Orphaned

A short film on throw-away culture and TV

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.

In this detective story, filmmaker Cullen Hoback investigates the largest chemical drinking water contamination in a generation. But something is rotten in state and federal regulatory agencies, and through years of persistent journalism, we learn the shocking truth about what’s really happening with drinking water in America.

Lost Heroes is the story of Canada's forgotten comic book superheroes and their legendary creators. A ninety-minute journey to recover a forgotten part of Canada's pop culture and a national treasure few have ever heard about. This is the tale of a small country striving to create its own heroes, but finding itself constantly out muscled by better-funded and better-marketed superheroes from the media empire next door.

The environmental problems caused by fracking in America have been well publicized but what's less known are the gas industry's plans for expansion in other countries. This investigation, filmed in Botswana, South Africa and North America, reveals how gas companies are quietly invading some of the most protected places on the planet.

Maura is a black woman, mother of 7 children and recyclable material collector in one of the largest cities in Latin America. While she works hard to maintain herself, she has to deal with prejudice, invisibility and the ignorance of those who do not recognize the value and important role of the recyclable material collector bring to the city, as an environmental agent.

A young couple battle entrenched tradition and hostile forces to bet on nature for the future of their failing, four-hundred-year-old estate. Ripping down the fences, they set the land back to the wild and entrust its recovery to a motley mix of animals both tame and wild, beginning a grand experiment.

The filmed account of a large Canadian rock festival train tour boasting major acts. In the summer of 1970, a chartered train crossed Canada carrying some of the world's greatest rock bands. The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Band, Buddy Guy, and others lived (and partied) together for five days, stopping in major cities along the way to play live concerts. Their journey was filmed.

Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his becoming a foster child. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. Considered a milestone in documentary cinema, it addressed the country’s internal colonialism in a profoundly personal manner, winning a Special Jury Prize at Banff and multiple international awards.

Director Mirjam Leuze’s The Whale and The Raven illuminates the many issues that have drawn whale researchers, the Gitga’at First Nation, and the Government of British Columbia into a complex conflict. As the people in the Great Bear Rainforest struggle to protect their territory against the pressure and promise of the gas industry, caught in between are the countless beings that call this place home.

After their success climbing the world’s hardest offwidth, the Wide Boyz, Pete Whittaker and Tom Randall, embark on their next crack climbing mission. This time their sights are set on the thinner end of the crack climbing spectrum. Their goal is the mighty Cobra Crack in Squamish BC, considered to be the hardest finger crack in the world. First climbed by Canadian ‘rock star’ Sonnie Trotter after battling it out with Didier Berthod, the route hit the media spotlight in the film First Ascent. With no local hard cracks to train on, the Wide Boyz refit their underground training dungeon and commit to a year of torturous finger training. With only a short trip to Canada planned, the Boyz face their biggest challenge yet against the sharp granite bite of the mighty Cobra Crack!

Developments in the Canadian forestry industry during the 1970s are shown being carried out both as lab experiments and in the field to protect and conserve the country's vast forests. These include turning a Newfoundland bog into woodland, fostering British Columbia seedlings that withstand mechanical planting, inoculating Ontario elms against the bark beetle, devising ways of controlling fire, and more.

Five fishermen from Manresa, a poor neighborhood to the West of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, learn from marine biologist Omar Shamir Reynoso's one-of-a-kind plan to protect nesting sea turtles.

Narrated by Academy Award winners Sissy Spacek and Herbie Hancock, River of Gold is the disturbing account of a clandestine journey into Peru's Amazon rainforest to uncover the savage unraveling of pristine jungle. What will be the fate of this critical region of priceless biodiversity as these extraordinarily beautiful forests are turned into a hellish wasteland?

A feature-length documentary which examines a deeply disturbing episode in Canadian history, when an impoverished couple was coerced by undercover law enforcement agents into carrying out a terrorist bombing. Further, viewers learn that this case is far from unique in the context of Canadian intelligence.

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.

The Smog of the Sea chronicles a 1-week journey through the remote waters of the Sargasso Sea. Marine scientist Marcus Eriksen invited onboard an unusual crew to help him study the sea: renowned surfers Keith & Dan Malloy, musician Jack Johnson, spearfisher woman Kimi Werner, and bodysurfer Mark Cunningham become citizen scientists on a mission to assess the fate of plastics in the world’s oceans. After years of hearing about the famous “garbage patches” in the ocean’s gyres, the crew is stunned to learn that the patches are a myth: the waters stretching to the horizon are clear blue, with no islands of trash in sight. But as the crew sieves the water and sorts through their haul, a more disturbing reality sets in: a fog of microplastics permeates the world’s oceans, trillions of nearly invisible plastic shards making their way up the marine food chain. You can clean up a garbage patch, but how do you stop a fog?

A collection of recollections and opinions of and about Glenn Gould, interspersed with excerpts of archive footage of the great Canadian pianist speaking and playing.

Mothers and doctors speak out about the grim reality of life in the five years following the Chernobyl disaster. In children, doctors witnessed a massive increase of recurrent infections, baldness, as well as leukaemia and other cancers.