Alexis is a 32-year-old white woman married to Alain, an African from Rwanda. This documentary focuses on Alexis giving birth in her parents home. As her parents and great-grandmother look on, a calm mid-wife delivers ten and a half pound Jazmine. The documentary is Interspersed with interviews with Alexis, her husband, Alexis' parents, the soon to be great-grandmother and the midwife.
7,591 Matches Found
In June 1970, Acadian prog-rock group L’Empremier did not shoot a live recording session within the ruins of Fort Beauséjour, Acadisco did not produce and release the album, and the original songs did not become emblematic militant anthems for the Acadian people.
L'Empremier Live at Beaubassin
This 1950 documentary examines the penalties of forest destruction: fire, flood, wasted resources and barren lands. The film describes measures to preserve Canada's prime source of national wealth. Scenes of the wilderness created by stripping land of protective trees show the need to halt careless exploitation. Contrasting the slow process of re-seeding with the swift, modern methods of felling trees, the film urges planned cutting to ensure a protected yearly crop.
Look to the Forest
People on welfare are rarely heard. What do they go through? How do they feel? How do concerned social and welfare workers feel about the welfare system? What is welfare supposed to do? In this film, welfare recipients and social case workers talk about the problems of being "up against the system." Part of the "Challenge for Change" series.
Up Against the System
Best Evidence: Top 10 U.F.O. Sightings
In this visual essay strung along a clothesline, a narrator named Lavender tells the story of her mother, Jeanne, a Rwandese immigrant filled with hope.
Les Lavandières
In Fairy Creek, director Jen Muranetz documents the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, creating a searing portrait of contemporary environmental activism, bearing witness to the lengths activists are willing to take to protect British Columbia’s last old growth forests.
Fairy Creek
Vika is a Ukrainian student living in Toronto with a group of immigrants made of skaters, musicians and tattoo artists from Eastern Europe. As tensions rise in Eastern Ukraine and conflict affects their families and loved ones back home, the group’s sense of identity is tested. Half-documentary and half-fiction, Troika deals with fundamental questions about identity and the sense of belonging among a powerless youth.
Troika
Director Sylvia Hamilton reflects on her work with the NFBs Atlantic Studio and the birth of New Initiatives in Film - A Studio D initiative for women of colour and aboriginal women.
Making Movie History: Sylvia Hamilton
An international team of art restorers and archaeologists begin work on the restoration of medieval frescoes inside a network of ancient caves. Faced with local bureaucratic challenges and systemic neglect of archaeological sites, the team encounters a community of shepherds and migrants that have used the caves for centuries and discover a living culture worth preserving most of all.
Shepherds in the Cave
Alanis Obomsawin’s documentary The People of the Kattawapiskak River exposes the housing crisis faced by 1,700 Cree in Northern Ontario, a situation that led Attawapiskat’s band chief, Theresa Spence, to ask the Canadian Red Cross for help. With the Idle No More movement making front page headlines, this film provides background and context for one aspect of the growing crisis.
The People of the Kattawapiskak River
The love between Canadian artists Spring Hurlbut and Arnaud Maggs is tested by impending illness.
Spring & Arnaud
From the streets of Montréal-North to becoming a defensive force in the NBA with The Oklahoma City Thunder, basketball has been Luguentz Dort's lifelong journey. His Haitian roots, the grit of Parc Saint-Laurent, the founding of Maizon Dort and the unwavering spirit of his community have shaped him into everything he is today.
Montreal-Nord: A Place to Dream
Les meuniers de Saint-Eustache
This feature documentary tells the stories of 5 asylum seekers who flee their native countries to escape homophobic violence. They face hurdles integrating into Canada, fear deportation and anxiously await a decision that will change their lives forever.
Last Chance
A man makes a career change into the fashion industry.
Material Success
Life feels more like a complicated game of snakes and ladders than a straight line.
Serpents et échelles
After her mother dies, Fatima assumes a routine of care for her father and younger sister, but her world starts to close in on her as the days of Taliban arrival grow closer. Through video diaries and phone conversations, she stays in touch with a friend overseas, giving us a sobering glimpse into the looming uncertainty she faces.
Fatima in Kabul
Samwise and Stevie grew up with homelessness in BC and Nova Scotia. Ianos is a gender-queer Greek. Kwaku is a single father who came from extreme poverty and famine.
Wisemen, God, and Wednesday
Rewriting the Script features frank discussions with parents, siblings and extended family members of South Asian gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people. Poignant testimonies are shared not only about the coming out experience but how these families transformed themselves to include their queer children, changing the larger South Asian community in the process. The documentary speaks not only to experiences of South Asians (which includes people originating from the Indian subcontinent), but to other diasporic communities as well.
