Samuel Grey Horse, an Indigenous equestrian from Austin, Texas, is known for rescuing horses from being put down. After a riding accident lands him in a coma, Grey Horse experiences an afterlife vision that changes his perspective on the world and his place in it.
Jo; or The Act of Riding a Bike is Zefier's third film.
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.
This documentary highlights the evolution of Brazil's Circo Voador venue from homespun artists' performance space to national cultural institution.
Carrie Davis was part of the child removal system near the end of the Sixties Scoop. With guidance from her uncle Emmett Sack and the community, Carrie reconnects to their land, language, and culture.
Western culture treats mental disorders primarily through biomedical psychiatry, but filmmakers Phil Borges and Kevin Tomlinson reveal a growing movement of professionals and survivors who are forging alternative treatments that focus on recovery and turning mental “illness” into a positive transformative experience.
This short documentary examines an innovative educational program developed by John and Gerti Murdoch to teach Cree children their language via Cree folklore, photographs, artifacts, and books that were written and printed in the community. Made as part of the NFB’s groundbreaking Challenge for Change series, Cree Way shows that local control of the education curriculum has a place in Indigenous communities.
Grundtvigs steder
Atik, gardien du territoire
Mosha Michael made an assured directorial debut with this seven-minute short, a relaxed, narration-free depiction of an Inuk seal hunt. Having participated in a 1974 Super 8 workshop in Frobisher Bay, Michael shot and edited the film himself. His voice can be heard on the appealing guitar-based soundtrack…. Natsik Hunting is believed to be Canada’s first Inuk-directed film. – NFB
A documentary account by award-winning filmmaker John Ferry of the events that led up to the 1969 Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island as told by principal organizer, Adam Fortunate Eagle. The story unfolds through Fortunate Eagle's remembrances, archival newsreel footage and photographs.
For the Suruí, an indigenous people in western Brazil, there was a lot at stake in the 2022 presidential elections. Under incumbent President Bolsonaro, logging and mining companies were given free rein in their territory. His opponent Lula, on the other hand, pledged to protect the Amazon and uphold Indigenous rights. Tribal leader Almir and his daughter, the young activist Txai Suruí, are each followed during their campaign in the final month before the elections. While Txai travels abroad to raise awareness about the destruction of the rainforest, Almir campaigns across the state of Rondônia, seeking support for his congressional bid.
In a remote Peruvian city, lives Honorata Vilca, an illiterate woman of Quechua descent who sells candies more than 20 years ago, with the rain will cry to the sky itself.
Rematriation explores scientific, cultural, economic and sociopolitical perspectives, as citizens fight to protect the last big trees in British Columbia from being felled. The lessons we take away permeate the fabric of Canadian identity.
This short documentary film is a fascinating portrait of urban and rural Quebec in the late 1960s, as the province entered modernity. The collective work produced for the Quebec Ministry of Industry and Commerce calls on several major Quebec figures.
Gilles Groulx's first film shot in 1955 with a camera borrowed from his brother and edited during his spare time when he worked as an editor at the Radio-Canada news service a few years before he joined the NFB. Silent film, presented as its author left it, where the soil and the dialectic of Groulx's work are already there: documentary realism, the social space to be explored, daily life, the relationship between individual and society, social disparities, the consumer society, seduction and happiness.
Documents the cultural and ecological impacts of coal stripmining, uranium mining, and oil shale development in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona – homeland of the Hopi and Navajo.
Three Alaska Native women work to save their endangered language, Kodiak Alutiiq, and ensure the future of their culture while confronting their personal demons. With just 41 fluent Native speakers remaining, mostly Elders, some estimate their language could die out within ten years. The small community travels to a remote Island, where a language immersion experiment unfolds with the remaining fluent Elders. Young camper Sadie, an at-risk 13 year old learner and budding Alutiiq dancer, is inspired and gains strength through her work with the teachers. Yet PTSD and politics loom large as the elders, teachers, and students try to continue the difficult task of language revitalization over the next five years.
Ten years after an enormous open-pit gold mine began operations in Malartic, the hoped-for economic miracle is nothing more than a mirage. Filmmaker Nicolas Paquet explores the glaring contrast between the town’s decline and the wealth of the mining company, along with the mechanisms of an opaque decision-making system in which ordinary people have little say. Part anthropological study, part investigation into the corridors of power, Malartic addresses the fundamental issue of sustainable and fair land management.
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.