Trifles of Importance

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)

A portrait and tribute to Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta.

Hymn of the Nations, originally titled Arturo Toscanini: Hymn of the Nations, is a 1944 film directed by Alexander Hammid, which features the "Inno delle nazioni," a patriotic work for tenor soloist, chorus, and orchestra, composed by Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi in the early 1860s. (For this musical work, Verdi utilized the national anthems of several European nations.) In December 1943, Arturo Toscanini filmed a performance of this music for inclusion in an Office of War Information documentary about the role of Italian-Americans in aiding the Allies during World War II. Toscanini added a bridge passage to include arrangements of "The Star-Spangled Banner" for the United States and "The Internationale" for the Soviet Union and the Italian partisans. Joining Toscanini in the filmed performance in NBC Studio 8-H, were tenor Jan Peerce, the Westminster Choir, and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.

A documentary following young Anishinaabe water activist Autumn Peltier as she travels to the UN to preserve the future of Indigenous communities.

This short film presents a discussion about the role of merchants on Fogo Island, and of the feasibility of cooperatives.

Ténérife

A photoshoot on the roofs and in the streets of Paris, under the astonished eyes of the inhabitants.

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Etienne-Jules Marey, a French inventor who turned a gun into a camera. A hand-drawn hunter whose weapon, instead of firing ammunition, shoots photographs. Carlos, a Mexican wildlife photographer who used to be a real life hunter until he chose to get rid of all his guns. All come together in this poetic yet approachable animated documentary short film.

1950 short film portrait of the octogenarian folk artist. Nominated for an Oscar in the category "Best Short Subject, One-reel".

Beloved by audiences for over a decade, Here TV's original movie "Shelter" is celebrated with an in-depth discussion with stars Trevor Wright and Brad Rowe, along with director Jonah Markowitz.

Filmmaker/activist Melaw Nakehk’o has spent the pandemic with her family at a remote land camp in the Northwest Territories, “getting wood, listening to the wind, staying warm and dry, and watching the sun move across the sky.” In documenting camp life—activities like making fish leather and scraping moose hide—she anchors the COVID experience in a specific time and place.

Thursday shot from filmmaker Galen Johnson's high-rise apartment during COVID-19 “lockdown” in Winnipeg, captures people going about their daily routines in the city's eerily empty streets, yards and parking lots, on their balconies and on the riverbanks. The extreme distance and the diminutive scale of humans is paired with sound close-ups—a combination that embodies the strange, heightened intensity of feeling of the time, knowing an era-defining tragedy is happening yet being so physically removed.

Le Grice no longer simply uses the printer as a reflexive mechanism, but utilises the possibilities of colour-shift and permutation of imagery as the film progresses from simplicity to complexity… With the film’s culmination in representational, photographic imagery, one would anticipate a culminating “richness” of image; yet the insistent evidence of splice bars and the loop and repetition of the short piece of found footage and the conflicting superimposition of filtered loops all reiterate the work which is necessary to decipher that cinematic image. - Deke Dusinberre

A short documentary covering the conclave and election of Pope Pius XII.

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

This final John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series short looks at a community, Mooseheart, in Illinois that orphaned children call home.

Documentary about the rave and techno scene of the 90s.

A retrospective documentary of the cult classic movie The Goonies. Including interviews with the cast, exploration of the film's locations and unique stories you wont hear anywhere else.

Our Cinema