Michel Brault, l'instinct de vue

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).

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.

"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 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

"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

"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

A working class family leaves St-Henri quarter in Montréal to build a new home in the countryside.

La meilleure façon, c'est par accident

In the 1986 World Cup, Diego Maradona, the world's greatest football player, reached his apotheosis, redefining what is possible for one man to accomplish on a football pitch. His ability to take control of the ball -- the game -- an entire tournament -- split the world in two. It was both illuminating and an affront, beguiling and an outrage, and the fervor that surrounded him was unprecedented, bordering on the religious. Constructed from archive material, "Maradona '86" is an ode to this ultimate footballing idol, basking in the operatic intensity of his performance in Mexico as he wrote his name on football history forever.

Rain on a window pane, a fire truck, a tomcat with innumerable offspring: it is an intentionally unintentional gaze that allows for chance encounters, for stories and memories - leads that Ruth Beckermann follows across Europe and the Mediterranean. Nigerian asylum seekers in Sicily, an Arab musician in Galilee, nationalists drunk on beer in Vienna, the Capitoline Wolf, and three veiled young women trying for minutes to cross a busy road in Alexandria. Threads, cloth and textiles pop up like book marks in a fabric of movement, of traveling or seeking refuge.

The story of Pixar's early short films illuminates not only the evolution of the company but also the early days of computer animation, when a small group of artists and scientists shared a single computer in a hallway, and struggled to create emotionally compelling short films.

Every year, thousands of commercials are made that never reach our TV screens, deemed too shocking to see. In order to make it onto the screen, they must clear all manner of obstacles, from fussy clients to obsessive regulators and restrictive rights issues. X-Rated takes a look at these outlawed pieces of advertising, revealing the most explicit, controversial and shocking ads never seen. These are ads that break all manner of taboos, from sex, violence, blasphemy, homosexuality, animal cruelty, rapping pensioners, swearing children, suicidal toys and naked athletes to Kylie in her undies on a bucking bronco. Amongst the contributors are advertising executives, producers and censors. The programme also takes a look at the embarrassing world of western celebrities in Japanese ads.

This documentary study of the mechanisms that turn the gears of the tabloids is conducted by the unique figure Pavel Novotný. This editor-in-chief of one of the most widely read Czech media outlets of the time, providing news from the world of show business and human misfortune, gets straight to the point. Readership is a fetish, an absolute alibi for all invasions of privacy and every transgression of good ethics. Seen up close, the whole cluster of disreputable reports looks like a staged tableau. Before the eager eyes of an anxious public, celebrities willingly or unwillingly perform acts that the scrutiny of the all-powerful tabloid workers attributes racy significance to.

Taking the form of a conversation between a young teacher at a French school in Moncton and her students, the film shows how hard it is for francophones to preserve their language in a society where English is everywhere and has been for centuries.

From the lower St. Lawrence, a picture of whale hunting that looks more like a round-up, with a corral, whale-boys and all. In 1534, when he stopped at the island he named l'Île-aux-Coudres, Jacques Cartier saw how the Indians captured the little white beluga whales by setting a fence of saplings into off-shore mud. In the film, the islanders show that the old method still works, thanks to the trusting 'sea-pigs,' the same old tide, and a little magic.

Bermuda Triangle Exposed’ explores the most deadly and unexplained marine graveyard on Earth. It spans from Bermuda to Miami to Puerto Rico; from 8,500 metres below the surface of the sea to 8,500 metres into the sky. For decades it has held us baffled as it defies explanation. Some 2000 boats and 75 planes have disappeared without a trace here. Freak waves, magnetic anomalies, giant whirlpools and strange fireballs have all been blamed for the unusual disappearances. See whether we will ever determine truth behind the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle as this programme investigates what is beneath the infamous stretch of ocean.

“Making Waves” takes viewers below the surface of the world’s largest freshwater ecosystem and into the middle of a complex war for survival. For more than a century, non-native species of plants, fish, invertebrates and microscopic organisms have been silently invading the Great Lakes, leaving devastation in their wake. Invasive species like Asian carp, zebra mussels and more are transforming the ecosystem from top to bottom, pushing some native species to the brink of extinction, and costing the region hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Narrated by Bill Kurtis, “Making Waves” traces the path of the invasion and joins researchers on the front lines as they combat invasive species and work to restore native species, in an effort to prevent a biological takeover of the Great Lakes.

Franz West (1909-85) remembers his youth in Vienna: the variety of the Jewish population of the so called Matzah-Island, his commitment to the worker’s movement of the Red Vienna and the rise of Austro-fascism and National Socialism. West’s masterly narration combined with impressing archive footage illustrate and elucidate the complex Austrian history between WW1 and WW2.

Patrick Troughton was born and raised in North London. During a long and successful career he appeared in countless television dramas, including Doctor Finlay's Casebook, and The Old Curiosity Shop, plus feature films including Laurence Olivier’s acclaimed Hamlet. But it is probably his role as the second Doctor Who that he will be most remembered for. Eccentric, childish, comic, whimsical... the list of facets within his portrayal is long and complex and this reflected much of Patrick’s own personality. In this tribute Myth Makers we concentrate on what exactly made PATRICK’s second Doctor so successful. And for the first time we include an exclusive interview with Patrick shot at his only UK convention appearance at PanoptiCon VI! The only such interview shot in the UK.

The life and work of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.