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A BAFTA award nominated animation based on a poem by Earle Birney and a painting by El Greco. The theme concerns the responsibility of the innovator for the thing he makes. In the film, a carpenter builds a cross but is reluctant to become involved in the right or wrong of situations that bring men to die on crosses. His interest is in his own craftsmanship. To illustrate this moral, the filmmaker used light-pen drawings, giving colour and emphasis through optical processes.

A family of seven lives on a New England island with nobody else. One winter, they got stranded because the bay froze over. This didn't much matter to them, but someone on the mainland remembered them and launched an aerial rescue mission; an unfounded story that one boy had appendicitis results in a larger rescue mission, with the situation rapidly escalating into a major catastrophe all because of the rescue mission.

A reclusive Albertan DJ runs his popular pirate radio station in a remote farmhouse but begins to feel pressure from his romantic relationship with a fan and his producer who wants more mainstream content.

In wartime Sault Ste. Marie, the mayor invites the president of the Jewish congregation to speak at the town’s upcoming ecumenical war bonds rally. However, the president has just quit and nobody wants the thankless job. A funny and endearing drama featuring Melvyn Douglas, Nehemiah Persoff, Paul Soles and a 15-year-old Mike Myers. Based on a semi-autobiographical short story by Order of Canada winner Morley Torgov. Collie-haired Myers, in one of his first TV roles, is more behaved than usual as a skateboard-riding young piano prodigy. Hollywood veteran Douglas does most of the heavy lifting as a Jewish elder trying the impossible — recruiting a new president who can, in Torgov’s words, handle himself “among the goyim” at an upcoming town war bond rally. The town’s new tailor (Soles) — thought of as a bit of a peacock — is seen as the perfect candidate. (CBC TV-Movie 1978)

A film that pays tribute to the various celebrations in Québec on St-Jean-Baptiste Day.

This short animated fable stars witches, cloaked riders and other Gothic characters, in a tale about the hungry natural world. Here the artist plays cat's cradle with ideas, especially the notion that one thing leads to another and that lives lead from one to another. Without words but featuring a witch's brew of sounds.

Lucia has left her native Chile and is now living in Montréal, Canada. Here, she tries to start a new life as an art teacher while also dealing with the painful memories of the coup d'etat that overthew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and drove many Chilean into exile.

A priest and nun, haunted by physical longings, leave their respective callings. Even after their desires are fulfilled they experience crisis of faith.

A view of man's perpetual struggle for self-destruction, in which we glimpse a world where rockets are part of everyone's lives.

Two rival robotics companies in the future release their latest creations at a robotics convention, claiming each to be the latest and greatest in technological advances. Mega Stellar Company's release is a robot boy named Romie-O, while Super Solar Cybernetics has released a girl robot named Julie-8. Unforeseen to each of the company's creators, is how each of the advanced robots soon falls in love with the other.

This meditative French-Canadian film tells the story of a young woman's search for the father she has never known. Marie Chapdelaine (Carole Laure) grew up in a remote area of Quebec without ever knowing her father, a lumberjack. She moves to Montreal, settles in there with a job as a topless dancer and begins her search for him. Eventually, with the help of his former mistress, they find the lumber camp he was working in, only to discover that he was killed in a labor dispute.

When a young female mouse makes a deal with the devil to become a rock star and learns the price, her boyfriend has to help her avoid damnation.

Bureaucracy shapes our lives and guides us from the cradle to the grave. This documentary lays bare the idiosyncrasies of bureaucracy, whether in Canada, Austria, Hungary, the Vatican or the Virgin Islands. It also attempts to make the functioning of the public service more comprehensible. The absurdities of bureaucratic behaviour are exposed with humour and irreverence.

Ellie Epp’s 12-shot study of a soon-to-be-demolished public bath in London, which “maps another way out of structural film toward a cinema of delicate implication".

An NFB crew filmed a group of three families, Cree hunters from Mistassini. Since times predating agriculture, this First Nations people have gone to the bush of the James Bay and Ungava Bay area to hunt. We see the building of the winter camp, the hunting and the rhythms of Cree family life.

Sleepy Hollow, a town plagued by the Headless Horseman, hires the most educated person they can find to fight him - Ichabod Crane. He, talking horse and dog, and Rip van Winkle go on the quest. But the Horseman has a secret.

Profile of a Chinese immigrant to Canada narrated by her son.

Two artsy/hippie couples sharing a townhouse play head-games with each other and with a pizza-delivery driver.

Lumsden, Saskatchewan is a town of 850 citizens on a river called the Qu'Appelle. In the spring of 1974, the river doubled its volume and threatened to flood the town. The townspeople organized themselves and the whole province stood behind them. Lumsden is the story of an incredible battle against impossible odds.

Since the first film was made explaining the power of the atom, nuclear technology has made great advances. This film is an up-to-date account of the many areas of nuclear research and recent developments in Canada. It was filmed at the long-functioning atomic reactors at Chalk River and Rolphton, and at the latest and largest atomic power station at Pickering, as well as at laboratories across the land where experimentation is carried out in both pure and applied nuclear science. Produced for the NFB by Crawley Films Ltd. for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

The ups and downs in the life of a country-western singer.

