Belle famille

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.

"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

"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

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).

"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

La meilleure façon, c'est par accident

Michel Brault, l'instinct de vue

"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 sports documentary about association football that follows a week in the life of West Bromwich Albion football club.

A Cambridge geneticist dispels misconceptions about living with obesity and explores why the epidemic continues to expand across the UK and America.

A view from a window becomes the locus for a series of visual and verbal descriptions of the past and present.

Professional climber Emily Harrington has summited Everest, 8000-meter peaks, and dominated the competition circuit but, her greatest challenge extends beyond the physical. To cement her legacy in the male dominated world of elite rock climbing, she sets her sights on a career-defining 24-hour ascent of Yosemite’s El Capitan. Caught between the pursuit of personal ambition and the ticking biological clock of life, a near-fatal fall forces Emily to reckon with what she’s willing to risk. Equal parts gripping survival story and intimate portrait, Girl Climber isn’t just about breaking records, it’s about breaking barriers. Amongst Yosemite’s legendary boy’s club, Emily isn’t proving she is the best *Girl Climber-- she's proving she is one of the best. Period.

7P is constructed around the carol The Twelve Days of Christmas and incorporates similar picture and sound fragments recorded over the Christmas period 1977-8. Using the song as a determining framework, the film is edited so that picture and sound recorded on consecutive days are juxtaposed in each verse. The film is partly concerned with the abstract tensions produced by the day to day variations in picture and sound, but it also plays upon any expectations which arise from familiarity with the carol. Through repetition, nonsensical juxtapositions of word and image start to acquire their own unfathomable meanings. – J.S.

As a young girl, Fawzia Mirza fell under the spell of Bollywood heroines and their promise of love and feminine perfection. As an adult, she looks back and re-imagines the epic romance in the classic film Aradhana, in a queer light.

The third time was the charm. Twice turned down by "Menudo" for being too short, Ricky Martin (born Enrique Martin Morales) joined the boy band at the age of 12 and emerged as a teen heartthrob. Five years later, he was on his own, singing in 5 languages, propelling Latin pop to mainstream music. There was Mexican theater, a TV show, and then an American soap opera and sitcom along the way. The child who began as a choir altar boy and sang fast food TV ads in Puerto Rico would transcend his "Livin' La Vida Loca" lyrics and reveal his true self as a gay man. A six-year marriage, 4 children by surrogacy, and divorce would follow. Some may call it "A Loco Life."

Rhys Day presents NO DIVIDE - a sticky mashup biopic/ videofeast.

Behind the crown and beyond the glamour, ambitious hopefuls chase their Miss Universe Philippines dreams, facing fierce competition and great sacrifice.

A glimpse into the everyday life of Juanita, a Mayan traditional doctor, midwife, nurse and activist. Leader of "The Awakening of the Women who Heal,"; an organization of midwives in the Orient of Yucatan, Mexico. Juanita has dedicated her life to helping others with her gift for healing. The film follows Juanita as she redefines the meaning of modern and traditional medicine practices.

Outspoken leader Charles Perkins grew up on a reserve, separated from his relatives. He was shunned by white Australian society and his early experiences of racism spurred him to go on to university and to challenge racial inequality. One of the first Aboriginal people to graduate from university, he soon came to the forefront of direct action against oppression and injustice, leading the 1965 freedom rides that challenged apartheid practices in northern NSW. Freedom Ride takes Charles Perkins back to Moree and Walgett and uses newsreel footage and dramatic reconstructions to retrace his story. The program was directed and produced by his daughter Rachel Perkins; his son Adam Perkins plays Charles as a young man.

The Dreamers (1985) is a posthumous short film assembled by Oja Kodar from unfinished footage directed by Orson Welles in 1982. Edited after Welles’s death, the film derives from fragmentary material intended for an uncompleted adaptation of stories by Isak Dinesen. The 1985 version represents an editorial assembly rather than a completed work authored by Welles, presenting selected footage in a reconstructed form for archival circulation. (Note: This is a posthumous editorial reconstruction. The original 1982 project exists separately as an unfinished Welles work and was never completed or released by him.)