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The story of Oedipus' gradual discovery of his primal crime, killing his father and marrying his mother, filmed by the famed British theatrical director Sir Tyrone Guthrie. This elegant version of Sophocles' play adds a brilliant stroke: the actors wear masks just as the Greeks did in the playwright's day.

Ten years after his defection from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, Igor Gouzenko is hunted by Soviet agents. Based on a true story.

Story of blood brothers whose bonds are tested when marauding Sioux Indians cross the border to enlist the peaceful Cree in a battle against the Great White Father.

Short film produced by the Bell Telephone Company to encourage the effective use of their phones.

Nico, a drug dealer, murders a telegram messenger-boy "for kicks", egged on by partner-in-crime, TV director Francis. Cliff, the boy's older brother, investigates his death due to the slow progress made by the police.

This short film depicts how a small Canadian city, bearing the name of Stratford and by a river Avon, created its own renowned Shakespearean theatre. The film tells how the idea grew, how a famous British director, international stars and Canadian talent were recruited, and how the Stratford Shakespearean Festival finally became a triumphant reality.

Carnival time in Quebec, Canada, is also time for racing with sled-dogs, horse-drawn sleighs, hockey, curling the carving of ice-statues, obstacle races by youngsters, fireworks, and also the selection of a Carnival Queen.

Army officer whose parents are white and Indian tries to avert an Indian war.

An animated film drawn entirely in pastels. Various fantastical plant-like things "grow" from the ground, eventually launching five spheres. The spheres drift in space while changing shapes and come back down to another setting, which eventually becomes more fantastical and symbolic than the opening one. The soundtrack has a jazz slant, with an ensemble of four saxophones and synthetic sound (i.e. sound created by drawing directly on the soundtrack).

In this short drama, Peter accidentally breaks a glass bowl intended as a birthday gift for his mother. Mr. and Mrs. Deichmann and their daughter Anneke, all artisans in clay, come to the rescue and make him one of their designs while Peter watches. Every stage, from the first turn of the potter's wheel to the final glazing and baking, is shown.

This documentary presents a before-and-after picture of people in a large-scale public housing project in Toronto. Due to a housing shortage, they were forced to live in squalid, dingy flats and ramshackle dwellings on a crowded street in Regent Park North; now they have access to new, modern housing developments designed to offer them privacy, light and space.

In this Oscar-winning short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower.

Fred Davis introduces us to Canadian Air Force operations in Zweibrucken, West Germany. Follow Green Section as they perform drills and explain what it takes to be a fighter pilot.

This short documentary profiles the uniquely cloistered wildlife of Sable Island, known as the “Atlantic graveyard” due to its inhospitable conditions. Barren sands and endless gales proved too much for human settlement on this island off the coast of Nova Scotia. Only a small group of researchers and maintenance people occupy the island; horses run wild, seals and birds multiply profusely, and the Ipswich sparrow has found a fruitful breeding ground for itself. Sable Island provides a perfect opportunity to observe nature in an untouched, organic laboratory.

An ordinary-looking chair refuses to be sat upon.

This short film is a humorous look at the tourist industry in Canada. In tongue-in-cheek fashion, it points out the importance of good public relations in the tourist industry - more specifically, what not to do to tourists. (Sourced from the National Film Board of Canada: https://www.nfb.ca/film/tourist_go_home)

Pierre Chambrac, a French industrialist, and Canadian Paul Laforêt, two former brothers in arms, meet again by chance in Paris five years after the end of World War II. Pierre is engaged to a beautiful foreign young lady by the name of Helen Bering. He introduces her to his friend, which seems to trouble him. To his amazement, Helen and Paul disappear without notice. Pierre, who was beginning to feel jealous, sees his suspicion confirmed. He decides to fly to Montreal where he thinks the couple has taken refuge. Once there, he learns that his dear Helen is actually a criminal and that Paul is a policeman whose duty was to arrest her.

A little girl wittness the death of her mother- expressly killed through negligence by the woman supposedly nursing the invalid mother back to health. The coniving nurse in turn marries the child's father thereby taking the dead woman's place and becoming the little girl's stepmother. After unwisely revealing to the stepmother that she knows the reason for her mother's death; Aurore is abused by her stepmother who hopes that in torturing the child she can keep her silent. The father, who is absent during the day farming the land, closes his eyes or refuses to believe his new wife is abusive when confronted by the sight of his miserable burnt and beaten child.

