État critique

In this film a group of children manipulates reality using a series of photographs of their own activities. As they lay out the photos in different sequences, the story of their day changes. Simple, realistic dialogue and a combination of live action and still photographs capture the viewer's imagination.

This short follows grand dame of the theatre Diana Leblanc as she prepares for a role in The Dybbuk (Soulpepper Theatre Company) and gets ready to direct an opera (Madame Butterfly). The film weaves together archival footage, photographs, and animation depicting Leblanc as a young ballerina, offering an intimate reflection on her life’s passions, challenges, and lessons.

Produced by the NFB in co-operation with the National Arts Centre and the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards Foundation on the occasion of the 2015 Governor General's Performing Arts Awards.

George F. Walker's career has spanned almost four decades, but Rolly and Stevie (from Walker's play Criminal Genius) have succeeded in tying the notoriously elusive dramatist down. To a chair. With lots of rope. Director Scott Smith's wicked reversal of theatrical order puts Walker in the centre of one of his own creations. This film was produced for the 2009 Governor General's Performing Arts Award.

This documentary introduces us to Mark Rowswell, a Canadian comedian virtually unknown in his own country who has an enormous following in mainland China, where he is known as Dashan.

The film provides a unique look at China through the eyes of a man who has become fully at home in Chinese culture—his appearances on national television have been known to draw up to 600 million viewers. It shows Rowswell performing, talking about his art and popularity, and discussing the West’s role in the development of the new China.

Backyard Theatre is a documentary about playwright Michel Tremblay and director André Brassard’s flavourful brand of Quebec theatre, which captured the earthy wit and joual (slang) of Montreal's East End working-class neighbourhood. The film features impromptu improvisation by the cast of Les belles-soeurs and Demain matin, Montréal m'attend, two genre-defining plays.

This documentary invites you to join acclaimed playwright David Fennario for a performance of his funny and touching one-man play Banana Boots.

The film recounts Fennario’s memories of Montreal’s Verdun and Point Saint-Charles districts, follows him on a journey to Belfast for the Irish premiere of his hit play Balconville, and details his move from major theatrical performances to community theatre, where he sought to "create theatre that can be used to fight back."

This documentary short is a cinematic recording of Tales from a Prairie Drifter, a stage comedy about the North-West Resistance during the opening of the Canadian West. Highlighting the roles of Louis Riel, the Resistance leader, prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald and General Middleton, who was sent to quell the uprising, the play defines the First nations and Métis cause more succinctly than many history books. Here, the play is performed by the Regina Globe Theatre before an Indigineous audience of First Nations and Métis, whose reactions are recorded.

This 1959 feature documentary is a foray into Canada’s art milieu. What is it like to be a Canadian artist? Answering this central question are Teresa Stratas, winner of Metropolitan Opera auditions; acclaimed lyric tenor Léopold Simoneau and his talented wife, soprano Pierrette Alarie; the National Ballet Company of Canada’s artistic director, Celia Franca and leading male dancer, David Adams; as well as jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, whom we visit at 3 o'clock in the morning at Boston's Storyville Club. The film also includes interviews with radio and television actor John Drainie, Christopher Plummer and Jean Gascon, director of Montreal's Théâtre du Nouveau Monde.

This short film is a retelling of the Mi’kmaq legend of Medoonak, the reckless ruler of the winds and the seas who was persuaded to quieten his magical wings and calm the churning waters so that the Mi’kmaq fishermen could catch food for their starving people. Here, the story is colourfully interpreted in mime, dance and narration by elaborately garbed and masked actors of the Mermaid Theatre of Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

Jane Mallet appears in Nature Woman as a physical fitness enthusiast interviewed by Peter Mews. The Commodores sing Ilklay Moor, and then Peter Mews returns in the comedy skit Ten Minutes with Marg Margetson, in which a woman radio personality answers listeners' problems.

This short documentary from 1956 catches up with several talented Canadians who have found a home in the entertainment or arts scenes of London and Paris. Among them are Toronto-born Beverley Baxter, a baronet and MP who claims that London has a history of being invaded (first the Romans, now the Canadians), and then-aspiring novelist Mordecai Richler, who feels he has a better chance of making a living in England than he does back home.