After selling out multiple screenings and igniting crucial discussion about gender-based violence and restorative justice at this year’s Hot Docs festival, Attiya Khan and Lawrence Jackman’s feature documentary A Better Man (Intervention Productions/National Film Board of Canada) returns with a theatrical engagement at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, June 9–21. Khan and Jackman will attend three Q&As during the film’s opening weekend, on Friday, June 9, at 6:30 p.m., Saturday, June 10, at 6:30 p.m. and Sunday, June 11, at 8:45 p.m. (See complete schedule below or visit the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema website.)
With The Enemy, internationally acclaimed photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa steps up his quest to change people’s attitudes toward armed conflicts, violence, and the suffering they produce. This virtual-reality experience puts a human face on armed fighters, dropping audiences squarely into the combat zones of long-standing conflicts. The Enemy will have its world premiere at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris, from May 18 to June 4, followed by its North American premiere in Boston (October to December 2017) and its Canadian premiere in Montreal (winter 2018). Ben Khelifa will also go on a Canadian media tour, and the project’s augmented- and mixed-reality app will be accessible worldwide starting in summer 2017. The international co-production uses unprecedented, powerful encounters with combatants from opposing camps to show that both sides are in fact more alike than different. The Enemy is co-produced by Camera Lucida Productions, France Télévisions, the NFB, Dpt. and Emissive.
Winner of the Colin Low Award for Canadian Documentary at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver just days ago, Julia Ivanova’s acclaimed feature Limit Is the Sky, about a diverse group of young dreamers trying to jump-start their lives in Fort McMurray, is available for download and VOD on iTunes and NFB.ca starting May 16.
The Canadian Museum of Nature and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) are teaming up to produce a unique interactive installation—with real ice—as part of the museum’s new Canada Goose Arctic Gallery. Dubbed Beyond Ice, the installation will debut June 21, 2017, with the opening of the gallery.
Throughout 2017, the National Film Board of Canada is offering titles from its unparalleled collection of 250 Indigenous-made films for free public screenings and special events across the country, in a tour entitled Aabiziingwashi (#WideAwake): NFB Indigenous Cinema on Tour.
With Streamers, the National Film Board of Canada and ARTE France continue to explore new ways of telling stories using new technologies and platforms. This real-time documentary experience, filming every week until the end of June, will form the basis of a collaborative documentary launching in fall 2017. Through the prism of video game and streaming platform Twitch.tv, Streamers examines the desire to be part of something greater than oneself in today’s hyper-connected era. Eight to 10 episodes in English or French, featuring 32 Twitch users from North America and Europe as well as the communities that follow them, will be live-streamed on twitch.tv/streamersdoc. In keeping with the spirit of Twitch, the Streamers creative team will be taking an open, collaborative and real-time approach to exploring streaming—how it works as well as its limitations—and attempt to reveal the impact it can have on human relationships.
From Sherbrooke to Brooks, Roger Parent’s debut feature-length documentary, has taken the People’s Choice/Special Jury Award in the Regard d’ici section of the 2017 Festival international de cinéma Vues d’Afrique in Montreal. Produced at the NFB’s Canadian Francophonie Studio by Dominic Desjardins in collaboration with UNIS TV, the film tells the story of the migration corridor between Quebec and Alberta travelled by French-speaking African refugees, who are trapped between the fragility of their dreams and the harsh constraints of reality.
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 be taking part in the Jeune Pousses interactive program, following a call for applications that went out in November 2016. This new nine-week apprenticeship (April 25 to June 21, 2017) will give students from a variety of UQAM programs the chance to work together at the NFB’s Interactive Studio, under the guidance of executive producer Hugues Sweeney, where they’ll create an audio project that will be launched when the apprenticeship is over. In addition to benefiting from a multidisciplinary experience in a real production environment, participants will attend master classes led by acclaimed artists and professionals from various fields.
On Wednesday, May 3, at 7 p.m. at the Cinémathèque québécoise, the public is invited to a special screening of Santiago Bertolino’s feature documentary Freelancer on the Front Lines / Un journaliste au front (NFB), followed by a discussion to mark World Press Freedom Day. The event was organized by the NFB in close collaboration with UQAM’s École des médias, and guest speakers will include the film’s director, Santiago Bertolino, and UQAM journalism professor Guillaume Lavallée, author of Drone de guerre: Visages du Pakistan dans la tourmente. The discussion will be hosted by André Lavoie, Le Devoir film critic and freelance journalist. After the screening, the film will continue its theatrical run in Montreal at the Cinémathèque québécoise and will also be playing at the Cinéma Le Clap in Quebec City starting May 3.
The lineup of National Film Board of Canada titles at Edmonton’s NorthwestFest (May 5–14, 2017) features local productions, stories and innovation, with an interactive VR experience as well as three powerful documentary films.
The National Film Board of Canada, in partnership with Place des Arts and the Society for the Celebrations of Montréal’s 375th Anniversary, is unveiling a remarkable project commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Montreal World’s Fair: a free, immersive experience called Expo 67 Live. This journey through the greatest moments of Expo 67 will take place every evening, from September 18 to 30, 2017, at the Place des Arts Esplanade. Created by multi-disciplinary artist K (Karine Lanoie-Brien), Expo 67 Live was produced at the NFB by executive producer René Chénier. Radio-Canada is also a partner in the event.
On April 22 in Edmonton, pioneering filmmaker and National Film Board of Canada producer Selwyn Jacob received the Outstanding Achievement Award, recognizing outstanding accomplishment, contribution to media art, and body of work, at FAVA FEST, the annual festival of the Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta.
Matthew Rankin’s animated film THE TESLA WORLD LIGHT, produced at the National Film Board of Canada by Julie Roy, will have its world premiere at the 56th International Critics’ Week, a parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival organized by the French Syndicate of Film Critics. Rankin’s film will be one of 10 short films competing at the prestigious international event, which takes place May 18 to 26, 2017.
Launching April 21 at Tribeca Film Festival’s Storyscapes, Draw Me Close blurs the worlds of live performance, virtual reality and animation to create a vivid memoir about the relationship between a mother and her son in the wake of her terminal-cancer diagnosis. Weaving theatrical storytelling with cutting-edge technology, the project takes a deceptively simple and humanistic approach to the immersive medium: it allows the audience member to experience life as five-year-old Jordan, inside a live, animated world.
We stand on guard for thee. These are the words that ring through the air at the end of our national anthem.
It’s also the inspiration for What We Protect, the latest installment of the National Film Board of Canada’s 1 Nation. 4 Lenses, part of its special online programming for the 150th anniversary of Confederation (#Canada150).