Rewriting the Script: A Love Letter to our Families
Samedi soir
Inclinations began as a moment of “crip” play. The ramp becomes a source of creative movement. Dancers can move in ways that they cannot move on flat surfaces and the ramp itself becomes an artistic object, transformed albeit temporarily into an environment that reveals connection, trust, beauty, and desire. Choreographed, directed, and shot from disability perspectives, this dance-on-video delves into the playful connection enabled where disability, community, and ramp meet.
Inclinations
Darth Vader, Lara Croft, and Bilbo Baggins are sharing a latte. Captain America, Superwoman, and Naruto are waiting for the toilet. No, you’re not dreaming. You’ve just entered the world of Cosplay
Cosplay Culture
It seems that Canada don't want to hear about their heroes of the two World Wars, especially in Quebec. In English, La Guerre oubliée means The Forgotten War. Here, we talk about the 1914-18 big thing. This documentary doesn't use old footage, but actors to show us some parts of that war in Quebec. Joe Bocan sings some songs of that period and makes the narrations. There's also some rare veterans of the war who talk.
The Forgotten War
Enjoy the epic story of NASA space exploration. This comprehensive edition takes you on an adventure showcasing the most thrilling moments in U.S. Space exploration, while also examining the heartbreaking events when tragedy struck. It’s all here…. From the amazing flight of John Glenn in Friendship 7 to The “Eagle has landed” historic mission to the moon, and Skylab and more. A Brilliant combination of adventure, science, history - perfect for the whole family.
NASA 50 Years of Space Exploration
On January 3, 2009, a secretive software engineer with the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" launched the world's newest monetary invention: a cryptocurrency called bitcoin. Just over two years after bitcoin was introduced, Nakamoto vanished, with over one million bitcoin to his name. The mystery inventor's worth has reached as high as $70 billion, but not a single one of those bitcoins has ever traded hands or moved from Nakamoto's online wallet. After sending a few cryptic emails stating he "may not be around," Nakamoto went silent and has not been heard from since early 2011. Why did Nakamoto disappear? Some have speculated that he may have taken his own life. Or maybe he wanted to wash his hands of his bitcoin project, walking away from it all and maintaining his anonymity. In this film, director and producer Paul Kemp goes on a worldwide journey to piece together the most compelling case yet for who Satoshi Nakamoto was and why he disappeared.
Searching for Satoshi
This short documentary film illustrates the various ways people fight the high cost of energy by devising ingenious ways to use wood, the sun, and the wind. The film highlights one such project named the Ark. Using natural systems only, this bio-shelter ingeniously provides housing, heat, food and electricity for an entire family.
Sun, Wind and Wood
In his laboratory, an oceanographer conducts temperature and salinity tests to determine the necessary conditions for the micro-algae Protoceratium reticulatum to survive in the Saint Lawrence Estuary. The filmmaker, moving between the seen and the unseen, follows the scientist as he studies the dinoflagellate, an amazing microscopic monster organism responsible for red tides and other phenomena.
Ballast Stowaways Dinoflagellates
"Inquiry of Shadows" is a documentary that delves into the hidden depths of the Uyghur genocide in China. Through personal accounts, expert insights, and historical analysis, the film unveils the dark nexus of psychological warfare, cultural obliteration, and the silencing of artistic and intellectual voices.
Inquiry Of Shadows
Growing up gay in small town Nova Scotia in the 50s was the perfect training for survival. Shot on Super 8, the resultant grainy image brings a home movie atmosphere to this story of escape.
Amherst
Juskatla weaves together perspectives of the people who live on the islands of Haida Gwaii-an archipelago on Canada's Northwest coast, and the ancestral territories of the Haida Nation. From industrial loggers who harvest trees from ancient forests, to Sphenia Jones, a Haida matriarch who bears an intimate knowledge of her People's territories, Juskatla meditates on the divergent ways of being that shape the islands and its people.
Juskatla
Homeless man Robert (Bobby) Webb discovers the art of filmmaking, turning pages of his life into a heartfelt reel. Through his journey he finds hope and new meanings in unexpected aspects of his life as he relives them.
Pages of Hope
This short documentary follows Gabe Etchinelle as builds a mooseskin boat as a tribute to an earlier way of life, where the Shotah Dene people would use a mooseskin boats and transport their families and cargo down mountain rivers to trading settlements throughout the Northwest Territories.
