Social & External
A promotional video produced by the Alberta government in 1975, "The time of the tar sands", featuring Gordon Pinsent. credit: Archives of Alberta.
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.
Ladies of good families and social standing come to have their afternoon tea with their daughters who will someday follow in the same tradition. A charming portrait of a time that is slowly disappearing.
In the past 20 years, some 300,000 English-speaking people have left Montréal, convinced they had no future in a Québec that had become increasingly French, increasingly nationalistic. In this video we meet some of the people who are moving away and recall the days, in the last century, when there were more English-speaking people than French in Montréal. The video poses a controversial question: Will the city, with its youth leaving in great numbers, become a community of the elderly, unable to renew itself?
After a storm Montreal gets fully covered by snow
Raise Her Up follows the historian, advocate, and artist creating a statue of Armine Gosling, marking 100 years of womens suffrage in Newfoundland.
A web documentary that explores Montreal’s incredible contribution to jazz music history through the legendary black musicians of Little Burgundy – the neighbourhood that was a hub of musical creativity, private clubs and speakeasies from the Jazz Age 1920s to the Golden Era of Jazz in the 1940s and 50s. Oscar Peterson, Oliver Jones, Norman Marshall Villeneuve, the Sealey Brothers, Nelson Symonds, and Louis Metcalf are among the greats who lived or played in "Burgundy".
Every day, on the streets of Canada's cities, we pass them on our way to work or school. Bums, beggars, winos, bag people we call them. But who is the person at the end of that outstretched arm? What is life on the street really like? Is there a way off the street? For six years, director Daniel Cross followed the lives of three homeless men who spent much of their time in and around a Montreal subway station. Filmed in a cinema verité style, the film is unique: it humanizes the homeless, breaking down the barrier between us and them, neither moralizing nor offering easy answers. This is a gritty, compelling look at life on the streets that moves beyond the media stereotypes to show both the humanity of the homeless and the street-toughened aspects of their existence.
This feature documentary examines its own genre, which has often been called Canada's national art form. Released in the year of the NFB's 75th birthday, Shameless Propaganda is filmmaker Robert Lower's take on the boldest and most compelling propaganda effort in our history (1939-1945), in which founding NFB Commissioner John Grierson saw the documentary as a "hammer to shape society". All 500 of the films produced by the NFB until 1945 are distilled here for the essence of their message to Canadians. Using only these films and still photos from that era, Lower recreates the picture of Canada they gave us and looks in it for the Canada we know today. What he finds is by turns enlightening, entertaining, and unexpectedly disturbing.
A young and ambitious team of chefs face the life-changing challenges of competing in the world's most prestigious culinary competition.
An impressionistic view of Canada's national parks. The camera creates a composite landscape of ideal beauty where nature is wild and varied. It travels from the east coast to the west, from seashore to mountains, from lakes to forests. A film without words.
Produced for the NFB by Crawley Films Ltd. for the Canadian Department of Industry Trade and Commerce. This film provides a showcase for products manufactured in Canada, from aircraft designed for special duties, to pre-cast bathrooms that can be installed in one simple operation. There is heavy-duty machinery developed for the special needs of Canadian industry. There are women's fashions of universal appeal. All bear the 'Made in Canada' label and can be viewed in this film in colour and at close range.
A woman with a deep love of the land, Yolande Simard Perrault sees her life as having been shaped by a planetary upheaval in Charlevoix, Quebec, millions of years ago. As enduring as the Canadian Shield, she’s a woman of strength and spirit, a child of the crater left by the meteor’s impact. This documentary portrays a determined woman who’s the reflection of a land created on an immense scale. She was the creative and life partner of filmmaker Pierre Perrault, who gave up everything to be by her side. The film charts the influence of her unquenchable dreams and her contribution to the building of a people’s collective memory. In a stream of images and words, Simard Perrault recounts the splendours of the landscape and the people who shaped it. Generous and boundless, she embarks on a quest for identity that nurtures and perpetuates the oeuvre of the man who breathed new life into Quebec cinema.
A Brazilian performance artist Vanesa Cardoso living in Newfoundland, Canada explores the figures of her Pochinko clown, discovering a desire to expose the comedy of our deepest vulnerabilities - the very ones that make us human. A creative journey through Richard Pochinko's seven masks and six directions, Vanessa reveals her clown while musing on the personal drive and struggles that inspire her art.
Interviews with leading authors, philosophers and scientists, with an in-depth discussion of the Law of Attraction. The audience is shown how they can learn and use 'The Secret' in their everyday lives.
This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.
RETURN tells the story of a retired Green Beret who embarks on a healing journey from Montana to Vietnam. There he retraces his steps, shares his wartime experiences with his son, treats his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and seeks out the mountain tribespeople he once lived with and fought alongside as a Special Forces officer.
Alex Gibney explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.
Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
One-man armies, meet-cutes, casual strolls away from huge explosions — stars and industry insiders toast and roast these cinematic chestnuts and more.
Legendary journalist Gay Talese unmasks a motel owner who spied on his guests for decades. But his bombshell story soon becomes a scandal of its own.
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
Just two years away from turning 30, participants in Michael Apted's documentary series are facing serious questions of identity and purpose, wondering whether they've found their place in the world.
A look at the origins, history and conspiracies behind the "Majestic 12", a clandestine group of military and corporate figureheads charged with reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.
The Captains is a feature-length documentary film written and directed by William Shatner. The film follows Shatner as he interviews the other actors who have portrayed starship captains in the Star Trek franchise.
Five broken cameras – and each one has a powerful tale to tell. Embedded in the bullet-ridden remains of digital technology is the story of Emad Burnat, a farmer from the Palestinian village of Bil’in, which famously chose nonviolent resistance when the Israeli army encroached upon its land to make room for Jewish colonists. Emad buys his first camera in 2005 to document the birth of his fourth son, Gibreel. Over the course of the film, he becomes the peaceful archivist of an escalating struggle as olive trees are bulldozed, lives are lost, and a wall is built to segregate burgeoning Israeli settlements.
Filmed at the end of Taylor Swift's record-breaking Eras Tour in Vancouver, B.C., this complete, in-depth 45-song concert includes the complete 'The Tortured Poets Department' set and special mashups.
A look at how climate change affects our environment and what society can do to prevent the demise of endangered species, ecosystems, and native communities across the planet.
In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.
A group of British children aged 7 from widely ranging backgrounds are interviewed about a range of subjects. The filmmakers plan to re-interview them at 7 year intervals to track how their lives and attitudes change as they age.
Police pull over a woman who claims she just gave birth. But the baby — and the blood — aren't hers. Twisted lies unravel in this true-crime documentary.
Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.
Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.
This documentary from Albert and David Maysles follows the bitter rivalry of four door-to-door salesmen working for the Mid-American Bible Company: Paul "The Badger" Brennan, Charles "The Gipper" McDevitt, James "The Rabbit" Baker and Raymond "The Bull" Martos. Times are tough for this hard-living quartet, who spend their days traveling through small-town America, trying their best to peddle gold-leaf Bibles to an apathetic crowd of lower-middle-class housewives and elderly couples.
