Seal hunting, a critical part of Inuit life, has been controversial for a long time. Now, a new generation of Inuit, armed with social media and their own sense of humour and justice, are challenging the anti-sealing groups and bringing their own voices into the conversation. Director Alethea Arnaquq-Baril joins her fellow Inuit activists as they challenge outdated perceptions of Inuit and present themselves to the world as a modern people in dire need of a sustainable economy.
A routine workday in a granite quarry turns surreptitiously into a captivating industrial symphony. While men work in the background, different equipment and machines perform for the camera as if they are individual dancers in a contemporary ballet.
A night in a bar like any other… Deftly capturing furtive glances, moments of euphoria and awkward situations, Serge Bordeleau blends tools borrowed from fiction filmmaking with documentary observation to construct a gallery of characters who provide undeniable proof that every night holds a myriad potential stories.
Lifeguards run down the beach and dive into the ocean to save swimmers from drowning. These dramatic rescues are captured by a hyperactive, spinning camera that becomes one with the elements and challenges how subjective a documentary may be.
Air force pilots, a heavy metal band and two fans of modified cars are the unlikely focus of a deadpan film essay on language. Through a clever, unpredictable edit, Philippe David Gagné takes great delight in revealing the strange ways that men communicate.
In a rural setting, the bleeding of a pig is depicted plainly, as an autumn ritual. A just and moving tribute to the handing down of actions that, shared across families and generations, also perpetuate true social solidarity.
The southern Prairies are among the most accessible, but also the least known, of all the regions in Canada. The rolling hills and waving grasses, the small towns and family farms, the bake sales and fall suppers are all there. The winters are cold, the summers hot; and everything sometimes seems a thousand miles away. It is a land of many stories, and a new collection of films from the National Film Board of Canada brings some of these stories to audiences across the nation and around the world.
In the summer of 2015, filmmaker Scott Parker travelled to this region to produce 10 short documentaries based on community-generated ideas. Subjects, themes, even interview questions were all conceived with significant community input, and each film was screened with the participants to get their feedback and final approval. Each doc is a beautiful portrait of prairie life.
The Grasslands Project, as it became known, was conceived and designed by Parker in concert with NFB Executive Producer David Christensen. Parker then travelled to the area, headquartered himself in the small Saskatchewan town of Eastend and began the extensive community engagement the project would require if it was to be successful either cinematically or as an outreach action.
As Parker was the point man of this engagement, it was decided he would also be the only filmmaker creating the 10 short documentaries. Over several weeks, he managed to form strong, trusting relationships with many people who would be instrumental in making the films, so the NFB team organized a camera and sound package uniquely suited to a single filmmaker operating in the field, and an edit suite was set up in Eastend. Parker would live in the town for six months while shooting and editing the films, and he spent about two months living out of his “mobile production unit.”
In addition to the 10 short films, The Grasslands Project aimed to hold 10 community media workshops across the south; in the end, due to popular demand, 12 were held. Participants included journalists, librarians, historians, prospective actors, Indigenous youth, agriculture insiders, bloggers, youth with complex physical disabilities, teachers, students, and federal inmates. Parker developed and led each and every one of the workshops. The project was fortunate to team up with local folklorist and writer Kristin Catherwood, who was instrumental in clarifying the ideals behind it and helping workshop participants understand the relationship between place and story.
There is power in people telling their own stories back to themselves, and while not all the workshops had a profound outcome, many did. They not only provided people with the fundamentals of making their own short films but also demonstrated the power of story and film.
And film indeed has power. The finished documentaries are rough and unprofessional, but, to the participants, both the process and product were transformative.
Mixing animated sequences and archival footage, Oscar is a touching portrait of virtuoso pianist Oscar Peterson at the twilight of an exceptional career, as he wistfully meditates on the price of fame and the impacts of the artist’s life on family life.
From the young prodigy’s beginnings in Little Burgundy to his triumphs on the international scene, this animated documentary by Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre explores the profound solitude of an artist constantly on tour. Set to the tunes of Peterson’s sometimes catchy, sometimes melancholy-tinged compositions, the film tells a heartfelt story about a life in jazz.
Seances presents a new way of experiencing film narrative, framed through the lens of loss. In a technical feat of data-driven cinematic storytelling, films are dynamically assembled in never-to-be-repeated configurations. Each exists only in the moment, with no pausing, scrubbing or sharing permitted, offering the audience just one chance to see this film before it disappears.
The project was born from the mind of one of the world’s foremost outré directors, Guy Maddin, who has long been haunted by the idea that 80% of films from the silent era have been lost. Driven by the desire to reincarnate this vanished history, an abundance of these films have been reimagined by Maddin and brothers Evan and Galen Johnson, with the express goal of combining and recombining them to create infinite narrative permutations.
In 2005, Michaëlle Jean became the Governor General of Canada. A dedicated journalist and citizen of the world, she devoted her mandate to youth, women, Indigenous people, and culture, promoting social change and international diplomacy. In 2010, the tragic earthquake in Haiti took her back to her native land. Michaëlle Jean: A Woman of Purpose is an insider’s look and a thoughtful portrait of the woman and the stateswoman.
They belong to the armed wing of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is also an active guerrilla movement. The mission of these female fighters? Defend Kurdish territory in Iraq and Syria, and defeat ISIS (the armed militants of the so-called Islamic State group), all while embodying a revolutionary ideal advocating female empowerment.
As filmmaker Zaynê Akyol follows their highly regimented lives, seasoned fighters like Rojen and Sozdar openly share with us their most intimate thoughts and dreams.
Even as fighting against ISIS intensifies in the Middle East, these women bravely continue their battle against barbarism. Offering a window into this largely unknown world, Gulîstan, Land of Roses exposes the hidden face of this highly mediatized war: the female, feminist face of a revolutionary group united by a common vision of freedom.
The Apology follows the personal journeys of three former “comfort women” who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Some 70 years after their imprisonment in so-called “comfort stations”, the three “grandmothers—Grandma Gil in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China, and Grandma Adela in the Philippines—face their twilight years in fading health. After decades of living in silence and shame about their past, they know that time is running out to give a first-hand account of the truth and ensure that this horrific chapter of history is not forgotten. Whether they are seeking a formal apology from the Japanese government or summoning the courage to finally share their secret with loved ones, their resolve moves them forward as they seize this last chance to set future generations on a course for reconciliation, healing, and justice.
The archetypal hero takes a journey through seven stages: birth, childhood, mission, labyrinth, monster, battle and death/rebirth. Through purely abstract, moving images, the corresponding emotional states are conveyed: calm, love, joy, surprise, fear, anger/hate, and death/rebirth leading again to calm.