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Territory: Regional (30)

  1. Available in English Options
5 years old
18 years old
  • Along Newfoundland's Shores
    Along Newfoundland's Shores
    We're sorry, this content is not available in your location.
    1962 7 min
    This short documentary includes three vignettes about life off the coast of Newfoundland. In Island of Birds, we visit Green Island, a sea bird sanctuary where puffins frolic. In Caplin Harvest, little silvery fish called caplin spawn by washing ashore along the waves, making an easy catch for fishermen. In Outports on the Move, off-shore houses are pried loose from their foundation and floated to the Newfoundland mainland, where schools, hospitals, stores and services are available to the community.
  • Blackwood
    Blackwood
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    Tony Ianzelo  &  Andy Thomson 1976 27 min
    This short film studies the works of one of Canada's greatest contemporary etchers - Newfoundland-born David Blackwood. The artist himself guides viewers through a step-by-step explanation of the etching process. Scenes of his hometown, examples of his own work and vivid tales of an old mariner recall the tragic seal hunts and a way of life that has now vanished.
  • Being Caribou
    Being Caribou
    Leanne Allison  &  Diana Wilson 2004 1 h 12 min
    In this feature-length documentary, husband and wife team Karsten Heuer (wildlife biologist) and Leanne Allison (environmentalist) follow a herd of 120,000 caribou on foot across 1500 km of Arctic tundra. In following the herd's migration, the couple hopes to raise awareness of the threats to the caribou's survival. Along the way they brave Arctic weather, icy rivers, hordes of mosquitoes and a very hungry grizzly bear. Dramatic footage and video diaries combine to provide an intimate perspective of an epic expedition.
  • The Changing Forest
    The Changing Forest
    Maurice Constant 1958 17 min
    A brief essay on the ecology of a forest along the Laurentian Shield, in Quebec. We see the forest as an integrated community of living things, balanced by conflict as well as harmony, and learn why the maple tree is best able to survive the struggle for supremacy in the Laurentian forest area.
  • The Chairmaker and the Boys
    The Chairmaker and the Boys
    1959 20 min
    This short fictional film evokes rural life in Cape Breton’s Margaree Valley, with its rich colours, bright sunshine, and crystal-clear streams. The film tells the story of a young boy and his grandfather, a carpenter with a hearing impairment. The young boy frolics joyfully in the rural landscape, but eventually he’ll need to learn a lesson from his grandfather about safety, responsibility, and maturity. The film features original music by Maurice Blackburn, one of Canada’s foremost composers.
  • Celebrating Chiac - Part II
    Celebrating Chiac - Part II
    Marie Cadieux 2009 1 h 17 min
    A documentary about Francophone Acadians in southeastern New Brunswick, and their relationship to language. 40 years after Michel Brault’s Éloge du chiac, Marie Cadieux travels to Moncton, Shediac, Bouctouche and even France, meeting people committed to safeguarding and valuing the specific character of Chiac. Featuring animated clips from Acadieman, this film elicits laughter and some teeth-gnashing, but is above all thought-provoking.
  • Canadian Landscape
    Canadian Landscape
    Radford Crawley 1941 18 min
    This documentary follows painter A.Y. Jackson on his canoe trips and on foot to the northern wilderness of Canada in autumn. This leading member of the Group of Seven discusses his approach to his subject matter and shows some of his paintings.
  • Men of the Deeps, Cape Breton
    Men of the Deeps, Cape Breton
    Sandra Dudley 1978 2 min
    This short vignette features coal mines in New Waterford and Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, along with traditional Cape Breton folk songs sung by Men of the Deeps - a miners' choral group.
  • Drylanders
    Drylanders
    Don Haldane 1963 1 h 9 min
    This epic drama looks at the opening of the Canadian West and the drought that led to the Depression in the Thirties. It is the saga of a family who left Eastern Canada to stake their future in the Prairies. Principle roles are played by Frances Hyland and James Douglas.
  • Distant Islands
    Distant Islands
    Bettina Maylone 1981 6 min
    This short animation uses appliqué and embroidered tapestries to recall a young girl's happy summers spent sailing with her family off the coast of British Columbia. Each tapestry, meticulously stitched by hand with brightly coloured yarns, evokes the memory of leisurely days at sea, drifting among the islands.
