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European Origins (26)
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The 80 Goes to SpartaBill Davies 1969 45 minThis feature documentary studies the different faces of Montreal’s Greek community in 1969. Instead of giving voice to the businessmen and well-integrated few, the film highlights the cultural and economic problems encountered by new immigrants and their families. -
Barbed Wire and MandolinsNicola Zavaglia 1997 48 minThis documentary introduces us to Italian-Canadians whose lives were disrupted and uprooted by seclusion in internment camps during the Second World War. On June 10, 1940, Italy entered WWII. Overnight, the Canadian government came to see the country's 112,000 Italian-Canadians as a threat to its national security. The RCMP rounded up thousands of people it considered fascist sympathizers. Seven hundred of them were held for up to three years in internment camps, most of them at Petawawa, Ontario. None were ever charged with a criminal offence. Remarkably, the former internees are not bitter as they look back on the way their own country treated them.
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Bekevar JubileeAlbert Kish 1977 27 minA warm and lively film, Bekevar Jubilee dips into history to look at a time when the first Hungarian peasants came to settle the plains of Saskatchewan. The film documents the festivities commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Bekevar community, and contrasts it with footage and photographs of the old and new countries at the turn of the century.
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Eye Witness No. 53Grant McLean 1953 11 minEvery year thousands of immigrants enter Canada. But what of their homelands and the ties they leave behind? This film visits Holland to tell that human story--the story of the Boelhauers, farm folk who choose emigration as the best means of one day owning their own land. Arriving in Canada, they are given hope by what they see around them. At the same time, Canada has acquired a fine family of the land.
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EnigmaticoDavid Mortin & Patricia Fogliato 1995 51 minInterweaving poetry, painting, photography, music and sculpture, this feature documentary is an innovative look at the lives and work of Canadian men and women artists of Italian origin. Broaching issues of identity and culture, the film explores the relationship between the immigrant experience and the creative process.
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Fires of EnvyDon Haldane 1957 29 minThis short film is a dramatization of Canadian author W.O. Mitchell's penetrating story about the racial prejudice encountered by a Polish immigrant farmer in a rural Saskatchewan community. Presented with the incisiveness characteristic of Mitchell's Jake and the Kid radio series, this film story employs homespun events of a farming community to lay bare some universal truths about the unthinking discrimination practiced against a man who is different from his English-speaking fellow farmers.
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Iceland on the PrairiesRadford Crawley 1941 21 minThis film tells the inspiring story of the rise of the Icelandic communities in western Canada and their fine contribution to the Canadian heritage. Like many people who have emigrated to Canada and become true Canadians, the prairie Icelanders have retained many of the customs and traditions of their ancestral land. Their food, for instance, is prepared in Icelandic fashion; and although their children go to Canadian schools, they also learn the sagas and legends of their forefathers.
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Jack RabbitWilliam Brind 1975 28 minThis short film retraces the life of Herman Smith Johannsen – the man who introduced the sport of cross-country skiing to Canadians. From past to present, his life story is portrayed through pictures from sports newsreels, Norwegian archives and his family album. The film catches up with him at both the Canadian Ski Marathon, where he is the honoured guest, and on a return trip to his native Norway.
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LouiseAnita Lebeau 2003 9 minThis animated short is an ode to Louise, a fiercely independent 96-year old inspired by animator Anita Lebeau's grandmother. Speaking in her own voice, Louise takes us through a day in her busy life near the town of Bruxelles, in rural Manitoba. Between coping with garden gophers and reaching cupboards that have grown taller, Louise's plans sometimes miscarry, her sense of humour is foolproof.
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The Last KeyJulien Capraro 2017 23 minA young immigrant arrives in Canada from France—and brings his Citroën 2CV with him. The iconic post-war car stands out on the streets of Vancouver, and before long he meets up with a group of like-minded car buffs. In Julien Capraro’s documentary short, Franck, Lionel, Harjeet and Johnny Mac, who are busy preparing for an upcoming antique-car show, explain how these vehicles not only evoke nostalgia for a past era but are also a powerful marker of identity and a link between two cultures. Produced as part of the Tremplin competition, in collaboration with ICI Radio-Canada Télé.
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Luckily I Need Little SleepKathleen Shannon 1974 7 minKathy worked as a nurse in Greece and then came to Canada. She and her family live in northern Alberta, where they are developing a farm. Kathy works outside the home as a nurse, sews for the children, maintains the house, and helps with the farm work.
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Mediterraneo Sempre - Mediterranean ForeverNicola Zavaglia 2000 1 h 12 minThis feature documentary explores the roots and communities of the Italian immigrants who have made Montreal their home across the 20th century. Starting from a village in Calabria, the filmmaker recounts the saga of Italian immigrants and presents a chapter from the history of his own community. Wherever the tides of immigration carried them, the exiled descendants of Leonardo and Michelangelo have re-created a Mediterranean of the heart, to which they turn to reconnect with their roots.
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Night MayorGuy Maddin 2009 13 minThis short Guy Maddin film tells the story of inventor Nihad Ademi, who harnesses the power of the aurora borealis in Winnipeg in 1939. Ademi uses this power to broadcast images of Canada to its own citizens from coast to coast, but in the process angers he the government.