A portrait of Newfoundland that records a way of life that has all but disappeared.

Classic short film depicts the Klondike gold rush at its peak, when would-be prospectors struggled through harsh conditions to reach the fabled gold fields over 3000 km north of civilization. Still photographs juxtapose Dawson City today against its bustling height in the gold rush.

This short puppet animation from the fifties tells the story of Magic Bow, a First Nations boy endowed with magic gifts. Magic Bow is in the big city for the first time, thrilling audiences with his tricks at the Wild West Rodeo. Outside the arena, cars, trucks and buses zip by at dizzying speeds. With the help of some savvy city dwellers, Magic Bow learns a few important traffic rules to help him navigate the streets safely.

This short fictional film features the picturesque seaside landscape of Prince Edward Island as the setting for a summer romance between a girl from Winnipeg and a young fisherman from North Rustico, PEI. The young couple visits historic and scenic sites such as Government House in Charlottetown and Cavendish, of Green Gables fame. The film is a classic summertime romance and a nostalgic visit to the delightfully sun-soaked PEI of the past.

In Toronto, early twenty-somethings Judy Monroe and Roy Kirby are in love and are planning to get married. They understand the obstacles they are facing as husband and wife as Judy is white and Roy is black.

This 1959 documentary short is a frank portrait of the daily operations inside the Montreal General Hospital’s emergency ward.

Teenage lovers are continually thwarted in their attempts to get married.

The misbehaving public performs for the camera in a half-hour miscellany of misdeeds. In a behind-the-scenes look at the hour-by-hour operation of a large metropolitan police force, this film presents a fair sampling of what keeps Toronto's police officers busy twenty-four hours a day.

A documentary account of the five-week visit of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh to Canada and the United States in the fall of 1951. Stops on the royal tour include Québec City, the National War Memorial in Ottawa, the Trenton Air Force Base in Toronto, a performance of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in Regina and visits to Calgary and Edmonton. The royal train crosses the Rockies and makes stops in several small towns. The royal couple boards HMCS Crusader in Vancouver and watches Native dances in Thunderbird Park, Victoria. They are then welcomed to the United States by President Truman. The remainder of the journey includes visits to Montreal, the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, a steel mill in Sydney, Nova Scotia and Portugal Cove, Newfoundland.

A dramatization of Canadian author W.O. Mitchell's penetrating story about the racial prejudice encountered by a Polish immigrant farmer in a rural Saskatchewan community.

The moon is the subject here. Man's fascination with the moon (via animation) is presented, as is the moon's usage in popular culture (from Shakespeare to nursery rhymes to popular songs). Also, superstitions and suppositions associated with the moon is presented. Then scientific research on the moon is shown, followed by plans for (and then a simulation of) an actual trip around the moon.

Two generals prepare for battle at the Plains of Abraham.

This Oscar-nominated short explores the genesis of cancerous cells and the mid-20th century state of research into the fight against cancer. The film questions the differences between normal cell growth in the human body and the subversive growth of cancerous cells. Cures have been found for a succession of once invincible diseases, but cancer still presented an enigma at the time of the making of this film—and continues to do so today. The collaboration of a global network of scientists is portrayed in the film, as they painstakingly following every clue that may lead to an eventual solution.

Made in 1957, this film glamorizes a service job in which minor emergencies appear as serious and absorbing challenges. Marriage is assumed to be the natural end of the middle-class woman's working life. No. 97 in the Eye Witness film series.

This short documentary (the second of two parts) follows Glenn Gould to New York City. There, we see the renowned Canadian concert pianist kidding the cab driver, bantering with sound engineers at Columbia Records, and then, alone with the piano, fastidiously recording Bach's Italian Concerto.

The story of a Machiavellian plan hatched by a money-grubbing stepmother to push aside the young lover of her stepdaughter whom she wants to marry a wealthy idiot. The woman devises the most abominable machinations to achieve her ends, going as far as to try and murder her own husband. This melodrama in which evil attempts to prevail over love was adapted from the play THE SPIRIT OF EVIL by Quebec’s prolific playwright of the 40s and 50s Henri Deyglun.

When the pilot and co-pilot of a commercial flight become ill from food poisoning, a passenger who once flew in WW2 must take the controls and try to safely land the aircraft.

