NFB Pause: Making Art in a Pandemic

Economist Armine Yalnizyan offers a radically honest and deliciously sweet review of our absurdly dysfunctional economic system and what we must do in order to survive and thrive in the 21st century.

Criminologist and community activist Munira Abukar believes justice and equity begin in your own home and heart. Embracing the uncomfortable awakening that 2020 has brought about, she debunks the cozy narrative of social equality and puts her finger on the key issues needing change.

Geneticist and environmentalist David Suzuki celebrates the pleasure of knowing we humans are squishy organic material in an inter-related web of life—and we’d better not forget that! An invitation to go out and play and learn from the real world.

Designer Bruce Mau views the COVID-19 pandemic as a short-term crisis in a long-term trend toward positive development. He dares us to abandon our toxic lifestyle habits and urges us toward bolder urban design.

Thursday, shot from filmmaker Galen Johnson's high-rise apartment during COVID-19 “lockdown” in Winnipeg, captures people going about their daily routines in the city's eerily empty streets, yards and parking lots, on their balconies and on the riverbanks. The extreme distance and the diminutive scale of humans is paired with sound close-ups—a combination that embodies the strange, heightened intensity of feeling of the time, knowing an era-defining tragedy is happening yet being so physically removed.

“GYMNASIA is an exploration of childhood and memory.”

Discover how Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski hope to “blow minds” with their new interactive experience Gymnasia

What does the collaboration between a voice actor and director look like for an animated film? Actor Rossif Sutherland and filmmaker Theodore Ushev talk about the intimacy required to animate life into The Physics of Sorrow.

With her documentary Into The Light, Togolese filmmaker Gentille M. Assih invites us into an intimate world of strong women who have survived domestic violence, and their empowering stories of liberation. [LINK to film]

In the summer of 1964, Quebecois filmmaker Gilles Groulx traveled to New Jersey to meet legendary jazz musician John Coltrane. The result: a history making soundtrack to a now classic French-Canadian film.

An homage to Art Deco aesthetics in black, white, and pink, The Procession considers loss and love in style. Meet the creators behind this work of art.

"Mary was a Mohawk woman from Kahnawake, the same community that I'm from. She is one of the key women to challenge discrimination against Indigenous women in Canada's Indian Act." Mohawk filmmaker Courtney Montour describes her new documentary on Mary Two-Axe Earley, whose fight for the rights of First Nations women made her a pivotal figure in Canada’s women’s rights movement.