A close-up view of crew racing from the seat that counts the most--the place of the man at the oars. Filmed at St. Catharines, Ontario, on the occasion of a North American rowing competition, this film follows a University of British Columbia team through practice, trials and competition, and to the telling race when well-schooled movement, hard rhythm and finely tuned muscles sweep the light shells ever faster down the course to the finish line.

Tom Hill, a Seneca artist and curator, explores the works of four contemporary Indigenous artists.

A hapless husband neglects to clear the icy walk, which leads to the mailman slipping and breaking his neck. A comedy of errors results from his attempts to hide the body.

This feature-length Oscar®-nominated documentary focuses on Malcolm Lowry, author of one of the major novels of the 20th century, Under the Volcano. But while Lowry fought a winning battle with words, he lost his battle with alcohol. Shot on location in four countries, the film combines photographs, readings by Richard Burton from the novel and interviews with the people who loved and hated Lowry, to create a vivid portrait of the man.

A richly illustrated cartoon film that enlarges on man's capacity to foul his own nest, and to ignore it. Made by a joint team of Canadian and Yugoslav animation artists, the film transmits its warning with unflagging humor, imagination, movement and design. In between animated sequences Dr. Fred H. Knelman, Professor of Science and Human Affairs at Concordia University in Montréal, comments on the import of what is shown and on what lies in store if more responsibility is not taken on a global scale to conserve what is left of our vital resources and usable environment.

Norman Laliberté, one of the most creative designers of banners in North America, is shown in his workroom piecing and stitching together bits of varicolored fabric to create figures and symbols reminiscent of ancient pomp and pageantry.

Three aliens from an unknown planet, who bear a strong resemblance to the Biblical Magi, visit earth to know the true meaning of Christmas. Peter, a young boy, and Lucy, his goose, are the first to encounter them. Unable to find the true meaning of Christmas in town, Peter takes them to his family's house in the woods. While Peter's grandmother tells the aliens about her memories of Christmas, Marvin, one of the town's bullies, steals Lucy. In the chase to rescue Lucy, Marvin falls through the ice in a lake. Peter attempts to rescue him but falls into the lake as well. The townsfolk, who were out searching for the aliens, attempt to save the boys but their human chain isn't long enough to reach them. The three aliens, who had sworn not to interfere with events on earth, decide to help in order to learn the meaning of Christmas.

Hershl is a thirtyish musician in Winnipeg. Fate brings him together with Kramer, an elderly tailor whose traditions and prejudices have forced him to deny the existence of his son who married a Gentile.

Filmed across the eastern half of North America in the 1970's, CARNIVALS is an homage to Speedy, Yak-Yak, Obie, Lobster Boy, and all the other carnies who lived and worked on Amusements of America. Theirs was a world within a world, traveling through the chaos of post-Viet Nam America as a community of freaks, strippers, clowns and bosses. To them, there world was sane; it was the rest of America that was crazy. In an era when Viet Nam madness was still tearing at the country the carnival was their refuge, their home.

A lonely divorced woman spends her evening in her apartment listening to a phone-in radio show. As she listens to strangers talk candidly about their personal problems, she has to come to terms with her own.

Uses animation without narration to show the painting of a man's face--a face that is continuously metamorphosing into different types. The film's title indicates an artist's evolution, as well as the evolution of man in relation to society and to his innate potential.

Author and activist Jane Jacobs talks about the problems and virtues of North American cities.

Two strangers have a fateful one-night stand in Montréal.

This documentary is a must have for "old school" wrestling fans! It's loosely focused on the career of 23 year old Vivian Vachon during her first professional tour, and the wrestling legends she shares the ring with. Through interviews with wrestling superstars, the promoters, the fans, and the critics, Wrestling Queen will give you a snapshot of a rarely seen part of 70’s culture, along with a healthy dose of wrestling nostalgia!

A tense, tight close-up of stunt man Ken Carter's role on the stock-car racing track. Risking life and limb to rocket a car from a ramp over a parked line of cars takes more than the will to make a living. What else is involved is shown by the film as the camera looks and listens while the stunt man readies for his act and then makes his wild ride.

"Fogo is a windswept island off the coast of Newfoundland where the inhabitants for generations have lived by, on and from the sea. In this film William Wells, fisherman, and his two sons take a day off from the nets for a journey to the gannet colony on the Funk Islands, fifty miles farther out to sea. There are exceptional close-up views of enormous flocks of seabirds swarming on the cliffs and in the sky."

This animated short film attempts to answer the eternal questions, What is dying? and How does it feel? Based on recent studies, case histories and some of the ancient myths, the afterlife state is portrayed as an awesome but methodical working-out of all the individual's past experiences. Film without words.

A chronicle of the lives of a couple and the gradual dissolution of their relationship.