The Last Mooseskin Boat
Bric à Brac is a documentary that takes a playful yet lucid look at the social ritual of the garage sale. Filmed spontaneously across the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, six enthusiasts share their impressions of their summer pastime, while a philosophy teacher and a well-known anthropologist (Bernard Arcand) compare their interpretations of the phenomenon in a clear-sighted, concrete way. Bric à Brac bypasses commonplaces to reflect on our consumer habits, our relationship with objects and the importance of territoriality in the practice of this inevitable activity that colors (or embarrasses!) our summers.
Bric à Brac
Doués et oubliés : maman, quand est-ce que j'apprends?
Amine, a Palestinian elder, is exiled twice: from land and from labour. Displaced from Haifa to Beirut, then again to Zirku Island, an offshore oil platform and work camp in the Arab gulf. A Stone’s Throw is a story of memories and disappearances, of trespassing borders, archives and private property to reveal the more than human relations that survive colonial space-time.
A Stone’s Throw
Lesra Martin was poor, illiterate and struggling on the violent streets of Brooklyn when a chance encounter with a group of Canadians shattered the confines of his life. Pulled from the chaos of the inner city and given a fresh start in Canada, Lesra became a hero when he helped to bring justice to wrongfully imprisoned American boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. Finding the courage to change his own life, today Lesra is a lawyer and motivational speaker on the world stage.
The Journey of Lesra Martin
Documentary on making locomotives.
The Miracle of a Locomotive
The three female protagonists present their personal relationship with intravenous drug use, and their intimate confessions are filled with fear and insecurity but also love for the state of intoxication. Ambient music in the background and colourful textures multiplying over shots of the everyday reality of drug users create an almost dreamlike world. “I won’t feel the full effects the whole night, but it will help take my mind off things.”
Death is dangerous, it could hurt
After a long period in life identifying as a Butch Lesbian, Cuthand considers transitioning to male. After a considerable amount of thought and discussion, Cuthand changed her mind and decided to remain a Butch Lesbian. Explaining her decision, she touches on the desire to maintain a connection to the Lesbian community, as well as the sexy genderfucking that happens when one is a masculine woman.
Boi Oh Boi
An intimate, eye-opening account of a lesbian baby boom in Canada during a period of rapid legal reform and social change. It is told entirely through the hilarious, rueful, self-reflective words of sixteen diverse parents (of newborns to six-year-olds) and would-bees, living in Toronto and London, Ontario. They take different sides on every controversy (known donors v frozen, liking clinics or hating them, how much biology matters, being ‘two mommies’ or ‘a mom and an other parent’, seeing homophobia everywhere or nowhere), but they are all passionately articulate about this strange new world of queer family-making.
Immaculate Conceptions: Inside a Lesbian Baby Boom
In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey is a documentary film about the legendary American guitarist, composer and provocateur John Fahey, 1939-2001. Fahey is often considered the godfather of 'American primitive guitar'. This cinematic exploration features Pete Townshend, Chris Funk of The Decemberists and Joey Burns of Calexico. These stellar musicians, along with Fahey associates and friends such as the famous 'Dr. Demento', radio broadcaster Barry Hansen, explore the legacy of this profoundly influential artist. The film was recorded in the Washington D.C. area where John Fahey was born, along the Mississippi Delta from Memphis to New Orleans, in Los Angeles, Toronto, Austin, New York and in Oregon where Fahey spent his last two decades.
In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey
In this engrossing documentary, director Jennifer Chiu reaches into her family’s history to explore the Hakka — a people, a language, and a culture. Thought to hail from the north of China, the Hakka settled in the south of the country, where they were known as the “guest people”. In the face of social marginalization, many of them dispersed to places such as Mauritius, India, Jamaica, and Canada — including BC’s Lower Mainland, where Chiu spent much of her childhood. The director’s reach is as expansive as her peoples’ migratory spread: Using found Super 8 footage, she explores the Hakka’s history in India, and through candid, probing interviews with relatives and community leaders she brings forth decades of a narrative that has been obscured for far too long. Chiu has made a warm, congenial film that is never weighed down by its explorations of family secrecy, the costs of assimilation, and the very uncertain future of Hakka culture.
Clan of the Painted Lady
Just out of jail, sitting in his car, Joseph drinks iced coffee, smokes cigarettes and makes videos. He loves a USA that he can see disappearing before his eyes, and his rants are a powerful trip into a reactionary and savage American psyche.
