Portrait of the Artist--As an Old Lady

Margaret Peterson is a retired painter, now living in Victoria, British Columbia, where this production was shot. The film explores the psyche of the painter through her paintings, through interviews, through an interpretive commentary by the director of the film, and the improvised riffs of a saxophone soloist. The film is a scrapbook of ideas, memories, opinions, interpretations and paintings that render the artist eventful rather than biographical. Beyond the Sun reveals a character very much attracted to primitive religion and a painter drawn to colour abstraction, both qualities typical of the 'beat' movement of the 1940s and 50s.

In 1920, a group of young Montreal women artists formed the nucleus of what would later become known as the Beaver Hall Hill Group. Together, they created an artistic environment of mutual support that lasted for more than three decades. By Woman's Hand explores this unique group through the eyes of Prudence Heward, Sarah Robertson and Anne Savage, its three most prominent members.

Set against a background of her paintings and the Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, landscapes they depict, this short documentary is a portrait of the life and work of one of Canada's foremost primitive painters, Maud Lewis. Emerging from her youth crippled with arthritis, Lewis escaped into her painting at the age of 30. She had never seen a work of art and had never attended an art class but her paintings captured the simple strength, beauty and happiness of the world she saw - a world without shadows.

This short documentary from the Canadian Artists series presents the art of Emily Carr, the Canadian painter who found exciting subject matter on British Columbia's Pacific Coast, with its giant trees and its Indigenous villages, totems and carvings. When Carr visited the Ucluelet Indian Reserve on Vancouver Island in 1898, the Nuu-chah-nulth people gave her the name Klee Wyck, meaning “Laughing One.” Her canvases are shown here amidst the landscapes and places where they were painted. At the end of the film Tse-shaht painter George Clutesi is pictured as Carr left her paintbrushes and other materials to him.

This Emmy-nominated feature film is an intimate and evocative journey into the hearts, minds and eyes of Georgia O’Keeffe, Emily Carr and Frida Kahlo - 3 of the 20th century’s most remarkable artists. The film uses the women’s own words, taken from their letters and diaries, to reveal 3 individual creative processes in all their subtle and fascinating variety.

In this acclaimed 1994 documentary, Loretta Todd, a leading figure in Indigenous cinema in Canada, profiles four contemporary female artists—Doreen Jensen, Rena Point Bolton, Jane Ash Poitras and Joane Cardinal-Schubert—who seek to find a continuum from traditional to contemporary forms of expression. Each artist reveals her practice and journey in her own words. The film is a moving testimony to the vital role Indigenous women play in nurturing Indigenous cultures.

Glimpses into the lives of three artists: Erhabor Amokpae of Lagos; Cid de Sosa Pinto of Sao Paulo; and Gord Smith of Montréal. Each artist provides his own commentary on how he lives, works, thinks and feels.

A questioning filmmaker from Québec finds out how Vancouver's poets and painters look at life and art. Among the people seen are sculptor Donald Jarvis, painters Jack Shadbolt, Joy Long and Margaret Peterson, and printmaker Sing Lim.

Made in memory of Canadian artist and filmmaker Joyce June Wieland, June is a hand-drawn stereoscopic animation by NFB animator, Munro Ferguson. It is like a three-dimensional abstract painting that moves. June is Munro's attempt to capture what it was like for him to know Joyce. Part 1, "Alzheimer's", is about the end of her life. Part 2, "Memory", is about what she was like during the height of her creative powers.

In this revealing study of Norval Morrisseau, filmed as he works among the lakes and woodlands of his ancestors, we see a remarkable Indigenous artist who emerged from a life of obscurity in the North American bush to become one of Canada's most renowned painters. Morrisseau the man is much like his paintings: vital and passionate, torn between his Ojibway heritage and the influences of the white man's world. Jack Pollock, the Toronto art gallery owner who discovered Morrisseau's paintings in the early 1960s, comments on what makes them so unique.

For Miller Brittain, variously described as a mystic, a war hero, a madman and a drunk, there was only one constant--art. Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1912, he painted most of the time in or near that city. Personal, social and religious upheavals were all reflected in his art, in aching, obsessive works that people didn't understand, and much of the time didn't buy, though now they are worth thousands. The film is a powerful reconstruction of the life and career of this misunderstood Maritime painter, and his relation to other Canadian artists.