Button Blanket

An Aboriginal Australian and Native American documentary narrated by award-winning actor Jack Thompson, One Heart-One Spirit tells the story of Kenneth Little Hawk, an elder Micmac/Mohawk performing artist, meeting the oldest surviving culture on the planet: the 40,000 year old Yolngu nation located in northern Australia.

The secret world of plants gets us closer to these motionless and quiet creatures, so attractive and surprising as the rest of the living creatures. The documentary reveals the most unknown aspects of the vegetable kingdom. We learn about the secret of the eternal youth of a 3500 years old sequoia and be charmed by the 'rafflesia arnoldi' flowers, able to reach up to one meter of diameter.

An NFB crew filmed a group of three families, Cree hunters from Mistassini. Since times predating agriculture, this First Nations people have gone to the bush of the James Bay and Ungava Bay area to hunt. We see the building of the winter camp, the hunting and the rhythms of Cree family life.

“Shellmound” is the story of how one location was transformed from a sacred center of pre-historic cultures to a commercial mecca for modern people. What began as a Native American burial ground three thousand years ago, was transformed first into an amusement park, and later an industrial age paint factory. Now, the tainted ancient soil sits beneath the glittering lights of Banana Republic, Victoria’s Secret, and the AMC movie theaters. “Shellmound” examines the decisions made during the recent toxic cleanup, excavation, and construction of the Bay Street mall through the eyes of the city of Emeryville, the developer, the archaeologists, and the native Californians who worked on the site.

This documentary short is an introduction to the Bella Bella (Heiltsuk) of Campbell Island, 500 km North of Vancouver on the Pacific Coast. Since the coming of settlers, these fishing people have watched their ancient Heiltsuk culture and their independence all but disappear. Today, in an energetic attempt to become self-sufficient, they are regaining both - successfully combining economic development with cultural revival.

Amazônia, a Nova Minamata?

Legendary documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin provides a glimpse of what action-driven decolonization looks like in Norway House, one of Manitoba's largest First Nation communities.

Explorer Bruce Parry visits nomadic tribes in Borneo and the Amazon in hope to better understand humanity's changing relationship with the world around us.

Yndio do Brasil is a collage of hundreds of Brazilian films and films from other countries - features, newsreels and documentaries - that show how the film industry has seen and heard Brazilian indigenous peoples since they were filmed in 1912 for the first time: idealised and prejudiced, religious and militaristic, cruel and magic.

Documentary about filmmaker Bonnie Ammaaq's memories of life on Baffin Island, where her family moved for eleven years during her childhood from the hamlet of Igloolik to return to the traditional Inuit way of life.

A polemic against Werner Herzog and the making of "Fitzcarraldo", exploring the question of the filmmaker's ethical and moral responsibility.

Wandering Spirit School, organized by concerned parents, broke with tradition by introducing subjects that are of particular relevance to its pupils. Traditional Indigenous stories, traditions, languages and crafts balance the program of academic subjects required by the Ontario Ministry of Education. The experience of the children at Wandering Spirit is contrasted with the very different life experienced by their parents, educated in the old residential schools.

Povo da Floresta

TOKYO Ainu features the Ainu, an indigenous people of Japan, living in Greater Tokyo (Tokyo and its surrounding areas), who are and actively in promoting their traditional culture in a metropolitan environment away from their traditional homeland, Hokkaido. Shedding a common assumption that all Ainu live in Hokkaido, the film captures the feelings, thoughts and aspirations of Ainu people that who try to follow the Ainu way no matter where they live.

When Masset, a Haida village in Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands), held a potlatch, it seemed as if the past grandeur of the people had returned. This is a colourful recreation of Indigenous life that faded more than two generations ago when the great totems were toppled by the missionaries and the costly potlatch was forbidden by law. The film shows how one village lived again the old glory, with singing, dancing, feasting, and the raising of a towering totem as a lasting reminder of what once was.

Muffins for Granny is a remarkably layered, emotionally complex story of personal and cultural survival. McLaren tells the story of her own grandmother by combining precious home movie fragments with the stories of seven elders dramatically affected by their experiences in residential school. McLaren uses animation with a painterly visual approach to move the audience between the darkness of memory and the reality that these charismatic survivors live in today.

With his ultra-conservative policies, US President Donald Trump is disrupting the global order as well as US institutions and society. Filmed less than one year after the start of his second mandate, this documentary analyses the concrete impact of his policies on the American people.

This documentary short is the first film made by an all-Aboriginal film crew, training under the NFB's Challenge for Change Program. It was shot at Akwesasne (St. Regis Reserve). Two spokesmen explain historical and other aspects of Longhouse religion, culture, and government and reflect on the impact of the white man's arrival on the Indian way of life.

A documentary film about Comanche activist LaDonna Harris, who led an extensive life of Native political and social activism, and is now passing on her traditional cultural and leadership values to a new generation of emerging Indigenous leaders.

In this revealing study of Norval Morrisseau, filmed as he works among the lakes and woodlands of his ancestors, we see a remarkable Indigenous artist who emerged from a life of obscurity in the North American bush to become one of Canada's most renowned painters. Morrisseau the man is much like his paintings: vital and passionate, torn between his Ojibway heritage and the influences of the white man's world.