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This feature documentary offers a shocking look at the living and working conditions of Haitian agricultural laborers in the Dominican Republic. Each year, some 20,000 workers cross the border to cut sugar cane, lured by promises of good money. Instead, they toil up to 14 hours per day and live in unhealthy, cramped camps without running water, electricity, medical or educational facilities.

Lester and Humphrey are the Royal Jester and Doctor, respectively, in a Kingdom terrorized by a mysterious giant whose presence is known only by his horrible voice and giant shadow. The giant takes the crown jewels which permit the Evil Prince Malokeo to convince the King to let him marry Princess Marigold. Marigold, horrified at the prospect and in love with Prince Daryl, turns to her friends Lester and Humphrey for help.

In a country bar, Mario, a regular, spontaneously decides to integrate his stunt routine into the nude dancer's performance, which leads to a quasi-orgy. After things have calmmed down, Mario's girlfriend confronts him to what he considers to be his true calling: a double career as stuntman and upholsterer.

Real time is an oxymoron. The film presents one firing of Vancouver's famous gun; an event that attracts an audience visible on screen unlike the audience watching the film; ourselves. Our experience of time in our innermost self is unlike our experience of space or mass yet nothing in physics corresponds to the passage of time. How can something we experience as so real be based on an illusion. Norfolk, Virginia also has a Nine O'clock Gun.

In this film, which takes place to the rhythm of Schubert's Military March, the point, this first form, by its multiplication and the chosen orientations, allows us to see how it can be chained to form lines, shapes, surfaces, to form ensembles that ultimately occupy the entire surface of the screen.

This documentary reveals something of the Chinese temperament through a visit to a seemingly ordinary railway station. Then we start to wonder. What does the “moving red flag” mean? Who are these Orientals, so patient in waiting, so concerned with order and the public good? Astonishment is followed by sympathy for the spontaneity and humor of these Chinese who, like us, share the same hopes and concerns.

A mother gives birth to an infant with Down Syndrome. The doctor advises that the child has multiple medical problems and advises that she "allow nature to take it's course". The child's crib is pushed into a closet because the hospital staff can no longer stand his screams as he is not being fed. One of the nurses smuggles him out of the hospital and has an intern come to do the minor but lifesaving corrective surgery on her kitchen table.

A troubled teen is lost in the wilderness for a year.

Canadian author, humorist and storyteller W.O. Mitchell talks about his career as a writer and performer. Known for his witty radio and television appearances, Mitchell shows a more serious side as he reveals his personal views on writing and on the meaning of life and death.

Cinderella has to stay home while her evil stepsisters go to the ball. You know the rest except everyone here is a penguin (even the mice that become the "horses") and the lost slipper is more like a swimming flipper.

A popular Jamaican women's troupe uses improvisation and theater as consciousness-raising tools for both rural and urban audiences. Their performances speak directly to the daily experiences of women--the least empowered workers, who labor long hours for low wages with no benefits or rights to organize for better conditions. Using role-play and interviews with female cane workers, the collective develops dramatizations which analyze social issues and pinpoint their concerns.

In the garden the dreamer dreams about sweet smelling metaphors. Over the course of this film animation, transformations occur that dissolve human violence into peaceful tranquility.

An excerpt from Kurt Schwitters' "Ursonate" (Sontata in primitive sounds) parades across the screen thanks to a Remington typewriter.

A look at the life of André Bessette through expert interviews and interviews with people who knew him.

Made during Lefebvre's national tour of Canada for a 1981 retrospective of his films compiled by the Canadian Film Institute, the film is a video diary documenting both his philosophical and creative discussions on the co-operative movement in cinema as part of the tour and the concurrent illness and death of his wife, film editor and producer Marguerite Duparc. (Wikipedia)

This short animation based on a popular children's story by Robert Munsch tells the story of a young boy with a major problem: his apartment has become a subway station but his mother doesn't believe him and blames him for the commuters' mess.

Wendy Tilby's Tables of Content was her graduation film from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, Vancouver in 1986. The movie transports one into another era, an earlier age of gentility and reticence, set in a rather stuffy restaurant during the day.

All soldiers belong to the same profession, no matter what country they serve, and it makes them different from everybody else. They have to be different, for their job is ultimately about killing and dying, and those things are not a natural vocation for any human being. Yet all soldiers are born civilians. The method for turning young men into soldiers-people who kill other people and expose themselves to death-is basic training.

On July 10, 1978, Eric Wilson - a 19-year from Ottawa and student at Tufts University - left home to drive to a summer college course in Colorado. When he went missing four days afterward in Nebraska, his family tried to persuade local and U.S. police that he wasn't simply a runaway and hadn't simply forgotten to call home. The program examines the lengths to which they had to go to find out what happened to Eric, and the byzantine nature of the legal system which seemed less interested in pursuing justice than in avoiding the expenses involved in the investigation and potential trials. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in 2007.

