The NFB is committed to respecting your privacy

We use cookies to ensure that our site works efficiently, as well as for advertising purposes.

If you do not wish to have your information used in this way, you can modify your browser settings before continuing your visit.

Learn more
Skip to content
My List
Your request could not be processed.
This film is already in your list

Advertising (20)

  1. Available in English Options
5 years old
18 years old
  • All the Right Stuff
    All the Right Stuff
    We're sorry, this content is not available in your location.
    Connie Littlefield 1997 22 min
    "I always have a good time. Lots of teenagers hang out at the mall. It's like walking around in a big TV set." Brendan, 13.

    All the Right Stuff is about kids, malls, media and money. This video puts the role of youth in today's corporate economy into perspective.

    Join Brendan on a tour through the local mall. With two hundred dollars of birthday money in his pocket, he's ready to do some serious spending on music, clothes, and video games.

    Teenagers represent a huge and lucrative market for advertisers. They may work in low-paying service sector jobs, but as Brendan says "I pay no rent. My income is one hundred percent disposable."

    Intercut with Brendan's shopping trip are interviews with shopkeepers, young people who talk about the pressure on them to consume and to sport all the right logos, and members of the bands Thrush Hermit and Hip Club Groove on how the music and clothing industries target young people.

    With poor job prospects and little access to the political process, teens come to see themselves primarily as consumers. It's a self-image marketers are only too happy to encourage and exploit.
  • Ashes of Doom
    Ashes of Doom
    Grant Munro  &  Don Arioli 1970 1 min
    This short film was produced for The Department of National Health and Welfare to warn against the dangers of cigarette smoking. Set against the backdrop of a typical '60s-era horror movie, a young woman is seen lighting up cigarette after cigarette. When a vampire appears at the stroke of midnight, she faints from sheer terror. But when the vampire closes in for the kill, he is hit with a nasty surprise...
  • The Bronswik Affair
    The Bronswik Affair
    Robert Awad  &  André Leduc 1978 23 min
    This funny yet serious short film demonstrates the effectiveness of advertising and the marketing machine. Its comic appeal lies in the characters and the absurd situations they find themselves in, but it also shines a harsh light on our tendency towards needless consumerism prompted by a steady flow of commercials.
  • Instant French
    Instant French
    We're sorry, this content is not available in your location.
    André Leduc 1979 1 min
    This animated short is a take on the "As Seen on TV" commercials, or the K-Tel ads of yesteryear. In this parody version, the ad attempts to sell an electronic device that allows one to speak fluent, effortless French.

    Please note that this film was produced in 1979 and reflects certain attitudes and thinking of its era. The last scene of the film includes negative stereotyping of Jews living in Quebec. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. While the film does not represent today’s views as perspectives of Canadians (and the NFB) have evolved and we have become more conscious regarding issues of discrimination and minority rights, the film is presented in its original version because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these stereotypes never existed.
  • Dollar Dance
    Dollar Dance
    Norman McLaren 1943 4 min
    This wartime publicity trailer by Norman McLaren focuses on wartime inflation and the role of price control. Single-frame animation is used with pen drawings made directly on 35mm film stock. Music is by Louis Applebaum, a leading composer and advocate for the arts in Canada.
  • Democracy at Work
    Democracy at Work
    Stanley Hawes  &  Fred Lasse 1944 18 min
    This short documentary was made near the end of World War II to introduce the subject of the need for labour-management committees. Government and industry in Canada were looking to a post-war era where production would have to be converted to peacetime. The objective was to improve productivity by reducing absenteeism, workplace accidents and keeping morale high.
  • 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.
  • For Future Generations
    For Future Generations
    We're sorry, this content is not available in your location.
    Boyce Richardson 1985 54 min
    This documentary is about the conservation ethic in Canada that led to the national parks systems around the world. Includes interviews with the then-Minister of Natural Resources, Jean Chretien.
  • Interoculus
    Interoculus
    Marie Valade 2010 1 min
    In an infinitely vast space, a woman, a man and a fish illustrate a flow of questions about perception. Pixillation and stop-motion animation enhance audience doubts about reality in Marie Valade's whimsical and playful test of how we see and perceive when watching 3-D films.

