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  • Dresden Story
    Dresden Story
    Julian Biggs 1954 30 min
    This film goes to Dresden, Ontario, to sample local attitudes towards racial discrimination against black people that brought this town into the news. After a round-up of the opinions of individual citizens, white and black, commentator Gordon Burwash joins two discussion panels, presenting opposite points of view. The rights and wrongs of the quarrel are left for the audience to decide.
  • Eye Witness No. 33
    Eye Witness No. 33
    1951 11 min
    These vignettes from 1951 covered various aspects of life in Canada and were shown in theatres across the country. Subjects included here are the S.S. Lurcher, an anchored boat that serves as both lighthouse and weather station; a 3-day celebration in Windsor, Ontario, to commemorate the freeing of American slaves; and British Columbia’s fabulous Sullivan Mine, where vast quantities of lead and zinc are being blasted from the belly of a mountain.
  • Everybody's Children
    Everybody's Children
    Monika Delmos 2008 51 min
    Monika Delmos's documentary captures a year in the life of two teenage refugees, Joyce and Sallieu, who have left their own countries to make a new life in Ontario. Joyce, 17, left the Democratic Republic of Congo to avoid being forced into prostitution by her family. Sallieu, 16, had witnessed the murder of his mother as a young boy in wartorn Sierra Leone.

    Delmos follows them as they bear the normal pressures of being a teenager while simultaneously undergoing the refugee application process. She shows how the guidance and support of a handful of people make a real difference in the day-to-day lives of these children.
  • Earth to Mouth
    Earth to Mouth
    Yung Chang 2002 41 min
    Filmed at the Wing Fong Farm in Ontario, this documentary follows the tilling, planting and harvesting of Asian vegetables destined for Chinese markets and restaurants. On 80 acres of land, Lau King-Fai, her son and a half-dozen migrant Mexican workers care for the plants. For Yeung Kwan, her son, the farm represents personal and financial independence. For his mother, it is an oasis of peace. For the Mexican workers, it provides jobs that help support their children back home.
  • Flemingdon Park: The Global Village
    Flemingdon Park: The Global Village
    Andrew Faiz 2002 47 min
    This documentary examines the history and current reality of Toronto’s Flemingdon Park. Now a subsidized housing project, it was built in 1961 as a trendy urban utopia. A decade later it was sold, and Flemingdon became home to refugees and new immigrants. Once a model of urban planning, Flemingdon Park's flip side is a history of violence and racism that residents have fought to overcome. Yet despite challenges, the community succeeds in making people from around the world feel at home in a different kind of utopia–one where differences are celebrated and new visions are possible.
  • Fighting Back
    Fighting Back
    Gary Toole 1984 24 min
    The Cabbagetown Boxing Club in Toronto has produced many Olympic and world-class boxers. Fighting Back is the story of Asif Dar, an underweight immigrant who learned boxing in order to defend himself from neighbourhood bullies. The film traces the relationship between Asif Dar, who came to the club as a youngster, and his instructor, Ken Hamilton, a long-time foe of the violence traditionally associated with boxing.
  • Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community
    Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community
    Jennifer Hodge  &  Roger McTair 1983 57 min
    This feature documentary takes us to the heart of the Jane-Finch "Corridor" in the early 1980s. Covering six square blocks in Toronto's North York, the area readily evokes images of vandalism, high-density subsidized housing, racial tension, despair and crime. By focusing on the lives of several of the residents, many of them black or members of other visible minorities, the film provides a powerful view of a community that, contrary to its popular image, is working towards a more positive future.
  • Invisible City
    Invisible City
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    Hubert Davis 2009 1 h 15 min
    Invisible City is a moving story of two boys from Regent Park crossing into adulthood – their mothers and mentors rooting for them to succeed; their environment and social pressures tempting them to make poor choices. Turning his camera on the often ignored inner city, Academy-award nominated director Hubert Davis sensitively depicts the disconnection of urban poverty and race from the mainstream.
  • Older Stronger Wiser
    Older Stronger Wiser
    Claire Prieto 1989 27 min
    In this short documentary, five black women talk about their lives in rural and urban Canada between the 1920s and 1950s. What emerges is a unique history of Canada’s black people and the legacy of their community elders. Produced by the NFB’s iconic Studio D.
  • The People of the Book
    The People of the Book
    Felix Lazarus 1973 28 min
    This short documentary explores the realities of Canadian Jews dwelling in smaller urban centers. Filmed in the northern Ontario towns of Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie and North Bay, The People of the Book provides insight into the ancient pattern of ceremony and belief practiced in the synagogue and shows the efforts of Jewish communities to perpetuate their culture and traditions.
  • Portrait of the Artist--As an Old Lady
    Portrait of the Artist--As an Old Lady
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    Gail Singer 1982 27 min
    Paraskeva 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.
  • The Right Candidate for Rosedale
    The Right Candidate for Rosedale
    Bonnie Sherr Klein  &  Anne Henderson 1979 32 min
    This short documentary records Black activist Anne Cools’ 1978 run for the Liberal Party nomination in Rosedale, one of Toronto's largest and socially most diverse federal ridings. The film records her bid for political power, and explains the nomination contest, a basic step in the Canadian electoral process. Because she was competing against the Liberal Party's preferred candidate, the nomination battle in Rosedale turned into one of the most innovative and fascinating in the history of Canadian politics.
  • Speakers for the Dead
    Speakers for the Dead
    David Sutherland  &  Jennifer Holness 2000 49 min
    This documentary reveals some of the hidden history of Blacks in Canada. In the 1930s in rural Ontario, a farmer buried the tombstones of a Black cemetery to make way for a potato patch. In the 1980s, descendants of the original settlers, Black and White, came together to restore the cemetery, but there were hidden truths no one wanted to discuss. Deep racial wounds were opened. Scenes of the cemetery excavation, interviews with residents and re-enactments—including one of a baseball game where a broken headstone is used for home plate—add to the film's emotional intensity.
  • The Secret Order
    The Secret Order
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    Phil Comeau 2022 1 h 24 min
    Phil Comeau shines a spotlight on the Ordre de Jacques-Cartier, a powerful secret society that operated from 1926 to 1965, infiltrating every sector of Canadian society and forging the fate of French-language communities. Through never-before-heard testimony from former members of the Order, along with historically accurate dramatic reconstructions, this film paints a gripping portrait of the social and political struggles of Canadian francophone-minority communities.
  • Unarmed Verses
    Unarmed Verses
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    Charles Officer 2016 1 h 25 min
    This feature documentary presents a thoughtful and vivid portrait of a community facing imposed relocation. At the centre of the story is a remarkably astute and luminous 12-year-old black girl whose poignant observations about life, the soul, and the power of art give voice to those rarely heard in society. Unarmed Verses is a cinematic rendering of our universal need for self-expression and belonging.
  • Veronica
    Veronica
    Beverly Shaffer 1977 14 min
    Nine-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.
  • World In a City
    World In a City
    Brett Story 2016 13 min
    World in a City is a portrait of Toronto and the steps Torontonians are taking to create a society that welcomes and encourages new immigrants to flourish. Join photographer Colin Boyd Shafer as he celebrates diversity in this short film, Canada’s contribution to the Big Cities project, an exciting international collaboration that uses documentary storytelling to outline both the challenges facing growing urban areas and the bold solutions to these ongoing problems.