A working class family leaves St-Henri quarter in Montréal to build a new home in the countryside.
Life is a movie.
Images of love and freedom personified by a man who like to travel, a man who has made a profession of doing nothing and who constantly comes up against the structures of a society he rejects.
"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
A first look at Strobus / Banksiana: a musical and visual work supported by two important protagonists of the Quebec forest: the white pine and the jack pine. Duu's second album, first double album : each half is distinguished by its sonic palette, its writing style, and the type of conifer that surrounds it. This short documentary offers an intimate glimpse into the creator's journey through the paths that led him to conceive this personal diptych, where he embraces his duality in this visceral desire to celebrate nature every day.
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.
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).
"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
Ordinary people suddenly find themselves face-to-face with a mysterious, silent camera operator.
Explains Heo Jun’s Dongui Bogam [동의보감] which is an important book in traditional Korean medicine. Heo Jun [허준] was a court physician during the reign of King Seonjo of the Joseon dynasty in Korea.
'Bo' Gritz is one of America's highest decorated Vietnam veterans and the real life inspiration behind Rambo. He also killed 400 people, turned against Washington and moved to the Nevada desert where he now sleeps with many weapons. Filmed over ten years using impressive visual material, Zimmerman's portrait of Bo embodies contemporary American society in all its dizzying complexity and contradictions.
“The Revolution They Remember” compiles selected excerpts from interviews of Chinese who recall their experiences of the Cultural Revolution era, 1966-1976, drawing on more than 120 interviews in the oral history projects of the University of Pittsburgh Library and the Dartmouth College Library. The film offers rich visual material, arranging the interviews according to the historical chronology of events, with attention to age, gender, geographic breadth, and social groups. It concludes with reflections of participants and scholars on the era and its legacies today.
Varjoja Radalla is a documentary film about surviving traumatic incidences. The film is following stories of train drivers who have all unwillingly be part of fatality caused by suicides and accidents. These fatalities are common in Finland and as often as once per week, at least one person gets killed by a locomotive. These incidences cause great deal of emotional pain and many drivers are suffering from PTSD. The film is showing how peer support and talking is helping these people to release their pain. The film is focused on one weekend in a countryside where group of train drivers are talking about their experiences and what has helped them to move on with their lives.
De'aundre Bonds, actor most known for playing "Stacy" in "The Wood" tells it all in this thrilling documentary about his life. From childhood to the silver screen to prison and back again.
On a bustling footbridge separating Argentina and Paraguay, where people traffic all kinds of things in a mix of Guarani and Spanish, we meet Angel. Over the course of the next ten years, Angel will have to make decisive choices for his future.
In this documentary film, a companion to the book, Arai interviews five women from Ofunato, ages 79 to 100, who have survived as many as three tsunami in the past century! They talk about their childhood memories, their fortitude in the face of war and natural disaster, and the extraordinary depth of spoken Kesengo. Director Suzuki Yoi’s rich poetic sensibility offers a vision of humanity in all its complexity, as the film weaves together their Takuboku translations, poetry by the women themselves, and local songs. Their stories and their language will become a part of everyone who listens to their voices
Every year, thousands of Antarctica's emperor penguins make an astonishing journey to breed their young. They walk, marching day and night in single file 70 miles into the darkest, driest and coldest continent on Earth. This amazing, true-life tale is touched with humour and alive with thrills. Breathtaking photography captures the transcendent beauty and staggering drama of devoted parent penguins who, in the fierce polar winter, take turns guarding their egg and trekking to the ocean in search of food. Predators hunt them, storms lash them. But the safety of their adorable chicks makes it all worthwhile. So follow the leader... to adventure!!
A film about three teenagers - Klara, Mina and Tanutscha - from the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. The trio have known each other since Kindergarten and have plenty in common. The three 15-year-olds are the best of friends; they are spending the summer at Prinzenbad, a large open-air swimming pool at the heart of the district where they live. They're feeling pretty grown up, and are convinced they've now left their childhood behind.