Social & External
Gurdeep is a thirteen-year-old Canadian Sikh whose family runs a dairy farm near Chilliwack, British Columbia. They have retained their language and religion. Attendance at the Sikh temple, playing soccer with his schoolmates, and working on the farm are all part of Gurdeep's well-integrated life, but sometimes he feels a little different from the other children because he wears a turban. This film is part of the Children of Canada series.
Throughout the course of the Haida basketball season, leaders of iconic rez ball team the Skidegate Saints compete for two titles - defending their All Native Basketball Championship, while also battling for title to their land and waters with the government that stole it from them with the Indian Act.
When Masset, a Haida village in Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands), held a potlatch, it seemed as if the past grandeur of the people had returned. This is a colourful recreation of Indigenous life that faded more than two generations ago when the great totems were toppled by the missionaries and the costly potlatch was forbidden by law. The film shows how one village lived again the old glory, with singing, dancing, feasting, and the raising of a towering totem as a lasting reminder of what once was.
During the 16th Workers' Festival in Dresden in 1976, a student group of Chilean emigrants paints a mural symbolically depicting the activity of the Unidad Popular during Salvador Allende's reign. Festival guests comment on this work. Music by Chilean music group Jaspampa, formed in Leipzig in 1972.
This film joins five of the world's leading whale researchers on a scientific expedition around Canada's Vancouver Island. Spectacular photography and sound recording, both above and under water, provide an imtimate look at killer, gray, and humpback whales, and the world they inhabit. Island of Whales examines the communication, habitat, food supply and behaviour of whales. What emerges is a picture of creatures more sophisticated and complex than ever before imagined. At the end of the film, we are left with one compelling question: Can these magnificent creatures survive in the face of declining food supplies and pollution?
Marc-André Leclerc, an exceptional climber, has made solo his religion and ice his homeland. When filmmaker Peter Mortimer begins his film, he places his camera at the base of a British Columbia cliff and waits patiently for the star climber to come down to answer his questions. Marc André, a little uncomfortable, prefers to return to the depths of the forest where he lives in a tent with his girlfriend Brette Harrington. In the heart of winter, Peter films vertiginous solos on fragile ice. He tries to make appointments with the climber who is never there and does not seem really concerned by this camera pointed at him "For me, it would not be a solo if there was someone else" . Marc-André is thus, the "pure light" of the mountaineers of his time, which marvel Barry Blanchard, Alex Honnold or Reinhold Messner, interviewed in the film. An event film for an extraordinary character.
Jérôme was sexually abused as a child by a priest. In a deeply personal film, he tries to search for clues in his memories and come to terms with the complicity of his former social environment.
Over the course of a year, film follows Vancouver Pride Society president Ken Coolen to various international Pride events, including Poland, Hungary, Russia, Sri Lanka and others where there is great opposition to pride parades. In North America, Pride is complicated by commercialization and a sense that the festivals are turning away from their political roots toward tourism, party promotion and entertainment. Christie documents the ways larger, more mainstream Pride events have supported the global Pride movement and how human rights components are being added to more established events. In the New York sequence, leaders organize an alternative Pride parade, the Drag March, set up to protest the corporatization of New York Pride. A parade in São Paulo, the world's largest Pride festival, itself includes a completely empty float, meant to symbolize all those lost to HIV and to anti-gay violence.
In 1996 I took the conservatory exam. I missed it. A year ago I was asked to do a masterclass on acting in cinema. I went there. I met a lively, joyful and passionate youth. Among my students there was Clémence. The following year, she asked me to film their last show. I felt her urgency and the fear she had of leaving this mythical place. So I accepted. By filming this youth, I revisited mine.
Renowned Haida artist Bill Reid shares his thoughts on artistry, activism and his deep affection for his homeland in this heartwarming tribute from Alanis Obomsawin to her friend's life, legacy and roots.
This documentary short introduces us to the Caravan Stage Company, the world's only horse-drawn open-air theater. Every summer it tours British Columbia and Alberta, bringing live entertainment to communities where television is often the main diversion. In a montage of short sketches, the film shows the troupe on the road and in performance. Hard work and laughter are basic ingredients of this unconventional lifestyle.
In this follow-up to his 2003 film, Totem: the Return of the G'psgolox Pole, filmmaker Gil Cardinal documents the events of the final journey of the G'psgolox Pole as it returns home to Kitamaat and the Haisla people, from where it went missing in 1929.
Twenty-three years after her brother mysteriously disappeared, a documentary filmmaker sets out to solve his missing person's case. But when a disturbing piece of evidence is revealed, she comes to believe that her brother might still be alive.
The moving story of Carlo Acutis, a young British-Italian amateur computer programmer who died in 2006, aged 15, as a result of leukemia. However, even though he is no longer here, to this day Carlo continues to be a great symbol of strength among young people. The documentary brings together a series of reports from people who entrusted themselves to the intercession of the boy, beatified by the Catholic Church in 2020, and had their lives transformed.
For 18-year-old Finnish–Kosovan Fatu, a simple visit to the grocery store feels as nerve-racking as a lunar expedition: for the first time in his life, he’s wearing makeup in public. Luckily his best friend Rai, a young woman on the spectrum of autism, is there to ferociously support him through the voyage.
Lebanon today. The traces of the civil war are all too tangible as government corruption becomes unbearable. In a country where conflict and peace are caught in an endless cycle, musicians from different backgrounds pool their talents to create an underground music scene. Each evokes his or her representation of Lebanon: its shifting geographical, political, historical and social borders, its painful passage through conflict and instability. A touching portrait of a young generation trying to build an oasis in a hostile environment where the forces of destruction continue to wreak havoc.
The desolate and mysterious island of Fårö, Sweden, Baltic Sea, 2004. Swedish master filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) looks back on his personal and artistic life; a journey through more than sixty years devoted to film, plays and television programs. (An abridged version of Ingmar Bergman Complete, 2004; a collection of three thematic documentaries: Bergman and Film; Bergman and Theater; and Bergman and Fårö Island.)
Denizens of the British Columbia archipelago unite to protect their land.
Having suffered incest from her father from the age of eight to the age of twelve, at forty-five, Beatrice filmed, with two cameras, a long meeting with her mother to try, with the viewer, to understand their story.