  • Éloge du chiac (English Subtitled Version)
    Éloge du chiac (English Subtitled Version)
    Michel Brault 1969 27 min
    Taking the form of a conversation between a young teacher at a French school in Moncton and her students, the film shows how hard it is for francophones to preserve their language in a society where English is everywhere and has been for centuries. In French with English subtitles.
  • Food: Secret of the Peace
    Food: Secret of the Peace
    Stuart Legg 1945 11 min
    Made at the end of WWII, this short film shows scenes of food queues, hunger riots and famine in liberated Europe, pointing out the political danger that lies in starvation conditions. Causes of food shortages and measures taken by the Allies to solve these problems are described.
  • A House on the Prairie
    A House on the Prairie
    Ron Bashford  &  Bob Lower 1978 17 min
    This documentary describes the unfortunate legacy of the lone house on the prairie, an example of a dwelling entirely unsuited for the harsh winter or summer. We meet some builders and home owners experimenting with designs that are more energy efficient, such as the dome, the underground house and a ranch with wind, solar energy and methane gas from animal waste.
  • Horses of Suffield
    Horses of Suffield
    Nick Bakyta 1998 46 min
    This documentary explores the fate of the endangered wild Suffield horses of Alberta. Located near a military base close to Medicine Hat, these animals were originally domesticated but returned to the wild over generations. These horses face endangerment because of their growing numbers and the limitations of their environment.
  • High Arctic: Life on the Land
    High Arctic: Life on the Land
    Dalton Muir 1958 21 min
    An ecological study of plant and animal life on the Queen Elizabeth Islands in the Canadian Arctic. The film includes profiles of animals such as musk-oxen, lemmings, arctic hares and various forms of plant life.
  • I Don't Have to Work that Big
    I Don't Have to Work that Big
    Michael McKennirey 1973 27 min
    This short documentary focuses on prairie sculptor Joe Fafard. If there's one thing Joe knows, it's cows. He knows the way they tuck in their forelegs to lie down to ruminate and the way a calf romps in the barnyard. He also knows his friends and neighbours in the farming community of Pense, Saskatchewan—and he sculpts them all in clay, as eloquent and quirky miniatures. Joe's work has been exhibited throughout Canada as well as in Paris and New York, and this film offers a glimpse into his process, his aesthetic, and the charming prairie community in which he lives.
  • Japan Inc: Lessons for North America?
    Japan Inc: Lessons for North America?
    Kalle Lasn 1980 27 min
    This short documentary is an absorbing study of Japanese business and industry. Discipline and productivity in Japan are much more regimented than in many other parts of the world. For the 110 million Japanese, survival means doing things together, rather than asserting a North American-style individualism. Japan's industry has automated and computerized at an unparalleled rate. Open-concept offices and collaborative work styles offer a model of the changing style of modern work that could inspire the West to modify their processes as well.
  • Just Another Job
    Just Another Job
    Pierre Letarte 1972 27 min
    This short film takes you behind the scenes of the Quebec Nordiques. Coached by the legendary Maurice Richard, the team is playing its opening World Hockey Association game at the Quebec Coliseum. Experience the pre-game tension, the on-ice action and the dream-contract signing.
  • The Jews of Winnipeg
    The Jews of Winnipeg
    Bill Davies 1973 27 min
    This short documentary tells the story of the first Jewish settlers to Winnipeg, people who fled European persecution at the turn of the century and founded a new community in a Canadian city.
  • The Land of Jacques Cartier
    The Land of Jacques Cartier
    René Bonnière  &  Pierre Perrault 1960 29 min
    Did Cartier dream of making a country from this land of a million birds? In his records of his exploration he certainly marvelled at seeing the great auks that have since disappeared from Isle aux Ouaiseaulx, the razor-bills and gannets that are gone from Blanc-Sablon, and the kittiwakes from Anticosti, all the winged creatures of all the islands which he described as being "as full of birds as a meadow is of grass". And that's not even counting the countless snow geese.
  • Men of the Deeps
    Men of the Deeps
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    John Walker 2003 51 min
    Men of the Deeps is a moving portrait of a group of former Cape Breton miners gathered together by their love of song. They are all members of the Men of the Deeps chorus, whose performances of traditional and contemporary songs evoke their working lives as miners.
