 hockey game

Just a stone’s throw from downtown Montreal is the largest social housing complex in Quebec. Built in 1959 where the red-light district used to be, Les Habitations Jeanne-Mance have retained something of the area’s seedy reputation for poverty, prostitution, drugs and violence. But who really knows the projects and the people who live there? Delving beneath the prejudices and stereotypes, director Isabelle Longtin ventured inside the buildings and met the residents.