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Minyan on the Mira: the Jewish People of Glace Bay

The dying Jewish community of Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, so small it can't always raise a minyan (the required quorum of ten men for prayer services) is profiled, warts and all, in this fascinating time capsule. Their children have left for Montreal, Toronto and Halifax and now only the older people remain keeping the spark of Jewishness alive. Their attitudes, including not allowing women into the minyan, and their feelings about the imminent demise of their community, contribute to a poignant portrait of a Jewish world that will soon exist only in memory.

Minyan on the Mira: the Jewish People of Glace Bay

NR 1995
Freedom from Everything

Personal film essay about two pandemics: AIDS and Coronavirus. Body memorials, survivor stories, remembrances. Both plagues are reframed by neoliberalism and its central mythology of personal freedom, brilliantly laid out in Hito Steyerl’s essay gem “Freedom from Everything” which is adapted and shapeshifted here. Pronouncing on the new precarity of the freelancer, Hito wryly observes that they have “freedom from everything,” from a good job, health care, affordable housing… Featuring Maggie Thatcher, Guy Fawkes, George Michael, James Baldwin, Akira Kurosawa and David Wojnarowicz.

Freedom from Everything

NR 2022
Postcards

How to use this old technology of the postcard, with its marriage of image and text, its insistence that every exchange has two-sides which can never be considered at the same time, to write oneself back into the world? The traveller alights in Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, even in Canada, finding words for the old wounds, sitting for a portrait in the middle of the city, out of doors, alone in a crowd. The military ghosts are never far, their costumes barely able to cover up the casual brutalities, even as the city’s citizens come together in unexpected formations, inventing new lives and conversations, like the plant life that flourishes around them, as resplendent as weeds. One of his most perfect and most personal reflections, a letter from the heart.

Postcards

NR 2021
Run From The Cure The Rick Simpson Story

After a serious head injury in 1997, Rick Simpson sought relief from his medical condition through the use of medicinal hemp oil. When Rick discovered that the hemp oil (with its high concentration of T.H.C.) cured cancers and other illnesses, he tried to share it with as many people as he could free of charge, curing and controlling literally hundreds of people's illnesses... but when the story went public, the long arm of the law snatched the medicine - leaving potentially thousands of people without their cancer treatments - and leaving Rick with unconsitutional charges of possessing and trafficking marijuana! Canada is in the middle of a CANCER EPIDEMIC! Meet the people who were not allowed to testify on Rick's behalf at the Supreme Court of Canada's Infamous Rick Simpson Trial on September 10, 2007... INCLUDING A MAN WHO WAS CURED OF TERMINAL CANCER USING HEMP OIL!

Run From The Cure The Rick Simpson Story

9.0 2008
Pilgrimage

St. Joseph's Oratory, a picturesque shrine silhouetted against Mount Royal, draws pilgrims by the thousands every year. They come from California by Greyhound bus, from Vancouver by plane, and on foot from many parishes surrounding Montréal. What is the fame of this shrine, that it attracts the devout and the curious alike? The story is told by Brother Placide Vermandère of the Order of the Holy Cross, who was personally acquainted with Brother André, after whom the shrine's famous temple is named. Cameras follow a procession of the League of the Sacred Heart through the streets of the city to the famous sanctuary and show many of the religious observances conducted in the church, including Mass attended by invalids who come in the hope of being healed of various afflictions.

Pilgrimage

10.0 1958
The Rise and Fall of the Grumpy Burger

The Rise and Fall of the Grumpy Burger follows filmmaker Marshall Sfalcin as he attempts to create a movie about his family's former fast-food empire. By day, he works as a construction worker in Windsor, Ontario, and by night, he makes films. His latest project involves chronicling the rise and fall of the Hi Ho Restaurants, founded by his grandfather Amie Fortin. Marshall's uncles, initially supportive, begin to resist as he delves into the darker aspects of their family history. With his project unravelling, Marshall finds solace in visits with his grandmother. Filmmaker Matt Gallagher documents this journey, blurring the line between truth and fiction.

