Discover Movies

A French-Canadian fur trapper takes a mute girl as his unwilling wife to live with him in his remote cabin in the woods.

This short film features 4 readings of a prose poem from Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers. Read by Cohen himself, the poem produces a distinct emotional effect every time it is read, following the poet’s rendition and accompanying visuals.

The story of three pets, a cat and two dogs, who lose their owners when they are all on vacation. Can they find their way home?

Frances Austen, a young, wealthy spinster, invites a mute teenager into her apartment after finding him freezing in the park next to where she lives. Despite her best efforts, their lack of communication only increases her sense of loneliness, as her possessiveness spirals into frightening new realms.

Jill Banford and Ellen March have built a good life together on a hardscrabble Canadian farm. Then handsome Paul Grenfell enters their isolated world, and sets friend against friend. But is Paul the real trouble between Jill and Ellen? Or has his presence merely awakened the unspoken, unexplored sexual tension that always existed between the women?

In this Dan Curtis production of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, Jack Palance stars as Dr. Henry Jekyll, a scientist experimenting to reveal the hidden, dark side of man, who, in the process of his experiment, releases a murderer from within himself.

A group of Canadian university students agree to partake in a grisly psychological experiment, which renders them incapable of speech but able to communicate telepathically.

After literally swimming across the Atlantic Ocean, an Englishman takes a country trip across Canada on a railcar.

This telefilm in black and white is diffused on the first French chain the November 6th 1965. It undoubtedly remains the most known adaptation of the Dom Juan of Molière.

A deer, disillusioned by the consumerism that defines his life. A lizard, ostracized from society, forever wandering. A chance meeting in the middle of a field. Who will survive? And who will transcend existence? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2009.

A doctor living in a small mining town discovers that his dissatisfied young wife is having an affair with a truck driver.

Comedy short produced by the Construction Safety Association of Ontario, Canada. It demonstrates the dos and don'ts of construction site safety. The film is the last professionally filmed footage of film legend Buster Keaton, shot months before his death from lung cancer on February 1, 1966. He recreates several routines from his youth, as well as some new material for the film. Most notable was his recreation of a gag from his 1918 film The Bell Boy in which he mops the floor using only the tip of the mop, little by little while sitting on the floor.

This is a very theatrical version, full of sound & fury, histrionics and big arm movements. Cynical audiences might not buy into it, but if you were to go back to the early 1600s this is probably the way you'd see it. The plot of Macbeth, if you were snoozing during high school English class, is about an 11th century Scottish warrior who hatches a dubious plan to steal the throne. Spurred on by his wife Lady Macbeth, who wears the pants in the household, he finds himself swiftly slipping down the path of evil.

A young archaeologist believes he is cursed by a mask that causes him to have weird nightmares and possibly to murder. Before committing suicide, he mails the mask to his psychiatrist, Dr. Barnes, who is soon plunged into the nightmare world of the mask.

Opera by Harry Somers portraying Metis leader Louis Riel and his Northwest Rebellion. 1969 CBC-TV production based on the original 1967 opera.

John and Yoko in the presidential suite at the Hilton Amsterdam, which they had decorated with hand-drawn signs above their bed reading "Bed Peace." They invited the global press into their room to discuss peace for 12 hours every day.

Henry, tracing his descent from Edward III, has claimed the French crown. Assured by the Archbishop of Canterbury that right is on his side, and needled by the Dauphin’s insolence, he prepares for war.

In this documentary, giants of italian cinema such as Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini and Zavattini talk about the importance of cinema after WW2, and about huge moments of social rebellion. This movie gives the floor to the creators of italian neorealism.

A family film about Nikki, a half-wolf, half-dog raised in the Yukon during the gold rush era. After being separated from her master, Nikki must fend for herself amidst bears, the harsh Yukon weather, and a trapper who wants her skin.

Directed by Terry Nowak. This early film about the Southern California Renaissance Fair, with Les Blank as cameraman, is shot in sensuous detail on a 16mm Bell & Howell camera. It is apparent in this early work that Blank was already developing his own unique style of shooting. Film to tape transfer of a scratchy work print copy is all that remains of the original film. Filmed 1963-64.

Two duelling birds get the urge to change their plumage. A blue jay wants to be decked out in the green of cedar, and a loon dons the burnished red of oak leaves, but neither bird foresees the consequences of vanity.

In a Lower Manhattan industrial loft, a camera very slowly zooms into a photograph on a wall while various people occasionally enter and exit.

"Master of Suspense" Alfred Hitchcock speaks candidly in this one-on-one interview with director and host Fletcher Markle, filmed in 1964 for the television documentary series "Telescope." During the discussion, Hitchcock talks about his early career as a silent-film editor, offers his take on the building blocks of his works and relates his theories on the impact of horror films on society and human behavior.

A boy's carved boat travels through the Canadian wilderness until it reaches the ocean.