Here is the village of Ste-Justine as one gifted man, novelist and playwright Roch Carrier, remembers it. In this small corner of Québec there is space in the landscape and in the vast spread of forest, but the fringe of rocks around every field speaks of the backbreaking hardship that was the lot of Carrier's father and of his grandfather before him. This is a nostalgic view of rural Québec.

When a business competitor assassinates her father when the father refuses to sell his firm, young woman takes over her father's paper company and with the help of her gangster boyfriend learns how to fight back against competitors.

The second IMAX film made, commissioned by the Ontario Government, and produced by MultiScreen Corporation, later to become IMAX corporation. North of Superior is a Northern Ontario travelogue, and was the first short feature to be shown at the newly created Ontario government theme park, Ontario Place, in it's state of the art cinema, Cinesphere, the first permanent IMAX installation.

Unable to keep her social commentary to herself and concentrate solely on her show dancing, the girl in this film is shot to death in the Quebec woods by people who don't want propagandizing about Chile to be openly voiced. She is discovered by a mysterious stranger, who heals her wounds and reanimates her by blowing on them. After he takes her back to his cabin, they fall in love.

This film documents the yearly cycle of the great blue heron, its migration from Central America and the West Indies to the St. Lawrence River in Québec, and the breeding and rearing of its young. Outstanding footage shot by the filmmaker perched high in a tree affords close-ups of the birds' intricate courtship rituals. A sensitive, beautifully photographed nature film with much to tell us of ecology and wildlife.

Set on an ice-encircled island in the St. Lawrence, this is a drama of passion and violence. An old man, attached to his ancestral home and traditions, is confronted by his son, an immature young man who has no time for these values. The outcome is tragic as the father refuses to let his home fall into the hands of outsiders.

In this Oscar-nominated animated short film, director Peter Foldès depicts one man’s descent into greed and gluttony. Rapidly dissolving and ever-evolving images create a contrast between abundance and want. One of the first films to use computer animation, this satire serves as a cautionary tale against self-indulgence in a world still plagued by hunger and poverty.

Various unrelated vignettes, often juxtaposing sound and image.

Follows Haida artist Bill Reid, from British Columbia. A jeweller and wood carver, he works on a traditional Haida totem pole. We watch the gradual transformation of a bare cedar trunk into a richly carved pole to stand on the shores of the town of Skidegate, in the Queen Charlotte Islands of B.C.

Three attendees at a puppet theater don various roles in order to sing a variety of songs by Jacques Brel, all while hippies and other eccentrics cavort about them.

The Canadian program for nuclear fuel waste management is explained through interviews with people working inside and outside the nuclear industry and by a visit to the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment, where a long-range used-fuel disposal program is being developed. Revised version from the film Nuclear Fuel Waste Management (106C 0179 542). Produced for the NFB by Crawley Films Ltd. for Atomic Energy Canada, Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment.

A film documenting work shortages during the Depression of the 1930s and the attempts to deal with the unemployed, in particular young men. The film discusses the establishment of relief camps and projects, where men were paid twenty cents per day; the founding of organizations such as the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), Workers' Unity League, and Relief Camp Workers' Union; general unionization and protest of the unemployed, including the On To Ottawa Trek, Regina Riot, sit-in strike from May to June 1938 at the Vancouver Main Post Office, Vancouver Art Gallery and Hotel Georgia, and the resulting Bloody Sunday of June 19.

The six members of the working-class Bessette family each mimic a certain stage of the life of the iconic Brother André and are an incarnation of his values and characteristics.

Farm families in Lestock, Saskatchewan, have pooled their resources so that rising operating costs will not drive them off their land. By pooling their land, their equipment, their livestock, and farming as a cooperative, they are able to live as they choose, to maintain their standard of living, and even to have some spare time left over to enjoy. An engaging look at a novel approach to big-scale farming.

Film accompanying the book of the same name by Nelvana Enterprises founders Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert, with partner Clive Smith as designer and illustrator. It looks at the "Canadian Whites" series of comic books made during World War II, with some focus on Nelvana of the Northern Lights, the genre's first superheroine, and Johnny Canuck. It was accompanied by a two-year travelling tour of the art, the National Gallery of Canada's "Comic Art Traditions in Canada, 1941–45". This is Nelvana Enterprises' first film.

A writer, Kamouraska is based on a real nineteenth-century love-triangle in rural Québec. It paints a poetic and terrifying tableau of the life of Elisabeth d'Aulnières: her marriage to Antoine Tassy, squire of Kamouraska; his violent murder; and her passion for George Nelson, an American doctor. Passionate and evocative, Kamouraska is the timeless story of one woman's destructive commitment to an ideal love.

Two couples talk about their experiences with postpartum depression.

In Penticton, BC, most students graduating from the only high school in town know that job opportunities and higher education lie elsewhere, most likely in Vancouver. So, for one memorable week, they go through a whirlwind of formal ceremonies, wild celebrations, hi-jinks and farewells that involve the whole population of this Okanagan Valley community.