    Produced as part of the 6th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.
  • Inhabiting Dance
    Inhabiting Dance
    Julien Cadieux 2009 25 min
    This short documentary is a portrait of Sylvie Mazerolle, a young woman for whom dance is as vital and fundamental as breathing. Tracking her process, the film also takes a look at dance in her home province of New Brunswick. In French with English subtitles.
  • Look to the Forest
    Look to the Forest
    Donald Fraser 1950 21 min
    This 1950 documentary examines the penalties of forest destruction: fire, flood, wasted resources and barren lands. The film describes measures to preserve Canada's prime source of national wealth. Scenes of the wilderness created by stripping land of protective trees show the need to halt careless exploitation. Contrasting the slow process of re-seeding with the swift, modern methods of felling trees, the film urges planned cutting to ensure a protected yearly crop.
  • Music Is Not a Luxury
    Music Is Not a Luxury
    Annette Mangaard 2012 5 min
    This short film pays tribute to Toronto philanthropist Earlaine Collins, recipient of the 2012 Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Voluntarism in the Performing Arts. Generous and thoughtful, Collins speaks of her bond with performers, the importance of giving, and how much has music meant to her and her late husband from their very first days together.

    Produced by the National Film Board of Canada in co-operation with the National Arts Centre and the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards Foundation on the occasion of the 2012 Governor General's Performing Arts Awards.
  • NFB 70 Years
    NFB 70 Years
    Jean-François Pouliot 2009 7 min
    As clever and sly as any good commercial, NFB 70 Years is the work of a filmmaker in full control of his medium and his message. With humour and self-deprecation – and not a whiff of complacency – Jean-François Pouliot smartly deconstructs the backward-looking perception often attributed to films from the National Film Board. Even the way the film is made pays homage to the filmmaking techniques that have earned Canada's public film producer and distributor its enviable reputation. This artful and skilfully produced mix of genres effectively borrows from direct cinema and flirts with virtuoso animation techniques. With its funny and clever direction, tight yet ingeniously wild and furious editing, brilliantly juxtaposed sequences with powerful relevance to the present, this film confirms the essential role of the NFB within the social fabric of Canada and the world.
  • Salvador Allende Gossens: A Testimony
    Salvador Allende Gossens: A Testimony
    Maurice Bulbulian  &  Michel Gauthier 1974 18 min
    A brief acquaintance with the president of Chile before his assassination in September, 1973. In 1972, several miners from Québec went to Chile to observe mining operations there. They also met with the President of the Republic. Salvador Allende explains, publicly at a meeting of icampanneros r, as well as in a conference with the visitors, the revolutionary socio-economic reforms he envisages for his country, which include nationalization of the copper industry. René Lévesque, Théo Gagné and Joseph Gosselin appear in the film. (A film for all students of political change. With English subtitles).
  • A Sunday at 105
    A Sunday at 105
    Daniel Léger 2007 13 min
    A 105-year-old Acadian agrees to be filmed one Sunday as she goes about her daily routine and ruminates on life. Filmed by her great-grandson, Aldéa Pellerin-Cormier comments wisely on politics, sex and religion. From getting ready in the morning to drinking her nightcap before bed, every moment is punctuated with a witticism or existential thought. Respectful of the old woman's privacy, Daniel Léger's first documentary looks at wisdom, serenity and enjoyment of life. In French with English subtitles.
  • Strangers for the Day
    Strangers for the Day
    Georges Dufaux  &  Jacques Godbout 1962 27 min
    This short documentary shows the reactions of European immigrants as they land in Halifax at the beginning of the 1960s. From the port, we follow them on a snowy journey by train to Montreal.
  • TV Sale
    TV Sale
    Ernie Schmidt 1975 10 min
    This animated short is an entertaining and incisive satire on some of the material that is disgorged via the "boob tube." The opening pitch of the television salesman establishes the tone of this pithy film: a solid-state model guarantees high-quality entertainment, and programs are always designed around products, not spectators.
  • This Is a Recorded Message
    This Is a Recorded Message
    Jean-Thomas Bédard 1973 10 min
    This experimental animated short takes a critical look at consumerism in a material world. Thousands of cut-out ads are presented in increasingly fragmented, rapid succession. The film's disorienting and hectic pace seeks to interrogate the extent to which seductive advertising is a shockingly strong force in shaping our desires, needs, and lives in contemporary capitalism.
  • V for Victory
    V for Victory
    Norman McLaren 1941 2 min
    This animated short by Norman McLaren is a publicity message for a war bond campaign. Symbols, a stick man and lettering are drawn directly on 35mm film stock and synchronized with a brass band rendition of Sousa's march "The Thunderer."
  • Women Are Warriors
    Women Are Warriors
    Jane Marsh 1942 14 min
    This short film from WWII focuses on the increasingly important roles women occupy on the various war fronts. In England, their more active jobs include ferrying planes from factory to airfield and operating anti-aircraft guns. In Russia, they are fighting on the front lines as well as acting as parachute nurses, army doctors and technicians. In Canada women have joined active service auxiliaries, and thousands labour day and night in factories turning out the tools of war. From the Canada Carries On series.