  • The New Alchemists
    The New Alchemists
    Dorothy Todd Henaut 1974 28 min
    This short documentary profiles a community engaged in developing sustainable living methods, including food production and small-scale solar and wind technology, on a farm in Massachusetts in the 1970s. Well before sustainability was a mainstream concern, these prescient innovators attempted to create a vision of a greener, kinder world. "Think small," say the New Alchemists. "Look what thinking big has done."
  • Seven Brides for Uncle Sam
    Seven Brides for Uncle Sam
    Anita McGee 1997 52 min
    This documentary shares the stories of seven women from Newfoundland who married American soldiers. From the beginning of World War II to the end of the Cold War, Newfoundland housed some of the largest military bases outside of the U.S. As a result, as many as 40,000 Newfoundland women married American soldiers. Using a combination of interviews and old war footage, Seven Brides for Uncle Sam shows how some of the most important events in world history can serve as the backdrop to the timeless tales of romance, heartbreak and joy.
  • Something in the Air
    Something in the Air
    Sylvie Dauphinais 2001 24 min
    A 2001 documentary about the dangers of pesticides used by potato farmers in Prince Edward Island. Filmmaker Sylvie Dauphinais made this documentary to issue a wake-up call about an environmental crisis that put the ill, the elderly and the young at great risk. Includes some subtitles.
  • Ten Million Books: An Introduction to Farley Mowat
    Ten Million Books: An Introduction to Farley Mowat
    Andy Thomson 1981 25 min
    Farley Mowat has sold more books than any other Canadian writer – 10 million copies in 22 languages in 50 countries. In this short film, Mowat recalls some of his experiences that have found their way into his work.
  • Vive la rose
    Vive la rose
    Bruce Alcock 2009 6 min
    Based on the last recording by one of Newfoundland's foremost traditional music performers, Emile Benoit's tender delivery of the 18th century French song is the heart of Vive la rose. The story of unrequited love and tentative obsession throughout the beloved's life, sickness and early death is the narrative focus, accompanied by an emotional interpretation of Benoit's strong Newfoundland French accent and wavering old man's voice. Vive la rose is animation on location, rooting the film in a location that evokes the past, and combines ink drawings with a variety of romantic and associative elements and objects.
  • Water for the Prairies
    Water for the Prairies
    Lawrence Cherry 1951 18 min
    This 1950s' film looks at the measures to preserve water flow from the Rocky Mountains. With the steady falling of the water table, the exploitation of timber stands and the recession of glaciers, water conservation was an urgent concern of the Alberta and federal governments.
  • Wild Life
    Wild Life
    Amanda Forbis  &  Wendy Tilby 2011 13 min
    In 1909, a dapper young remittance man is sent from England to Alberta to attempt ranching. However, his affection for badminton, bird watching and liquor leaves him little time for wrangling cattle. It soon becomes clear that nothing in his refined upbringing has prepared him for the harsh conditions of the New World. This animated short is about the beauty of the prairie, the pang of being homesick and the folly of living dangerously out of context.
  • Westray
    Westray
    Paul Cowan 2001 1 h 19 min
    In this feature documentary, filmmaker Paul Cowan offers an innovative, moving account of the Westray coal mine disaster that killed 26 men in Nova Scotia on May 9, 1992. The film focuses on the lives of three widows and three miners lucky enough not to be underground that day when the methane and coal dust ignited. But their lives were torn apart by the events.

    Meet some of the working men, who felt they had no option but to stay on at Westray. And wives, who heard the rumours, saw their men sometimes bloodied from accidents and stood by them, hoping it would all turn out all right. This is a film about working people everywhere whose lives are often entrusted to companies that violate the most fundamental rules of safety and decency in the name of profit.
  • We're Here to Stay
    We're Here to Stay
    Ian McLaren 1974 27 min
    This short documentary examines how 7 farm families in Lestock, Saskatchewan, have pooled their resources so that rising operating costs will not drive them off their land. By pooling their land, their equipment, their livestock, and farming as a cooperative, they are able to live as they choose, to maintain their standard of living, and even to have some spare time left over to enjoy. An engaging look at a novel approach to big-scale farming.