L' homme aux oiseaux

Ten-year-old Ti-Jean's feats dwarf those of even the strongest lumberjack as he fells timber, cuts, carries and piles heavy logs, and comes out the victor in every contest. This short French-Canadian folk tale portrays typical life and work in a winter logging camp.

This feature-length fiction, originally produced as a television miniseries and based on the novel Nuages sur les brûlés by Hervé Biron, explores the colonization of northern Quebec during the Depression-era 1930s. These historical dramas relive the toil, hardship and unexpected rewards of the pioneer. Folk singer Félix Leclerc appears in each episode. Part I: Encounters with the inhospitable wilderness while clearing a townsite. Part II: Struggles for leadership; log cabins are built and the women arrive. Part III: The dangers of frontier life: forest fire, accident, anxiety about bankruptcy, lack of tools, hard labour. Part IV: Big steps forward: the curé brings in teachers and is in turn presented with a new, though rough-hewn, church.

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 feature documentary turns the lens on Canadian playwright and novelist W.O. Mitchell. Throughout the film we see him in his many different roles – writer, teacher, family man, entertainer – as he talks candidly about himself, his work and the effect the Prairies have had on him, both personally and professionally.

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 short film features 4 readings of a prose poem from Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers. Read by Cohen himself, the poem produces a distinct emotional effect every time it is read, following the poet’s rendition and accompanying visuals.

This animation short is an adaptation of Michel Tremblay's short story "The Devil and the Mushroom." A tale of supernatural power, greed and violence, it involves a sinister stranger who single-handedly transforms a quiet village into the scene of a phantasmagoric nightmare.

A portrait of and tribute to the author who, with the publication of Barometer Rising in 1941, set a precedent in Canadian literature by writing about Canadian topics and places and, in so doing, paved the way for a thriving national literary movement. Through the use of still photographs, archival footage and interviews, this documentary traces seven decades of MacLennan's public and private life--as a young boy in Nova Scotia, brought up in a strict Presbyterian family of Scottish descent, as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, as a professor at McGill University, and as the author of seven novels and numerous essays. Also featured in the film are several readings from MacLennan's work.

This feature documentary is a portrait of the life and work of Canadian poet Irving Layton. Here, the artist who long masked himself in controversy, unexpectedly agrees to be unmasked in front of the camera. The 1981 Nobel nominee not only reads and explicates his own writings, but also speaks incisively about Canadian literature itself, defining it metaphorically as a "double hook" that combines "beauty and terror."

For more background info on this film, visit the NFB.ca blog.

This feature documentary by Jacques Godbout retraces the life of Hubert Aquin, one of Quebec's most brilliant writers. The film revolves around 2 episodes in Aquin's life: the dramatic events leading up to the publication of his first novel, and the anguish of the months preceding his suicide. (Aquin ended his life in 1977.) An unusual montage technique intercuts excerpts from a feature film in which he was the lead actor with the recollections of people who knew him well.

This short film offers a picturesque tour through the maple-wooded hills alongside Québec's Lièvre River in autumn to the accompaniment of acclaimed poet Archibald Lampman’s poems including Morning on the Lièvre. Trees are ablaze with colour, and their splendor is reflected in the mirrored surfaces of the water, offering a glimpse of the landscape Lampman knew so well through the poet’s eyes and words. Lampman’s poem is read by broadcaster and poet George Whalley, with accompanying score by composer Eldon Rathburn.