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Society and Technology (37)

  1. Available in English Options
5 years old
18 years old
  • Almost Real: Connecting in a Wired World
    Almost Real: Connecting in a Wired World
    Ann Shin 2002 47 min
    This documentary presents a few individuals for whom the Internet has become a way to connect with like-minded souls in surprising ways: a cyber punk based on an anti-aircraft rig in the English Channel who operates a rogue Web server, a monk developing "wireless prayer technology," a "gamer" who re-creates himself in an online game, a retired couple living in an Internet-controlled seniors' complex and a divorcée who exchanges vows online with a man she's never met.
  • The Amina Profile
    The Amina Profile
    Sophie Deraspe 2015 1 h 26 min
    Part love story, part international thriller, and a gripping chronicle of an unprecedented media and sociological hoax, this feature documentary travels from San Francisco and Washington to Istanbul, Tel Aviv and Beirut in a quest to reveal the true identity of the person behind the popular blog A Gay Girl in Damascus. Who is this Syrian-American revolutionary who goes by the name of Amina Arraf? Not even Montrealer Sandra Bagaria, with whom Amina is carrying an online affair, seems to know for sure. As the Syrian uprising gains momentum, the blog attracts a huge following. But it’s Amina’s subsequent abduction that sparks an international outcry to free her. Telling a detective story that involves various intelligence agencies and top-tier global media, the film tells a thoroughly modern tale of technology, love and news-as-spectacle questions the ways in which people connect in today’s virtual world.
  • Bush Pilot - Into the Wild Blue Yonder
    Bush Pilot - Into the Wild Blue Yonder
    Bruno Boulianne 2000 48 min
    This documentary paints a vivid portrait of the bush pilots who soar daily above the boreal forests and tundra of Quebec's Great North. Who hasn't dreamed of flying? Head in the clouds, light-hearted giddiness, a surge of adrenaline, exhilarating freedom. Bush pilots of northern Quebec, the last of a dying breed, experience these sensations every day aboard their hydroplanes. Lakes, rivers, forests: this majestic North of open spaces and infinite silence is all theirs.
  • The Brainwashers
    The Brainwashers
    Patrick Bouchard 2002 12 min
    In this animated short, two chimney sweepers clear all the memories from their victim's brain in a quest to determine what goes on in a man's head. A chilling film filled with fearsome puppets inhabiting a world of strange objects.
  • Blind Evolution
    Blind Evolution
    Zane Kozak 2010 1 min
    Transformation, technology, higher powers, breath. These ideas and elements roil around inside Toronto artist and filmmaker Zane Kozak's CG-animated short, taking us on a somewhat troubling but eerily mystical journey from the human form to... something entirely different.