Big Kiss Goodnight
"How do we know what we know?" asks the journalist in the studio to the special correspondent in Turkey who couldn't get into the conflict zone in Syria. The news report he put together is therefore made out of amateur footage.
How do we know what we know?
Shot over three years in 18 countries around the world, Human Nature journeys towards greater meaning as it weaves its way through space and time.
Human Nature
Color only exists in the presence of light, so all things are essentially black. But really, what is black? A short, elegant and experimental exploration of the value and meaning of BLACK.
El Color Negro
Following her coronation in 1838, Britain's Queen Victoria was being relentlessly pursued by a strange teenager, Edward "the Boy" Jones, who had an uncanny ability to sneak into Buckingham Palace without being detected. "If he had come into my bedroom, how frightened I would have been," the Queen wrote in her journal. As a result of his multiple intrusions into Buckingham Palace, the Boy Jones became a media celebrity. Fearful that he might injure or even assassinate the Queen, or kidnap the Princess Royal, the government of Prime Minister Lord Melbourne wanted to get rid of the Boy Jones at all costs.
The Curious Case Of The Boy Jones
Over 20 years have passed since Elwy Yost last served as the beloved host of TVO's Saturday Night at the Movies and Magic Shadows. His infectious enthusiasm for cinema and interviews with actors, filmmakers, and critics influenced generations and left an enduring legacy with audiences across Ontario. Through archival footage and interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, this film tells the story of how a school teacher from Weston, Ontario became a Hollywood film authority.
Magic Shadows, Elwy Yost: A Life in Movies
"Ricecake" is a short documentary film on RICECAKE: Vancouver’s Queer and Asian Dance Party, the brainchild of Shay Dior, a QPoC, drag artist, and mother of the HOUSE OF RICE. Through interviews with Shay Dior and friends, the film explores what it means to navigate queer spaces in Vancouver as an Asian person.
Ricecake
"Lumen" (meaning "light" in Latin) is a sensory film shot on Super-8 that portrays a young girl with oculocutaneous albinism. Despite the hypersensitivity caused by this genetic disease, the depigmentation of her skin and eyes gives her an extraordinary aura.
Lumen
Meet Canuck – a wild crow who formed an unlikely bond with his human friend, Shawn. The mischievous crow has captured the hearts of Vancouverites and garnered global attention through his antics.
Canuck and I
"Project Power” is an observational documentary that follows a group of everyday citizens as they take on the provincial government of New Brunswick over a historical attempt to privatize the publicly owned crown corporation, New Brunswick Power.
Project Power
Against The Odds describes different forms of resistance that existed in the German concentration camps like: smuggling of medicines, sabotage in weapons factories (especially the large effect it had on the German secret weapons programs), preparations for rebellions and escapes, and the mission of Capt. Pilecki, a Polish officer who purposefully got himself sent to Auschwitz in order to set up an underground organization in that Camp.
Against the Odds
Part 2 of the "Hymn to Freedom" TV docuseries on the Black experience in Canada, Sylvia Hamilton documents the history of Black immigration and community in Nova Scotia.
Against the Tides: The Jones Family
This thoughtful, eye-opening documentary by Toronto’s Karen Chapman asks whether a community plagued by gun violence can find a way forward via an unexpected solution: mindfulness and meditation.
Quiet Minds Silent Streets
At the World Expo in Milan, a group of global thought leaders, designers and students come together to collaboratively critique and re-design our societal systems, painting a vision of the future that brings Marshall McLuhan's global village one step closer to being realized.
Future Ways of Living
A couple looks back on the road trip that transformed their relationship and confronts the fear and vulnerability of falling in love. Early in their relationship, Evan and Laura embarked on a road trip to Evan's hometown in Alberta, Canada. Armed with an old Super 8mm movie camera, they documented their adventure, capturing candid moments of their burgeoning love story. Years later, they revisit the footage and reflect on the journey that defined their bond. TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE explores the deep emotional challenge of vulnerability and speaks to the profound power of acceptance and unconditional love.
Two Kinds of People
This film interview affords a glimpse of a bold and learned mind illuminating important social issues. Responding to questions on the related topics of language, democracy, and the role of the modern university, acclaimed literary critic Northrop Frye explains why education is crucial: "A democracy cannot function without articulate citizens." Frye claims that the university is a place where individual liberty becomes possible, as students learn to question beliefs imposed by society. For Frye, reading and writing are "instruments of freedom."
The Scholar in Society: Northrop Frye in Conversation
Anishinaabe author Drew Hayden Taylor investigates how — and why — Indigenous identity, culture and art are being appropriated by those who are not First Nations.