If Only I Were an Indian...

This feature-length documentary explores the diabetes epidemic within Indigenous communities in Canada. Ojibway filmmaker Brion Whitford lives with the pain of advanced diabetes, but shunned traditional Indigenous medicine and healing practices. But as his health deteriorated, he had a change of heart. Join Brion as he connects with his culture, comes to grips with his own mortality, and tries to re-establish balance in his life.

In a documentary that spans two continents and several generations, acclaimed director John Paskievich delves into the experience of exile and its impact on the human spirit.

Almost fifty years after his family fled Ukraine for freedom in Canada, the filmmaker visits his parents' homeland. It's a place both familiar and foreign. Drawing on his years growing up in Winnipeg, Paskievich explores how children of refugees and immigrants are caught between two worlds. While they struggle to put down roots in a new country, they must also preserve traditions of a distant land they have never known.

Paskievich's journey through Ukraine is interwoven with stories of displacement from other prominent Ukrainian Canadians--authors George Melnyk and Fran Ponomarenko, filmmaker Bohdana Bashuk, director Halya Kuchmij and dancer Lecia Polujan. A rich tapestry of memory and history, My Mother's Village brings to light the humour, anger, joy and complexity of living between borders.

In this follow-up to his 2003 film, Totem: the Return of the G'psgolox Pole, filmmaker Gil Cardinal documents the events of the final journey of the G'psgolox Pole as it returns home to Kitamaat and the Haisla people, from where it went missing in 1929.

A vivid recollection of the free west of the North American Indigenous Peoples and the vast herds of buffalo that once thundered across the plains. From paintings of the mid-1800s, the animation camera creates a most convincing picture of the buffalo hunt, both as the Indigenous People and, disastrously, the white hunters practised it.

This short documentary examines the role of corn in the lives of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Before colonization, corn was widely used as a beverage, a food staple, an oil, and a ceremonial object. It was respected and revered as a critical part of creation. This film explores the powerful bond and spiritual relationship that continues to exist between people and corn.

This extraordinary film introduces us to the Reutov family, part of an isolated northern Alberta community called the Old Believers. Adhering to the original Orthodox Christian dogma and rituals introduced to ancient Rus (present-day Ukraine, Byelorussia and Russia) by the Greeks of Byzantium, the Old Believers see themselves as the last Christians left on the face of the Earth. Here in North America, for the first time in their history, they are threatened not by persecution, but by economic bounty and the western notion of personal freedom. Shot over the four seasons, the film is both a beautiful rendering of timeless rituals and a fascinating exploration of the Old Believers' turbulent history.

This short documentary profiles Ukrainian-Canadian Ted Baryluk, whose grocery store has been a fixture in Winnipeg's North End for over 20 years. In this photo study, Ted talks about his store, the customers who have come and gone and the social changes his multicultural neighbourhood has seen. But most of all he wonders what will become of his store after he retires. He hopes his daughter will take over, but she wants to move away. The film is a wistful rendering of a shopkeeper's relationship with his daughter and a fascinating portrait of a neighbourhood and its inhabitants.

This short newsreel highlights the battles faced by both Axis and Ally powers over the minds of the world through propaganda and information. Part of the World in Action series, this film includes footage of Winston Churchill, Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler.

This 1964 documentary returns to the battlefields where over 100,000 Canadian soldiers lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars. The film also visits cemeteries where servicemen are buried. Filmed from Hong Kong to Sicily, this documentary is designed to show Canadians places they have reason to know but may not be able to visit. Produced for the Canadian Department of Veteran Affairs by the renowned documentary filmmaker Donald Brittain.

A tribute to the combatants in the First World War, this film traces the conflict through the war diary and private letters of five Canadian soldiers and a nurse. Hearing them, the listener detects between the lines an unspoken horror censored by war and propriety.

The film mingles war footage, historical photos and readings of excerpts from the diary and letters. The directorial talent of Claude Guilmain breathes life into these 90-year-old documents and accompanying archival images so that we experience the human face and heart of the conflict.

For the educational sector, five documentary vignettes have been drawn from the film: Nurses at the Front, The Officer's Role, The Life of the Soldier, Faith and Hope and The Trenches, each with further information on its particular subject.

This documentary is about Canadian artist Deryk Houston, who in 1999, had a life-altering journey to Baghdad. Unable to remain an outside observer of the crisis in Iraq, Deryk travelled to witness first-hand the impact of international sanctions on the Iraqi people. Compelled to speak out, the artist embarked upon a unique nature art project designed to call attention to the situation of the children of Iraq. Using rocks, gravel and hay, Deryk began to create large-scale art installations in the image of a mother and child against diverse landscapes around the world.