This fictional feature follows a twenty-something man who is struggling to define his position in the world in early adulthood. He has left their parents' home but still has not made an home of his own. Our protagonist’s alienation is palpable; for him life is a game, not because he chooses to make it so, but because he is unable to make anything more of it. But for those who befriend him and eventually turn him loose again, his game is not enough.

An indecisive young woman with an abnormal devotion to her father can't decide on which of her two boyfriends she should end her relationship with.

"The Best Damn Fiddler from Calabogie to Kaladar" tells the story of Emery Prometer, a proud bush worker in Ottawa Valley, resisting government aid to support his family. The film compassionately depicts their struggles and the resolve of Emery's daughter, Rosie, (Margot Kidder in her film debut) to break the cycle of poverty through education. This '60s NFB standout authentically portrays their dignity amid hardship, showcasing Canadian filmmaking despite hurdles from private broadcasters' cost concerns. The Best Damn Fiddler from Calabogie to Kaladar won eight Canadian Film Awards, including Best Picture (John Kemeny, Barrie Howells), Director (Peter Pearson), Cinematography (Tony Ianzelo), Screenplay (Joan Finnegan) and Lead Actor (Chris Wiggins).

An out-of-work Irish immigrant in Montreal remains hopeful that his luck is about to change but his disillusioned family grow tired of his constant lying, pigheadedness and instability.

A live recording of Carol Channing's revue on Broadway, filmed for early Canadian pay-TV.

Red Kirby is a seasoned bush pilot. When he crash lands his plane near a remote lake in northern Alberta, he is initially optimistic that he will soon be rescued. However, as the months drag by, Kirby realizes that he must take his fate into his own hands. To combat the loneliness, he befriends a family of Canada geese.

During the height of the Vietnam war, a hippie and a draft dodger get together and hatch a plan to flee to Canada. They steal a car and head towards Vancouver, but the trip doesn't go as smoothly as they planned, and before long they're being chased by the police, accused of murdering several police officers.

John Hofsess’s The Palace of Pleasure emerged from the psychedelic haze of 1960s postmodern art. It was a blistering work that combined arresting abstract imagery with the wounded expressions of a young couple, edited into a collage of mass culture imagery and album and book jackets, all of it framed as a therapeutic treatment. Addressed to a generation coming up in an era of protest and social change, where many found themselves increasingly burdened with hopelessness, paranoia, and neurosis, The Palace of Pleasure was offered as a cleansing ritual, a post-Freudian expelling of dammed-up energies that anticipated The Primal Scream. In this video, Stephen Broomer discusses Hofsess’s therapeutic ambitions, how the film was composed of Hofsess’s earlier films, and the sensual spell of the work, the way in which it commands us to enter into a universal fellowship of touch that circulates, from us to us, through us, to strain the boundaries between the self and the other.

The lives of a businessman and his family begin to spiral downward after he has an affair at an insurance convention.

A behind-the-scenes documentary about director Michelangelo Antonioni as he's shooting his segment of The Three Faces, a vehicle for Soraya, the former empress of Persia. Featuring interviews with Monica Vitti, Tonino Guerra and more.

A 16 year old girl recalls the last moments of her summer vacation, spent with friends in the Laurentians north of Montreal. She reminisces about their talks on life, death, love, and God. Shot in direct cinema style, working from a script that left room for the teenagers to improvise and express their own thoughts, the film sought to capture the immediacy of the youths presence their bodies, their language, their environment.

The film is centered on two men in a bathtub; it is implied that they are veterans of some past conflict. The first man is paranoid about the drain of the tub, the second indifferent to it. As the conversation between the two men progresses, a vine-like tendril emerges from the drain…

Polar Life’s novelty was its theatre, with the audience seated on a central rotating turntable in the middle of eleven fixed screens. Viewers have described the intricate juxtaposition of screen images and narration and the complex relationship created between moving spectators and multiple screens. Documentation images and scripts of the bilingual narration by Lise Payette and Patrick Watson show elaborate temporal and spatial representations of the Arctic and Antarctic regions: the Inuit in daily activities in the Canadian North; other northern peoples of Alaska, Lapland, and Siberia; and settlers from the South, scientists, explorers, and other inhabitants of the landscape, including reindeer, bears, and birds. Archival film footage of early northern explorers, combined with newly shot documentary footage, was edited across the various screens to create spatial relationships that are sometimes coherent, sometimes fragmented.

A mad scientist turns himself into a half-man, half-bird monster to avenge the death of his ancestor.

Two teenage girls go to winter carnival in Quebec City for the first time. Their ambiguous, tentative relation with a young boy brings both of them the sweet intensity and disillusionment of first love. One of four film sketches on the problems of adolescents facing the adult world in the 1960s included in the anthology film That Tender Age (La fleur de l'âge, ou Les adolescentes). The three other sketches were directed by Jean Rouch, Hiroshi Teshigahara, and Gian Vittorio Baldi.