A vibrant kaleidoscopic tribute to the guitar that meshes dance, mime, visual art, and virtuoso performances to create a spectacular yet intimate celebration of the instrument. For one exciting week the city of Toronto plays host to the International Guitar Festival. The streets echo with the sounds of the instrument as the great masters from every tradition gather to play for each other -- John Williams from England, Leo Brouwer from Cuba (classical), Turibio Santos from Brazil (folk), Vladimir Mikulka from Czechoslovakia (avant-garde), Rik Emmett and Kim Mitchell from Canada, Steve Morse from the USA (rock).

An allegorical film about the human condition with images that are similar to the art of Kandinsky or Klee and, closely combining surrealism and abstraction, prefigure a world that is becoming decline.

True story of the plight and persecution of Ethiopian Jewry and of Operation Moses, which was organized in response, transporting thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel by means of secret airlifts from Sudan.

Raju lives with his mother and resents his father for having an affair

Kipling is touring North America, hoping to recruit boy scouts, and he is trailed undercover by a CIA-TV reporter. Meanwhile, a travel agent, watching a film during his lunchbreak, meets Kipling - all three are arrested and the journalist is fired.

Writers, artists, and musicians celebrate the whale.

The Children of Soong Ching Ling is a 1984 Canadian short documentary film directed by Gary Bush. It is about the humanitarian work in support of children by Mrs. Soong Ching-ling, or Madame Sun Yat-sen, in particular the orphanage she sponsored. China has 350 million children under the age of 15. Understanding their problems is essential to understanding China. This revealing documentary vividly conveys the experiences China's children are undergoing and shows how the Chinese are attempting to provide their children with the health, education and skills they will need in the modern world. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

First Stop, China is a record of the choreographed performances and the unrehearsed moments of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens ballet company on the road, against a backdrop of unfamiliar sights and sounds. Their itinerary included China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Japan and Korea.

A video of live performances by Chris & Cosy with visuals by John Lacey. Recorded during the CTI European tour of 1983. (throbbing-gristle.com)

Through clever stylistic composition, this experimental film shows that everything is interdependent, even in the arts, and that, inevitably, both the artist and the viewer are being manipulated.

An amusing melange of '60s spy thrillers and other classics. Super secret agent Nick attempts to liberate a top secret microchip from the clutches of multimillionaire Quinton Frost. Paizs pokes fun at the jet set, the Cold War and Jean-Paul Sartre.

A documentary telling the story of the 1983 Solidarity strike in “British Columbia,” a key point in the introduction of neoliberal economic policy in the province.

The short documentary looks at some innovative approaches to providing services and accommodation for battered women in rural, northern, and Native communities. Filmed in Thompson and Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, and West Bay Reserve, Ontario, the film introduces the women who operate and use various types of accommodation such as transition houses, transition apartments, and safe houses. The shelter on West Bay Reserve is singled out as a project that was built by women for women to stand as a reminder that the Reserve will not tolerate violence against women. A Safe Distance is part of the The Next Step, a 3-film series about the services needed by and available to battered women.

This is an interesting little documentary about the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, which was apparently one of the global hotbeds of experimental/avant garde art- particularly video art- back in the 70's & 80's. MacGillvary interviews a number of the artists that were formative to the program. Many of whom would go on to become teachers at the school.

An adaptation of J. G. Frazer's text - Golden Bough - The Divine Right was conceived as a series of improvised dramatic moments for the camera. As the narrator advises the spectator about regicide - the archaic act of killing the king when he grows ill or feeble - a man dressed in a Los Angeles Kings' hockey sweater covers the emblem of a crown with a white cloth. The tape was produced at the Experimental Television Centre, Owego, New York.

The intermittently heard voice-over talks about a woman's self-awareness - being unable to know if she has really changed or not. The images are esoteric and hard to interpret: young women in black in various urban settings, something moving rhythmically. A personal, yet intriguing film.

On April 6, 1980, the Canadian Farmworkers Union came into existence. This film documents the conditions among Chinese and East Indian immigrant workers in British Columbia that provoked the formation of the union, and the response of growers and labor contractors to the threat of unionization. Made over a period of two years, the film is eloquent testimony to the progress of the workers’ movement from the first stirrings of militancy to the energetic canvassing of union members.

A Canadian Parliament, with many cameos, argues and fights over where to go for lunch.

Wong uses his second generation Chinese-Canadian perspective to frame the Chinese here in the new world, Canada, and in the motherland, China. This is an intimate, personal view. Through his own “family network” and several trips to the People’s Republic of China, the artist gained access to the everyday, non-exotic world of the Chinese. A picture emerges of displaced cultures and traditions in transitions.

