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.
For almost a century, the Coast Salish knitters of southern Vancouver Island have produced Cowichan sweaters from handspun wool. These distinctive sweaters are known and loved around the world, but the Indigenous women who make them remain largely invisible.
Promised Land is a social justice documentary that follows two tribes in the Pacific Northwest: the Duwamish and the Chinook, as they fight for the restoration of treaty rights they've long been denied. In following their story, the film examines a larger problem in the way that the government and society still looks at tribal sovereignty.
Part oral history and part visual poem, Miss Campbell: Inuk Teacher is the story of Evelyn Campbell, a trailblazer for an Inuit-led educational system in the small community of Rigolet, Labrador.
In 1999, Innu community members who, 40 years previously, had been forcibly relocated from their remote northern region of Labrador to established settlements in the province, return to Hebron to reminisce and reckon with the destructive impact the relocation had on their traditional ways of life and Indigenous identity. This film serves as a companion piece to Carol Brice Bennett’s book "IkKaumajannik Piusivinnik – Reconciling With Memories," and stands as the only known audio-visual document of the reunion of a resettled community in Newfoundland & Labrador.
Could Australia's past help secure its future? 65,000 years in the making, Burnt Country is about fighting fire, with fire. Exploring the profound knowledge and wisdom of First Nations, this film is an invitation to connect to country and community.
In the form of a poetic love letter to its nation, this short film reveals a strong community and the anchoring of the new generation in this rich culture.
In this era of "reconciliation", Indigenous land is still being taken at gunpoint. INVASION is a new film about the Unist'ot'en Camp, Gidimt'en checkpoint, and the Wet'suwet'en Nation standing up to the Canadian government and corporations who continue colonial violence against indigenous people.
This film is about the francization of Québec that has taken place since the Parti Québécois won power from the Liberals in 1976. It shows how the once powerful anglophone community is now questioning its very survival. It discusses some of the motivating forces behind Québécois nationalism. The film concludes by asking if the Canadian nation can survive if neither of its major language groups is welcome in the territory of the other.
In this searing documentary, Indigenous people share heartbreaking stories that reveal the injustices inflicted by the Canadian child welfare system.
In this evocative meditation, a disturbing link is made between the resource extraction industries’ exploitation of the land and violence inflicted on Indigenous women and girls. Or, as one young woman testifies, “Just as the land is being used, these women are being used.”
A documentary about climate change in Brazil, especially at Atafona Beach (in the Campos de Goytacazes region), which is being swallowed up by the sea. Narrated by Sonia Guajajara and Sidarta Ribeiro, the film deals with the genocide of the native people of Goytacazes.
Canadian director Catherine Annau's debut work is a documentary about the legacy of Pierre Trudeau, the long-running Prime Minister of Canada, who governed during the 1970s. The film focuses particularly on Trudeau's goal of creating a thoroughly bilingual nation. Annau interviews eight people in their mid-30s on both sides of the linguistic divide. One tells of her life growing up in a community of hard-core Quebec separatists, while another, a yuppie from Toronto, recalls believing as a child that people in Montreal got drunk and had sex all day long. Annau has all of the interviewees discuss how Trudeau's policies affected their lives and their perceptions of the other side, in this issue that strikes to the heart of Canada's national identity.
The story of the Quebec Mosque Shooting—the first ever mass shooting in a mosque in the West—is known around the world, but the story of the community that survived the attack is all but unknown. The Mosque: A Community's Struggle is an intimate portrait of the resilient Muslim community of Ste-Foy, Québec, as they struggle to survive and shift the narrative of what it means to be a Muslim, one year after the devastating attack that took the lives of six of their members. As the world moves on, this small mosque and its community fights Islamophobia, harassment and hate speech. How will the community heal and how will they stop the rhetoric that threatens to precipitate further violence?
TOKYO Ainu features the Ainu, an indigenous people of Japan, living in Greater Tokyo (Tokyo and its surrounding areas), who are and actively in promoting their traditional culture in a metropolitan environment away from their traditional homeland, Hokkaido. Shedding a common assumption that all Ainu live in Hokkaido, the film captures the feelings, thoughts and aspirations of Ainu people that who try to follow the Ainu way no matter where they live.
Documentary about the kolla people living in North Western Argentina.
In this short documentary, a Musqueam elder rediscovers his Native language and traditions in the city of Vancouver, in the vicinity of which the Musqueam people have lived for thousands of years. Writing the Land captures the ever-changing nature of a modern city - the glass and steel towers cut against the sky, grass, trees and a sudden flash of birds in flight and the enduring power of language to shape perception and create memory.
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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.
Yagorihwanirats, a Mohawk child from Kahnawake Mohawk Territory in Quebec, attends a unique and special school: Karihwanoron. It is a Mohawk immersion program that teaches Mohawk language, culture and philosophy. Yagorihwanirats is so excited to go to school that she never wants to miss a day – even if she is sick.