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.
La meilleure façon, c'est par accident
"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 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
A working class family leaves St-Henri quarter in Montréal to build a new home in the countryside.
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 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 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
Michel Brault, l'instinct de vue
Narrated by George Stevens Jr., this documentary by Oscar-winning director George Stevens trains its lens on World War II in a way that's rarely been seen before: in full color. The effect is nothing less than astounding, as viewers bear witness to the carnage of all-out battle in the European theater, which was home to some of the bloodiest skirmishes ever, from the Norman invasion to the fall of Berlin.
Out of one small London venue called The Blitz came a generation of outrageous teenagers, working class and art school kids, who would define the look, the sound, the style and the attitude of the '80s and beyond. This is their story.
Mrs. GREEN APPLE // The White Lounge in CINEMA
How an Irish border community took on an energy company - and its own government - to force a change in the law on oil and gas…
Singer-songwriter Charli XCX brings her pandemic album "how i'm feeling now" to life in this cinematic and intimate virtual show from Bandsintown PLUS.
Documentary about the first gay prom in America, that took place in West Hollywood, promoted by students of the EAGLES center, an alternative high school.
Gil Scott-Heron was one of the most influential musicians and poets of the last 50 years. In Don Letts's documentary, Gil tells his own story for the first time-from being one of the first black children to integrate an all white Southern state school to becoming the Godfather of Rap. There are contributions from Chuck D, Mos Def, Richi Havens and the Last Poets, among others. Filmed in October 2003, Gil performs live and recites poetry out on the streets of Harlem, which have inspired so much of his music.
Pixar director Peter Sohn takes viewers on a humorous personal journey through the inspiration behind Disney and Pixar’s feature film “Elemental.” “Good Chemistry: The Story of Elemental” traces his parents’ voyage from Korea to New York, explores his dad’s former grocery shop in the heart of the Bronx, and delves into his choice of a career in animation, rather than the family business.
Supermodel Adriana Lima presents a behind-the-scenes look at the FIFA congress in the Rwandan capital of Kigali in March 2023, which made Kigali the first-ever host city of a FIFA elective congress in Africa.
The rejection of the project for a new, more socially just constitution by the Chilean people in 2022 has reignited the conflicts that have plagued the country for five decades. On September 11, 1973, in a bloody military coup, General Pinochet ended the socialist revolution launched by President Salvador Allende, legitimately elected in a democratic election. The subsequent dictatorial regime with fascist features brought great violence and terror to the Chilean people. The accompanying neo-liberal economic system, which made the country one of the richest in the region, led to an ever-widening social gap in society, which in turn fell into a kind of passivity. In 2019, long after the dictator was voted out of office and the democratization that followed, a new social movement is shaking the prevailing order. From Allende's socialism to Pinochet's fascism, this historical fresco in documentary form returns to the origins of the rupture.
In June 2010, French actress Marion Cotillard spent a week in the heart of the tropical forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo with members of Greenpeace France and Greenpeace Africa. She delivers in video a strong testimony on the looting of Congolese forests which benefits a few industrial groups, often European.