This documentary feature is an in-depth exploration of the world of prostitution. Its characters include pimps, transsexuals, girls/women, boys, and johns. Shot in Montreal in the course of a year, the individual stories of these people cut across each other, and many come together in the film’s conclusion. Their lives―sometimes tragic, sometimes hilarious, but often disarming and touching, are presented in a direct, occasionally brutal way. Although there are no explicit scenes in the film, it was given an adult rating. This inside view of a singular world makes us reflect on life, love, relationships, and sexuality.

A 60 minute tape that tells in flash-form the story of a European critic and her relationship to three people; her lesbian lover who died of cancer, a Canadian / director in theatre, and a young performance artist who adopts her persona in a performance. The issue deals with sexual roles, love relationships and women's views of themselves in social/sexual relationships with women and men.

Interviews with Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz, eminent psychoanalyst who was a close collaborator with Carl G. Jung, in conversation with her student Fraser Boa, Canadian Jungian analyst.

Life is like a gigantic phonograph record fifty feet across. Or like one of those whirling discs at the old amusement park. You get on the disc and it's spinning and the faster it goes, the more centrifugal force builds up to throw you off it. The speed on the outer edge of the disc is so great you have to hold on for dear life just to stay on. The closer you get to the center of the disc, the slower the speed is and the easier it is to stand up. In fact, at the very center there is a point that is completely motionless. In life, most people don't get on the disc at all. They shouldn't get on. They don't have the nerve. They just sit in the stands and watch. Some people like to get on the outer edge and hang on and ride like hell. Others are standing up and falling down, staggering, lurching toward the center. And a few, a very few, reach the middle, that perfect motionless point, and stand up in the dead center of the rearing whirligig as if nothing could be clearer. (CB)

This video is a collage of images that takes the viewer down a path between their own virtue and cosmic morality. A quiet anxiety emerges as the strip explores the non-mathematical possibilities of the violent destruction of matter, as well as the habits into which people seem to push their fellows.

From the material he shot during a three month journey, Peter Mettler edited a lyrical film which is no ordinary travelogue or diary. Without occupying himself in advance with anticipated images, he attempted as often as spontaneously as possible to respond and react to his surroundings, improvising with the camera as one would on a musical instrument. These visual notes allow insights into perceptions, feelings and emotional states in various situations.

A man and a woman attempt to start a conversation with a third person. A spinoff of Spanghew Decorum.

A drama documentary about the life of explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert.

One day Jean-Baptiste Beauregard (Pierre Curzi) does not go out to face work or daily activities, instead he daydreams about the women in his past, about his teenage years, his failed marriage, and even his boyhood desires. His mental images follow each other across the screen, revealing that the women in his life are all the same (different wigs and costumes on the same actress), and his love life never changes either. This sameness can have a dulling effect on the viewers, indicating that if Jean-Baptiste's reminiscences were trimmed and his daydreams more varied and exciting, he would hold interest a little longer.

Through concerts and interviews, folk-progressive group Harmonium takes Quebec culture to California. This documentary full of colour and sound, filmed in California in 1978, recounts the ups and downs of the journey of the Quebec musical group Harmonium, who came to feel the pulse of Americans and see if culture, their culture, can succeed in crossing borders.

This Canadian adaption features real-life Scrooge interacting with puppet characters.[

This documentary examines the meanings of peace movements, from a socialist-feminist perspective. Beginning with civil disobedience actions at Litton Systems Canada in Toronto, supplier of parts for cruise missiles, and expanding into just wars in Latin America, major feminist organizers in Toronto like Mariana Valverde and Carmencita Hernandez ponder the rise in militarism in the Mulroney-Reagan era. The film tries to make connections between Canadian and U.S. participation in the arms race, and liberation struggles in the global south.

This short documentary profiles a group of men from the Toronto Lakeshore Oldtimers Hockey Club. Although middle-aged, they still play the game with as much energy and passion as they did 25 years ago. They claim that playing hockey is more fun now than it was when they were kids, despite the toll of aches and pains, injuries, gruelling schedules and late-night partying. Cares and responsibilities are cast aside once they are on the ice, and the locker room becomes a haven of uncomplicated camaraderie and fun. In refusing to grow old gracefully, they feel they won't grow old at all!

Tells the story of Sara, a girl of Greek descent, who lives in a small village on the French Atlantic coast and dreams of traveling to the country of her ancestors. It tells the story of her love for Simon, a young theater manager in Paris.

A very short film on the dangers of organized religion as experienced by a little Chinese girl.

Alannah Myles concert at The Diamond Club, Toronto, ON, Canada on October 31, 1989

1988 short film by Philip Hoffman.