To the tune of a classic French-Canadian nonsense song, surreal blackbird made of lines loses body parts and gets them back threefold.

An afternoon and evening in the complicated lives of six teenagers.

An efficiency expert is called in to downsize a trucking company and the employees fight to establish a union to save their jobs.

Overture is a 1958 Canadian short documentary film directed by Gian Luigi Polidoro. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. The film depicts the peacekeeping efforts of the United Nations, set against the music of Beethoven's Egmont Overture, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

This Colin Low documentary from 1959 depicts Venice in all its splendor. In the tradition of Venetian painter Canaletto, the film captures the great Italian city’s elusive beauty and fabled landscapes, where spired churches and turreted palaces soar into a blue Mediterranean sky. Narration by William Shatner.

A self-narrated portrait of a Polish immigrant in Winnipeg whose unglamorous job keeping streetcar switches working reveals dignity, resilience, and pride in everyday labor.

This short documentary from 1950 captures the thrill of harness racing on Prince Edward Island. We follow Bellhop's career as a pacer, from his unwilling introduction to harness through trials with a bicycle sulky (or 2-wheel cart) to his first big race. The film culminates with scenes of trotters and pacers at Charlottetown's Old Home Week.

This short documentary offers a look at the life forms on the Queen Elizabeth Islands within the Arctic Circle. Even in this frigid zone of icebergs and glaciers a surprising variety of wildlife and vegetation is seen. Writings from the logbooks of early explorers provide vivid descriptions of scenes as arresting to them in their century as to today's explorer. Note: Originally produced for the television series Perspective, this film was distributed separately on 16mm for schools and libraries, qualifying it as a standalone documentary.

The story of the settlement of Canada, illustrated with cheerful animated cartoons. The arrival of Jacques Cartier, the fishing and fur trades which followed, and the rival colonization by the French and British, climaxed by the battle of the Plains of Abraham, are depicted. The coming of the United Empire Loyalists is seen; then the west-coast gold rush and the completion of the transcontinental railway. New branches were added to the family tree when many European settlers came to fill the great spaces of the Prairies. Finally, we see the whole country matured into a nation, its traditions enriched by those of many peoples.

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.

We witness the race for marriage of thousands of young people, wanting at all costs to escape conscription, then we are transported to the war factories and we thus witness the difficulties of work in this place. Then it's the Italian campaign in 1943 and, finally, the return to Quebec where readjustment to civilian life proves more difficult than it seems. These events are experienced and told by the voice of a young man.

This short documentary depicts Christmastime in Montreal. The milling crowds, department store Santas, Brink's messengers, kindergarten angels and boisterous nightclubs all combine to make a vivid portrait of the holidays.

A beautiful country girl and a seductive nightclub singer vie for the same good-looking man.

This short documentary visits the 3 Quebec border towns of Rock Island, Stanstead and Beebe, and the Vermont town of Derby Line to see how residents and officials cope with a civic life that is cut down the middle by an international boundary.

This film observes, in a Montréal public school, the teaching of English to immigrant children. To thousands of children arriving in Canada from Greece, Italy, France, Germany or Japan, English is "a foreign language." Under able coaching they begin to understand and even enjoy the vagaries of the English language.

Liz tries to keep her friend from making the worse mistake of her life.

The big whale round-up at Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, is brought to the screen with a realism not often found in fish stories. Cameras are on hand to record the annual sea drama as herds of pothead whales are driven inshore by fishing boats and killed in shallow water. There is tense excitement as, their escape cut off, the marine monsters fight for their lives. Reporter Fred Davis is told about the commercial uses of whale meat and whale products, particularly in mink farming.

After returning home from war, an ill-tempered young soldier must deal with his sweetheart having married another man.

A short documentary film, set to Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, depicting the cycle of the seasons throughout a year on the grounds of his parents' farm on the shore of Lake Simcoe.

After many years of careful conservation, Banff and Jasper National Parks have become vast zoological gardens. Deer, moose, bear, big-horn sheep, birds and small animals that live above the treeline are natural subjects for the close-up camera, with a backdrop of snowy peaks.

A short look at the world of artist Arthur Lismer.

Here is a graphic picture of the tobacco harvest in southwestern Ontario. At the end of July, transient field workers move in for a brief bonanza when the plant is ripe. The tobacco harvesters call it "the back-breaking leaf."