Sword of the Samurai

Every night in December people in a small suburb of Philadelphia flock to a holiday light show. They drive at a snails pace through the 2 mile stretch of beautiful light displays, listening to holiday music, soaking up the Christmas spirt. But at the end of each night one man drives the stretch alone, turning off all of the lights, ending the joy day after day. This is his story.

Brief portrait of a conformist.

In America, everyone has a family story of immigration. Every family, at some point, has had somebody leave their native country behind to search for a better life. How did they hold onto their identity? How did they adapt to their new life? Every family has a special story. In my case, it's my Chinese-American story. My father would always tell us his story about walking for 7 days and 6 nights, before swimming for 4 hours to Macau to escape communism in 1966. His story would fall on my deaf ears until I returned to China with him.

An evocative portrait of people having orgasms, lingering on the silent classical face of ecstasy.

Presented by Grimposium and Uneasy Sleeper. Blekkmetal is a documentary about the one-off 2015 festival celebrating the origins of Norwegian black metal. Featuring exclusive interviews and footage of Enslaved, Taake, Aeternus, Gehenna, Helheim, Old Funeral, Kampfar, Hades Almighty and Gaahls Wyrd performing classic and rare songs from their catalog, Blekkmetal features an all-Canadian production team including director David Hall (alumnus of Concordia University), metal studies scholars Vivek Venkatesh (Concordia University) and Jason Wallin (University of Alberta), and mobile media scholar Owen Chapman (Concordia University). Blekkmetal is co-produced by the festival’s organizers Ivar Bjørnson, Jannicke Wiese-Hansen and Kirsti Rosseland.

La remise des décorations

In this tribute to the eternal allure of an ancient myth, colourful fins and swimming pools fill the lives of five modern-day women who strive to embody the mysterious siren as part of a growing “mermaiding” subculture.

Filmed in 1896 by Alexandre Promio for the Lumière company, this short actuality presents one of the earliest traveling shots in cinema. With the camera mounted on a gondola, the film glides along Venice’s Grand Canal, capturing passing gondolas, bustling waterfront activity, and the city’s iconic architecture from a moving perspective. This simple yet groundbreaking technique introduced audiences to a new way of experiencing motion on screen.

100 seconds-long six-scene footage consisting of selected coronation ceremonies of the Russian Tsar (Emperor) Nicholas II. Shows distinguished guests entering a carriage, parade of troops and carriages, Nicholas II and his wife empress Alexandra Feodorovna descending the Kremlin Red Staircase, procession of the newly crowned Emperor and his wife under the baldacchino, guests from the Asian parts of the Russian Empire.

A train arrives at Perrache station. We see the view from aboard the train.

Five black and white minstrels dancing and playing musical instruments in Rupert Street, London.

The floods of the Saône river during the first week of November, 1896.

Considered a remake of Lumière's La Voltige from 1895.

This picture was taken at one of the curves on the Lehigh Valley Railroad, along the beautiful Susquehanna River. The train is seen rapidly approaching in the distance, clearly outlined against the grey mountains. Smoke can be seen pouring in volumes from the stack of the locomotive, and as the train approaches closely, she sounds a whistle, warning some section men, who are working on the tracks in the foreground. As she rushes by the camera, the swing motion of the train gives a vivid idea of the lightning speed at which she is traveling. (Edison film catalog)

A large number of workers, mostly young women, leave by the front door of their work place at lunch time. The building has an impressive colonnaded facade, and is located at 181, Santa Catarine St., Porto - one of the city's main streets. A passengers' horse cart crosses from right to left of the screen, and a few seconds after an ox cart carrying merchandise crosses in the opposite direction. All the while, workers keep leaving the factory, giving a sense of a large work force.

A Berlin street scene.

A trains arrives at Perrache station and people disembark.

Outside a fairground cinematograph in Edwardian Lancashire.

A daredevil rides his bicycle down a ramp and attempts to land in a pool of water as a crowd of spectators watches.

Everyday wintertime life of Sámi reindeer herder Inka Länta and her family, mingling authentic and fictionalized takes.