The Rise and Fall of the Grumpy Burger

NR 2008
Retrouvailles inconnues: Les francoqueers à Vancouver avant et après l'an 2000

Amélia, an emerging non-binary filmmaker, has been given 2 months given and a research grant to find out more about francophone queer life in western Canada. As the only participant from (what is colonially known as) British-Columbia and with only 3 weeks left, the pressure is on: Amélia rushes to find any traces of francophone queer people in Vancouver before the year 2000, the year they were born. Amidst this chaotic research effort, they find André, an older French-Canadian gay man that lived in Vancouver for 25 years. Through their conversations, Amélia unlocks André's hidden personal visual archive, that proves that, indeed, francophone queers were alive and thriving years before they were born. This documentary shows how Amélia put together a presentation about their own queer ancestors through screen capture, archival footage, interviews and narration that ends up changing their own view of themself as a queer french-canadian in the west.

Retrouvailles inconnues: Les francoqueers à Vancouver avant et après l'an 2000

NR 2024
Douglas Point Nuclear Power Station: Design and Construction

A comprehensive treatment of technical and engineering aspects of Canada's first large nuclear electric power plant at Douglas Point, Ontario. The film shows the design, machining and assembly of component parts, and the special properties of the materials that went into the construction, as well as some of the exhaustive tests that were made before the station went "on power." Produced for the NFB by Crawley Films Ltd. for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

Douglas Point Nuclear Power Station: Design and Construction

NR 1969
VOÏVOD: We Are Connected

From unlikely origins in northern Québec at the height of the Cold War, Voïvod’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi aesthetic, fuelled by a youthful obsession with their instruments, took them from underground success to sharing dates and tours with Iron Maiden, Rush, and Metallica. Despite adversity, and perhaps by cosmic intervention or just serendipity, Voïvod found guitarist Daniel “Chewy” Mongrain; subsequently, the band re-ignited their engines and laid a course back to Morgöth via numerous live shows around the world, a comeback album in Target Earth, singles, EPs, and finally, the late-career triumph, The Wake. In 2019, Voïvod were recognized by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences with a Juno Award for best hard rock/metal album of the year for The Wake.

VOÏVOD: We Are Connected

NR 2024
Cloud Gate 2

Through a mercurial collage of found footage, desktop screen capture, and images captured by the filmmaker on her pilgrimage to the Cloud Gate (aka "The Bean", Chicago's only must-see monument) one year after her grandmother's passing, Cloud Gate 2 is a meditation on the architecture and technology of memory. The film unveils and deconstructs the ways we try to store and optimize memory, through monuments, photographs, legal depositions, high security data centers, and notions of heaven itself, making for a critical reflection of the Cloud in all its forms. Addressed as a letter to a long-lost friend, Cloud Gate 2 reverse-engineers the physical and spiritual structures of memory––the unending loop between seeing, remembering, and knowing––and the function of images within this cycle.

Cloud Gate 2

NR N/A
Country Threshing

This short documentary records the rural sights and sounds of the Eastern Townships of Quebec. The day of the big stationary threshing machine is almost over, as the machine is pushed into obscurity by the combine harvester. But there are still parts of Canada where crops are gathered in the old-fashioned way as the men work out in the fields and the women manage the kitchen. This film offers a rare and charming glimpse into mid-20th-century rural and family life in Canada.

Country Threshing

8.0 1958
Hobby

An inspiring story about adjusting to life-altering circumstances and the saving grace of creativity and perseverance, "Hobby" is an intimate snapshot of Albino Carreira, the man and visionary behind an eccentrically decorated semi-detached house that has become a well-known and beloved Toronto landmark. The residence, which is located in the city’s Koreatown neighbourhood, captivates onlookers, evoking both bewilderment and awe with its exterior adorned in an eclectic mix of plastic bugs, seashells, coins, and other assorted knickknacks. A Portuguese immigrant, Carreira’s life was forever changed in 1993 when a workplace injury confined him to his home and left him on a permanent disability pension. He began decorating his mailbox to pass time, which eventually led him on an obsessive journey to cover every square inch of his residence with unexpected creative embellishments. This ongoing monumental project serves as a powerful expression of Carreira’s indomitable spirit.

Hobby

NR 2024
Spiders Web

Spiders Web is a docu-fiction film that follows Spider, a 56 year old man from Toronto who is yet again facing jail time. His last hope of staying out of prison is finding Cougar, a woman he’s spent more than one drunken night with but can’t seem to find. This journey to find Cougar leads him through Toronto, to friends, family and deep into his dreams. His search stirs up the past and he is forced to face demons he thought he had buried long ago; Love, pain, violence and confusion.

Spiders Web

NR 2024