Social & External
A working class family leaves St-Henri quarter in Montréal to build a new home in the countryside.
"Montréal under the snow and the cold winter. It is the period of the year when the garage owners strike it rich. The automobile at the service of man? This small opus would rather show the contrary. This is one in a series of eight films titled “Chronicle of Everyday Life,” a project that filmmaker Jacques Leduc took four years to realize, and whose goal was to revisit Direct Cinema at a moment when it was already heavily “contaminated” by mainstream TV." - Anthology Film Archives
"This documentary depicts a canoe being built in the traditional manner. Cesar Newashish, a 67-year-old Attikamek of the Manawan Reserve North of Montréal, uses only birchbark, cedar splints, spruce roots, and gum. With a sure hand he works methodically to fashion a craft unsurpassed in function or beauty of design. Building a canoe solely from the materials that the forest provides may become a lost art, even among the Native Peoples whose traditional craft it is. The film is free of spoken commentary but text appears on the screen in Cree, French, and English." - Anthology Film Archives
"This feature documentary is considered to be the forerunner of the NFB's Challenge for Change Program. The film offers in inside look at 3 weeks in the life of the Bailey family. Trouble with the police, begging for stale bread, and the birth of another child are just some of the issues they face. Through it all, the father tries to explain his family's predicament. Although filmed in Montreal, the film offers an anatomy of poverty as it occurs throughout North America." - NFB
"This film is one of the first French Unit productions of the “Société Nouvelle/Challenge for Change” program. When an old area of Montréal is to be demolished to make way for a new low-income housing development, is there anything the residents can do to protect their own interests? The film documents such a situation in the Little Burgundy district of Montréal and shows how the residents organized themselves into a committee that successfully influenced the city’s housing policy." - Anthology Film Archives
Feature-length documentary as part of Pierre Perrault's Abitibian Cycle. The filmmaker questions the past and present of Abitibi and draws up, face to face, the promises of colonization in the 1930s and the great disappointment caused by the closing of the land in the 1970s. There are witnesses to the heroic era, including the cultivator Hauris Lalancette, as well as extracts from films by Father Maurice Proulx (1934-1940).
A documentary about direct-cinema from its very beginnings (Nanook of the North) to the fake-direct-cinema of the Blair Witch Project. All the important direct-cinema filmmakers are portrayed and/or interviewed: Leacock, Wiseman, Maysles, Pennebaker, Reisz and others.
Charismatic taxi driver Oussama crisscrosses Casablanca day and night, picking up passengers and taking them to their destinations. Along the way, the driver and his customers invariably end up in lively conversations about major and minor topics, ranging from day-to-day worries to serious issues and big dreams.
The tenth edition of Polish Pride parades a colorful trail of rainbow flags through the streets of Warsaw. Along the route, Antek and his friends line up to warn of the “pink threat” in prayer and edifying hymns. As traditional Catholics, he and his Brotherhood hold deeply conservative views: sex before marriage is out of the question, homosexuality can be cured, abortion is a great evil and Poland is for the Poles. His sister thinks his homophobic ranting is pointless, because in a few years the planet will be destroyed anyway as nobody is doing anything about climate change.
Does Shangri-La really exist? Mirka Duijn goes in search of the answer in this travelogue-cum-investigation. She travels to the mountains of Tibetan China and digs into the archives to unravel the history of this mythical place. At first sight, the answer is obvious: British author James Hilton invented Shangri-La for his 1933 novel Lost Horizon, in which four characters crash land in the Kunlun Mountains and later find a magnificent monastery—a paradise on earth.
Whether they’re all dressed up and in full make-up, or looking as much as possible like the Virgin Mary, the inhabitants of the red light district in the Mexican border city of Tijuana live in a world of their own. The notorious neighborhood of Zona Norte is their home, but their minds are always elsewhere.
Russians bombarded Bucha, Borodyanka, Irpin and other cities in the region following their invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. By the time they retreated a month later, the damage was huge: buildings had been destroyed and there were corpses lying in the streets. Filmmakers Mila Teshaieva and Marcus Lenz went in immediately, in time to film local people emerging from their shelters, but never showing the actual atrocities. That wasn’t necessary, as the trauma of war is clear to see on everyone’s faces, including those of the volunteers who rushed in from far and wide to help.
A journey through the artistic life of the British-American rock band The Pretenders, formed in 1978, and a portrait of its leader, the charismatic singer and songwriter Chrissie Hynde.
An in-depth look at the career of iconoclastic artist Robert Irwin, whose investigations into the nature of perception have radically expanded the possibilities of what art can be.
Diane Sawyer sits down with actor Matthew Perry as he discusses his success, hard-fought battle with addiction, and life today.
Documentary about the making of Vera Chytilová's film DAISIES
