The Back-breaking Leaf

Smoke Traders is an inside look at the world of the Mohawk tobacco trade.

When Jennifer Pan calls 911 to report that her parents have been shot, she becomes the primary focus of a captivating criminal case.

Joyce Jonathan Crone—Mohawk matriarch, retired teacher, activist, humanitarian—reaches forward into her community of Huntsville, Ontario, opening hearts and bridging gaps for Indigenous education.

Shot in Southern England over the course of six weeks by a crew of three American filmmakers, CircleSpeak offers a nuanced look at the passions and beliefs of the people immersed in the crop circle phenomenon during the season of 2001. This feature-length documentary presents interviews with serious “researchers”, self-proclaimed “hoaxers”, local farmers and villagers who are all, in one way or another, involved in this strange and compelling summer spectacle taking place year after year.

Varda focuses her eye on gleaners: those who scour already-reaped fields for the odd potato or turnip. Her investigation leads from forgotten corners of the French countryside to off-hours at the green markets of Paris, following those who insist on finding a use for that which society has cast off, whether out of necessity or activism.

The definitive account of Japan’s struggle as it faced a nuclear catastrophe while still reeling from the devastation of an earthquake and tsunami.

Pêche Capitale

This documentary follows two Mohawk girls on their journey to become Mohawk women. Friends since childhood, Kaienkwinehtha and Kasennakohe are members of the traditional community of Akwesasne on the U.S./Canada border. Together, they undertake a four-year rite of passage for adolescents, called Oheró:kon, or "under the husk." The ceremony had been nearly extinct, a casualty of colonialism and intergenerational trauma; revived in the past decade by two traditional leaders, it has since flourished. Filmmaker Katsitsionni Fox has served as a mentor, or "auntie," to many youth going through the passage rites.

For the past 40 years, Bruce Beach has been preparing for a nuclear disaster. A bunker of 42 school buses is buried on his property, designed to save humanity. Curious onlookers and interested preppers regularly visit the site named Ark Two, but it's clear that the creator of this decaying shelter is the only one truly convinced of its practicality in the event of an apocalypse. Now that Bruce is in his 80s, he and his wife Jean need to spend more time taking care of their immediate needs than worrying about the future. What could easily be dismissed as evangelical paranoia becomes a tragic yet uplifting story about a risk-taking inventor who has lived without regrets. Sometimes outside-the-box thinkers become millionaires and are recognized for their genius ability to guide us into the future, while others are pushed to the margins. There’s a lot to be learned from both

2020 marks 100 years since the birth of Federico Fellini, the most prominent Italian director and one of the symbols of the insuperable cinematic heyday of mid-20th century. Fellini had always been a mysterious director, not only in his cryptic symbolism but also in his idiosyncratic, excessive mixture of psychoanalysis, Catholicism and faith in the mysterious. In this documentary, his relationship with the paranormal, luck and fate, alongside the coexistence of organized discourse and transcendence to the imaginary, is examined via friends, collaborators and distinguished fans (Friedkin, Gilliam, Chazelle). A great testimony to why rationalists and ideologists have a hard time with his work, ‘Fellini and the Spirits’ is an appropriate yet unexpected tribute.

Picturesque scenes of land girls gathering hay on an Essex farm during WWI.

A fast-paced collage of Ontario life. Highlights include a rollercoaster ride, a hair-raising speedboat skim along Ottawa's Rideau Canal, a downhill ski run through the trees on a Thunder Bay trail, and the sleek beauty of a small fleet of ice boats whistling over a gleaming lake.

Za bohatou úrodu

Žně 1950

The second IMAX film made, commissioned by the Ontario Government, and produced by MultiScreen Corporation, later to become IMAX corporation. North of Superior is a Northern Ontario travelogue, and was the first short feature to be shown at the newly created Ontario government theme park, Ontario Place, in it's state of the art cinema, Cinesphere, the first permanent IMAX installation.

Documentary about the last four seasons on the farm run by the director's parents. The film starts on 1 January 1992, at 6 am and ends in a misty landscape at the end of that year. Het is een schone dag geweest (It's been a beautiful day) shows the end of a farm venture for which no successor has been found, but also the disappearance of a traditional way of life. Modern agriculture is ruled by new regulations, largely made in Brussels. Lonely work on a noisy machine replaces hard but communal work on the land. In a disciplined style, the film shows the disappearance of a traditional lifestyle in part of Holland. Het is een schone dag geweest was ïn 2007 admitted to the "Canon van de Nederlandse Film", a list of the most important Dutch films. (filmcommission.nl)

Women make up less than a quarter of STEM professionals in the United States, and numbers are even lower for women of color. But there is a growing group of researchers who are writing a new chapter for women scientists, exposing longstanding discrimination, and leading the way in making science more inclusive.

In the Canadian Northwest, the Chippewa tribe struggles to find food before the onset of winter.

The rhythms of a typical day during the summer wheat harvest in Kansas.

A journey through valleys, living rocks and the culture of the Valtellina hillsides.