The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and Red Bull Media House present True North, a nine-part docuseries that provides an intimate look at the rise of the Toronto hoop dream through the stories of five young athletes, inspired by the wave of professional talent coming from their city. Director Ryan Sidhoo captures the raw emotion of navigating today’s youth basketball machine through the eyes of the city’s players, coaches and families at the centre of it.
With a view to increasing the supply of French-language programming in the digital TV market, CBC/Radio-Canada French Services, Groupe V Média (V), Bell Media (Canal Vie, Canal D, Z and VRAK), TV5 Québec Canada (TV5 and Unis TV) and the National Film of Canada (NFB) are pleased to announce agreements that will enrich the content offering of the ICI TOU.TV EXTRA platform, starting immediately.
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) returns to the La Rochelle International Film Festival this year with a strong lineup of films by renowned filmmakers. Two feature documentaries will be included: Labrecque, une caméra pour la mémoire/Labrecque From Film to Memory (ACPAV/NFB), by Michel La Veaux, which will be making its European premiere at the festival; and Premières armes/First Stripes (NFB), by Jean-François Caissy, back in Europe after its world premiere in Berlin and its selection for the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto. There will also be a tribute to animator Theodore Ushev, with screenings of eight of his short films. All three directors will attend the festival, which runs from June 29 to July 8, 2018.
With every day bringing new and alarming headlines about climate change and environmental catastrophes, it’s easy to become pessimistic and lose hope. Yet hope is at the heart of Velcrow Ripper and Nova Ami’s visually stunning feature documentary Metamorphosis—a cinematic poem for our planet, screening in cities across Canada this June.
For 48 hours only, from May 3 to 5, Santiago Bertolino’s feature documentary Freelancer on the Front Lines (NFB) will be available worldwide for free streaming on NFB.ca to mark World Press Freedom Day (May 3). After May 5, the film can be rented or downloaded for purchase on NFB.ca as well as on iTunes and Amazon. An exclusive NFB-produced podcast, in English only, will be launched on NFB.ca at the same time.
Following a call for applications that went out in October 2017, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) have revealed the names of the eight apprentices who will take part in the second Jeunes Pousses interactive program. The nine-week apprenticeship (April 25 to June 21, 2018) will give students from a variety of UQAM programs the chance to work together at the NFB’s Digital Studio, under the guidance of executive producer Hugues Sweeney. They’ll create an interactive multiplatform project around the theme of metamorphosis to be launched in fall 2018.
WALL, a feature-length animated film written by David Hare, the renowned British playwright, screenwriter and two-time Oscar nominee (for The Hours and The Reader), and directed by award-winning Canadian filmmaker Cam Christiansen, marks the NFB's return to the coveted feature film competition section of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. The film, which explores both sides of the wall separating Israel and Palestine, will be screened with the writer and director as well as NFB producer David Christensen in attendance.
Museum of Symmetry, a virtual reality (VR) experience directed and animated by Paloma Dawkins and produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), will have its world premiere at the A MAZE. 7th International Games and Playful Media Festival in Berlin, taking place from April 25 to 29. The work has also been selected to screen at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the world’s largest animation event, running from June 11 to 16.
The multilateral partnerships involved in what is a historic restoration of the Canada Pavilion in Venice perfectly reflect the Biennale Architettura 2018 theme of FREESPACE, described by La Biennale di Venezia as “a generosity of spirit at the heart of architecture’s agenda.”
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) will be at Cannes for a second year running, this time with Patrick Bouchard’s animated short The Subject. Produced by Julie Roy, the film has been selected to screen in the 50th-anniversary edition of the Directors’ Fortnight, a section organized by the French Directors’ Guild and held in parallel with the Cannes Film Festival. This year’s Directors’ Fortnight takes place from May 9–19. The Subject is the first of Bouchard’s films to have made the cut of this international lineup. After Cannes, it will go on to screen in competition at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, which runs from June 11–16.
The National Film Board of Canada has signed two new deals with broadcasters and online providers in the People’s Republic of China, which will see acclaimed NFB animation and documentaries available on CCTV-10, the science and education channel of China Central Television, as well as the Bilibili web portal.
The National Film Board of Canada’s commitment to exploring vital global issues, and producing groundbreaking works by Indigenous and culturally diverse filmmakers, will be on display at the 2018 DOXA Documentary Film Festival (May 3–13) with Velcrow Ripper and Nova Ami’s feature documentary Metamorphosis (Clique Pictures/Transparent Film/NFB), the short films To Wake Up the Nakota Language by Louise BigEagle and Three Thousand by Asinnajaq, as well as a special screening of Vancouver filmmaker and producer Selwyn Jacob’s The Road Taken.
Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square is flooded. Mature trees grow through cracks in the sidewalks, people commute via canoe and grow vegetables on skyscraper roofs. In this radically different future, urban life is thriving.
The NFB’s French Program Documentary Studio, in collaboration with Quebec’s Institut national de l’image et du son (INIS), Réalisatrices Équitables, and Femmes du cinéma, de la télévision et des médias numériques (FCTMN), is launching Les femmes de métiers, a series of four conversations offering an invaluable and up-close look at the experiences of women artists in the film industry.
Dream is musician Philippe Lambert’s first virtual reality work as a director. Beginning April 10, the 10-minute creation will be available online all over the world, in 2D and 3D WebVR, at nfb.ca/dream. Dream will have its world premiere at the fourth MUTEK_IMG Forum for Digital Creation, taking place April 10 to 13 at the Phi Centre as part of the official lineup of events at this year’s Montréal Digital Spring. Visitors to this free presentation at MUTEK_IMG will be able to experience the VR work lying down, engaging fully in the creators’ virtual dreamscapes.