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One Sunday in CanadaGilles Carle 1961 27 minOne Sunday in Canada visits an Italian community in the northwest sector of Montreal, where about half of the city's 150,000 Italians live. In the new suburbs where they are settling, the streets may have names like Venice, Naples, Genoa; and wherever men and women gather, there is the ebullience characteristic of the Latin. This is a Sunday on which special observances are held at the Italian church of Madonna della Difesa, and it is also the Sunday when Montreal's Cantalia soccer team challenges Toronto's Italia. A very human story of people adapting to life in a new environment.
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Passport to CanadaRoger Blais 1949 11 minIn the 1940s thousands of immigrants are coming from Europe to Canada offering strength and skills in exchange for hope and a new life. 'The long night is ended, the morning draws nigh,' sums up the feelings of those who are sped through immigration formalities on their way to a fresh existence. Though the language may be different, these new Canadians soon find things in Canada that remind them of Holland, Poland or Belgium. Some immigrants carry on with their old trades--sewing, farming, diamond cutting. Others, on huge projects such as Des Joachims, use their muscles to help build their adopted homeland, while their love of culture and their skilled professions will make valuable contributions to Canada in the future.
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PiesSheldon Cohen 2004 12 minThis animated film about blind prejudice is based on a short story by Canadian author Wilma Riley. Mrs. Cherwak is Polish and owns a cow. Mrs. Meuser is a German with entrenched notions of cleanliness. She does not appreciate the cow's inevitable by-product. The film describes their conflict and its curious resolution over coffee and mincemeat pie. While the author chose to write about the Germans and the Poles she grew up with on the outskirts of Regina, the situation she describes could apply anywhere in the world.
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Paul Tomkowicz: Street-railway SwitchmanRoman Kroitor 1953 9 minIn this film, Paul Tomkowicz, Polish-born Canadian, talks about his job and his life in Canada. He compares his new life in the city of Winnipeg to the life he knew in Poland, marvelling at the freedom Canadians enjoy. In winter the rail-switches on streetcar tracks in Winnipeg froze and jammed with freezing mud and snow. Keeping them clean, whatever the weather, was the job of the switchman.
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Polish DanceLaura Boulton 1944 10 minThis short documentary profiles the traditional music and pageantry of Polish-Canadians in Manitoba. The heritage and national traditions of Poland were brought to Canada by immigrants and sustained across generations. The colourful traditional dress and lively music of Polish-Canadians is captured by ethnomusicologist Laura Boulton, a pioneering woman in the educational documentary film movement whose goal was to “capture, absorb, and bring back the world’s music.”
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The Physics of SorrowTheodore Ushev 2019 27 minThe Physics of Sorrow tracks an unknown man’s life as he sifts through memories of his youth in Bulgaria through to his increasingly rootless and melancholic adulthood in Canada.
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Portrait of the Artist--As an Old LadyGail Singer 1982 27 minParaskeva Clark, artist, socialist, feminist, is her own woman at her own cost. This film is a cameo of an irascible and oftentimes touching artist whose work has won her a place in exhibitions and private collections. Born in Russia in 1898, she eventually married a Canadian and moved to Toronto. Because her canvases reflect a strong social conscience, she had to struggle hard to earn a place in the nation's ultra-conservative galleries.
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Strangers at the DoorJohn Howe 1977 28 minThis drama tells the harrowing story of an immigrant family in the New World. On arrival in Canada, their hopes for a better life were dashed when immigration officials refused to grant entry to their daughter. During a routine medical examination it was found that Kasia had contracted an infectious eye disease. She is separated from her family and sent back to Europe alone.
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ShipbuilderStephen Surjik 1985 6 minThis film recreates the true story of Tom Sukanen, an eccentric Finnish immigrant who homesteaded in Saskatchewan in the 1920s and 1930s. Sukanen spent ten years building and moving overland a huge iron ship that was to carry him back to his native Finland. The ship never reached water.
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This Is a PhotographAlbert Kish 1971 10 minThis short experimental film is composed of snapshot impressions of a European immigrant's first five years in Canada. With humour and discernment, they reveal his reactions to his adopted country, to the environment, and the Canadian manners and customs to which he attempts to adjust. At first everything seems strange—the red brick houses, the glass skyscrapers, cars everywhere, stores stuffed with consumer goods—but gradually our protagonist becomes accustomed to calling the place home.
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TzaritzaTheodore Ushev 2006 6 minThis animated short by Theodore Ushev combines warmth, humour and magic in a story about a young girl who misses her grandmother. When Lili finds a tzaritza (magic shell) along the seashore, she hatches a plan to bring her Grandma from Bulgaria to Montreal to make her father happy. Part of the Talespinners collection, the film features music by Normand Roger.
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VeronicaBeverly Shaffer 1977 14 minNine-year-old Veronica Makarewicz leads a double life. Born of Polish parents, she dances Polish dances, goes twice weekly to a Polish school, and talks to Polish customers in her parents' bakery. But this film shows that she is also very Canadian. This film is part of the Children of Canada series.
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Wood Mountain PoemsHarvey Spak 1978 28 minIn this short documentary, Canadian poet Andrew Suknaski introduces us to Wood Mountain, the south central Saskatchewan village he calls home. In between musings on his poetry, which is tinged with nostalgia and the vast loneliness of the plains, the poet discusses the area’s multicultural background and Native heritage, as well as the customs and stories of these various ethnic groups.