A humanity student, Lucien is active in various extracurricular activities. Recognized by his peers, he represents other students in their challenge of college rules and the settlement of the fate of an incompetent professor. He ends up being thrown out of the school. After his mother's death, even though he dates Lise, a young woman with whom he does acting, he has to resist the advances of a homosexual whose death he will accidentally cause.

A candid-camera view of professional wrestling as seen in the Montréal Forum, where some of the biggest bouts are staged, and in back-street wrestling parlours where the warriors practice their art.

This short drama is a portrait of colonial administrator, Governor General and statesman Lord Durham (1792-1840). When Durham recommended self-government in Canada, he closed the door on his own political success. But in the end, the policies he declared for Canada became the pattern for self-rule in the rest of the Commonwealth.

This short documentary depicts the formation in 1959 of the first successful co-operative in an Inuit community in Northern Québec. The film describes how, with other Inuit of the George River community, the Annanacks formed a joint venture that included a sawmill, a fish-freezing plant and a small boat-building industry.

A tale from downtown, where the morality of business is not always as transparent as the shining glass fronts of the office buildings. The film follows the adventures of a young man on the way up, intent on building an image to match his ambitions. In doing so he leaves a trail of hurt feelings among those he uses as steps toward his goal.

Shows Tête-à-la-Baleine, Québec, a village with a double life--one on the North Shore mainland during winter months, the other on mossy islands of the Gulf to which the entire population moves for summer fishing.

This short documentary film is a fascinating portrait of urban and rural Quebec in the late 1960s, as the province entered modernity. The collective work produced for the Quebec Ministry of Industry and Commerce calls on several major Quebec figures.

A series of vignettes are tied together by a story involving a carnivorous entity which masquerades as a bedcover. The creature absorbs evil and greedy people into its body, but leaves the innocent unharmed.

An account of the building and bringing into operation of Canada's pioneer nuclear power plant - the Nuclear Power Demonstration Station (NPD), built in northern Ontario as a prototype for larger plants. The film explains the principle of nuclear fission. Produced by Crawley Films Ltd. for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, Ontario Hydro and Canadian General Electric Company Limited.

The people of Unamenshipu (La Romaine), an Innu community in the Côte-Nord region of Quebec, are seen but not heard in this richly detailed documentary about the rituals surrounding an Innu caribou hunt. Released in 1960, it’s one of 13 titles in Au Pays de Neufve-France, a series of poetic documentary shorts about life along the St. Lawrence River. Off-camera narration, written by Pierre Perrault, frames the Innu participants through an ethnographic lens. Co-directed by René Bonnière and Perrault, a founding figure of Quebec’s direct cinema movement.

A scientist develops an unusual pair of eyeglasses which allows the wearer's mind to see things objectively rather than the usual subjective manner.

A teenage boy rebels against parental authority and must face a harsh reality when he tries to live on his own.

Dedicated “to all victims of intolerance,” "The Devil’s Toy" is a faux–public service documentary that chronicles the early days of skateboarding in Montreal. Framed as mock anti-skateboarding propaganda, Claude Jutra contrasts official hostility with the exhilaration and freedom experienced by youths racing downhill through city streets, shortly before the activity was banned.

Released in 1968 and often referred to as Canada’s first music video, The Ballad of Crowfoot was directed by Willie Dunn, a Mi’kmaq/Scottish folk singer and activist who was part of the historic Indian Film Crew, the first all-Indigenous production unit at the NFB. The film is a powerful look at colonial betrayals, told through a striking montage of archival images and a ballad composed by Dunn himself about the legendary 19th-century Siksika (Blackfoot) chief who negotiated Treaty 7 on behalf of the Blackfoot Confederacy. The IFC’s inaugural release, Crowfoot was the first Indigenous-directed film to be made at the NFB.

This animated short is a play on motion set against a background of multi-hued sky. Spheres of translucent pearl float weightlessly in the unlimited panorama of the sky, grouping, regrouping or colliding like the stylized burst of some atomic chain reaction. The dance is set to the musical cadences of Bach, played by pianist Glenn Gould.

A film record of M.E.T.E.I. (Medical Expedition to Easter Island), one of the most unusual scientific enquiries ever launched, headed by a McGill University research team. While the film is concerned mainly with the physical condition of Easter Islanders, it also provides glimpses of island activities, a village wedding, and the famous long-faced stone sculptures.

She was the nymph who found refuge in the river reeds when the goat-god Pan pursued her. Syrinx is the first film of Ryan Larkin, a young artist from Norman McLaren’s student group. To illustrate the ancient Greek legend of how Pan made his pipes, he employs various charcoal sketches. Accompanying music is Claude Debussy’s Syrinx for solo flute.

16mm, b/w, silent

Two rivals are out to recover a cache of stolen jewels. The thief who originally stole them has just gotten out of prison, however, and he is looking for his twin brother, who knows where the jewels are hidden. Complications ensue.

A 23-year-old Canadian wanders aimlessly throughout his wasted life.