Canadian Carnival

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.

When the junior ice hockey team from the small town of Náchod, in the Czech Republic, sets off in a bus to Morocco to play the away game in an exchange programme, the players and their coach expect an easy victory and a cultural shock: “bring ear plugs”, the coach suggests them with a touch of undisguised condescendence, so as not to hear the call to prayer early in the morning. Both on and off the ice, Rozálie Kohoutová and Tomáš Bojar’s camera focuses on a few teenagers and their exchanges, simultaneously funny and cruel, in a clumsy English.

Innu assi (communautés innues)

This short documentary offers a close-up view of a hectic hockey game in which the Toronto Maple Leafs and the New York Rangers fight to break a tied score. From the flash of blades, the spurting ice, and the echoing roar of avid fans, the film occasionally turns back to neighbourhood games where youngsters learn skating and stickhandling, the fundamentals of professional skill. Stars, such as Clint Smith, Bob Davidson, Syl Apps and others, are seen in action.

A documentary highlighting the Soviet Union's legendary and enigmatic hockey training culture and world-dominating team through the eyes of the team's Captain Slava Fetisov, following his shift from hockey star and celebrated national hero to political enemy.

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.

A stationary camera, looking diagonally across a racetrack toward the infield, records the horses as they race past. Once they are out of view and the race is over, police officers run onto the infield. The crowd moves around.

1972, the height of the cold war era, Canada vs USSR. 8 games of hard fought Hockey that would go onto change how Hockey is seen and played the world over. This made for TV documentary follows the 'Summit Series', an international Hockey event that would not only engulf the nations involved, but the entire world.

Anticosti: La chasse au pétrole extrême

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.

Take a breathtaking train a ride through Nothern Quebec and Labrador on Canada’s first First Nations-owned railway. Come for the celebration of the power of independence, the crucial importance of aboriginal owned businesses and stay for the beauty of the northern landscape.

This short film is a series of vignettes of life in Saint-Henri, a Montreal working-class district, on the first day of school. From dawn to midnight, we take in the neighbourhood’s pulse: a mother fussing over children, a father's enforced idleness, teenage boys clowning, young lovers dallying - the unposed quality of daily life.

Part documentary, part drama, this film presents the life and work of Jack Kerouac, an American writer with Québec roots who became one of the most important spokesmen for his generation. Intercut with archival footage, photographs and interviews, this film takes apart the heroic myth and even returns to the childhood of the author whose life and work contributed greatly to the cultural, sexual and social revolution of the 1960s.

Siméon Malec, host on Pakueshikan FM radio, receives Marie-Soleil Bellefleur on the air to discuss new regulations concerning salmon nets. To their great dismay, the duo is constantly interrupted by increasingly worrying calls... It seems that a lion has been seen in the community!

A film about an aging men's field hockey team from the Netherlands - average age: 70! - that has been playing together for over 50 years. They have decided to stop playing because they can't keep up with the 65-year olds… A portrait of a regional team of friends who are growing old together… And they are about to play their very last game together. Winner Audience Choice Award Art of Brooklyn Film Festival 2014

The story of an Eskimo father and son who train and groom a sled dog team. When the father is lost on an ice floe, the son takes the unproven team on the search, and succeeds in finding his father.

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.

On August 9, 1988, the NHL was forever changed with the single stroke of a pen. The Edmonton Oilers, fresh off their fourth Stanley Cup victory in five years, signed a deal that sent Wayne Gretzky, a Canadian national treasure and the greatest hockey player ever to play the game, to the Los Angeles Kings in a multi-player, multi-million dollar deal. As bewildered Oiler fans struggled to make sense of the unthinkable, fans in Los Angeles were rushing to purchase season tickets at a rate so fast it overwhelmed the Kings box office. Overnight, a franchise largely overlooked in its 21-year existence was suddenly playing to sellout crowds and standing ovations, and a league often relegated to “little brother” status exploded from 21 teams to 30 in less than a decade.

They call him "the Great One" and this is the first time ever he has told the many stories behind his greatest accomplishments and moments. Hosted by hockey personality John Davidson and Wayne's good friend, Keifer Sutherland, sports fans take a journey into the man that is Wayne Gretzky.

In-depth look at the twilight years, spent training apprentices, of temple builder Nishioka Tsunekazu, who was called the "devil" as he devoted his life to temple architecture. His insistence on the gargantuan timescale of linking life to the next millennium emerges from people who knew him. Remarkable as well for showing the unknown backstage of temple architecture. Nishioka, known as "the last temple carpenter," handled the major Showa-era repairs of Horyuji temple, and in 1990 was at the scene of the reconstruction work for Yakushi temple.