    Produced as part of the 6th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.
  • Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment
    Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment
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    Peter Wintonick 1999 1 h 42 min
    Crisis, Lonely Boy, Chronicle of a Summer. You may not know these films, but you see their influences every day--in everything from TV news to music videos to Webcams. The cinéma vérité (or direct cinema) movement of the '50s and '60s was driven by a group of rebel filmmakers tired of stilted documentaries. They wanted to show life as it really is: raw, gritty, dramatic. Rich in excerpts from vérité classics, Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment is the first film to capture all the excitement of a revolution that changed movie-making forever. Director Peter Wintonick's Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media is one of the bestselling documentaries of all time; co-producer Éric Michel won the Cannes Palme d'or for 50 ans, by director Gilles Carle, and co-producer Adam Symansky won an Oscar for Flamenco at 5:15.
  • Challenger: An Industrial Romance
    Challenger: An Industrial Romance
    Stephen Low 1980 57 min
    This feature documentary follows the development of Canadair's super-executive jet. A totally new type of aircraft, it is faster, cheaper to fly, and more comfortable than any other business jet. Would it make it off the drawing board and into the air? The film captures the spirit of the Canadian air transport industry and its attempt to compete with its American counterparts.
  • Canada at War, Part 10: Cinderella on the Left
    Canada at War, Part 10: Cinderella on the Left
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    1962 27 min
    June - December 1944. V-1 rockets, and later V-2s, rain death and destruction on Britain; their launching sites are mopped up by Canadians advancing on Pas de Calais. The Third Division spearheads the attack on the Scheldt estuary. Germans make a last-ditch stand in the Battle of the Bulge. In the English Channel, Canadian sailors man swift motor torpedo boats against German E-boats.
  • CBQM
    CBQM
    Dennis Allen 2009 1 h 6 min
    This feature-length documentary pays tribute to CBQM, the radio station that operates out of Fort McPherson, a small town about 150 km north of the Arctic Circle in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Through storytelling and old-time country music, filmmaker and long-time listener Dennis Allen crafts a nuanced portrait of the "Moccasin Telegraph," the radio station that is a pillar of local identity and pride in this lively northern Teetl'it Gwich'in community of 800 souls.
  • Canada at War, Part 13: The Clouded Dawn
    Canada at War, Part 13: The Clouded Dawn
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    1962 27 min
    August 1945 - 1946. Japan surrenders. World War II is over, but the scars are deep. Canadian prisoners are released from Japanese war camps. In Canada, as elsewhere, the monumental task of rehabilitation begins. In Ottawa the Gouzenko case shocks the nation. The trials at Nürenberg begin. The United Nations is formed. Canada, now a much stronger, independent nation, enters the Cold War.
  • Canada at War, Part 3: Year of Siege
    Canada at War, Part 3: Year of Siege
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    1962 27 min
    September 1940 - October 1941. The Battle of the Atlantic begins. German U-boats take their toll of Canadian convoys. The purge of Jews begins. German armies march into Russia. Mackenzie King is booed at Aldershot. Men of the Winnipeg Grenadiers and Royal Rifles leave for a fateful mission in Hong Kong.
  • The Defender
    The Defender
    Stephen Low 1988 54 min
    This documentary is about Bob Diemert of Carman, Manitoba, and his dream of building the world's next great fighter plane. His worldwide reputation as a genius at restoring "warbirds" enables him to finance his dream. The Defender is a lively, sometimes wild and funny, tale about a remarkable, modern-day folk hero.
  • Eye Witness No. 28
    Eye Witness No. 28
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    Ronald Weyman Allen Stark , … 1951 10 min
    New Look on Rails: The Montreal Locomotive Works takes on mass manufacture of diesel engines for Canadian railways, using pantograph machines that turn out six steel patterns in one electronic operation. Dedication to the Dance: In the Boris Volkoff School of Ballet in Toronto, long hours of training and exacting routines pay off in the making of professional ballet dancers. Fun in Fur Land: The annual Trappers' Festival at The Pas, Manitoba, complete with a Fur Queen's court and numerous competitions to test the timberline techniques of northerners, ends with the toughest dog derby in Canada.
  • Exile - A Myth Unearthed
    Exile - A Myth Unearthed
    Ilan Ziv 2012 1 h 37 min
    This feature documentary looks at new evidence that suggests the majority of the Jewish people may not have been exiled following the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Travelling from Galilee to Jerusalem and the catacombs of Rome, the film asks us to rethink our ideas about an event that has played a critical role in the Christian and Jewish traditions.
  • Engine 371
    Engine 371
    Kevin Langdale 2007 9 min
    This animated short looks at the building of Canada's transcontinental railroad with wit and whimsy. Engine 371 illustrates the struggle humans have with nature and how this fundamental tension united a country. A film without words.
  • Exile - A Myth Unearthed (BBC Version)
    Exile - A Myth Unearthed (BBC Version)
    Ilan Ziv 2013 59 min
    It has been depicted in artwork and lamented in poetry and prayer for nearly 2,000 years: the exile of the Jewish people from their homeland in the first century AD, following the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

    But what if the exile never happened?

    That is the central, provocative question of Exile: A Myth Unearthed, a documentary that looks at the exile through the lenses of archaeology, history, myth and religion, asking what it means for our understanding of history and the contemporary struggle over land in the Middle East.

    Since 1985, teams of archaeologists have been painstakingly unearthing artifacts from the ancient town of Sepphoris, in Galilee. Their findings are revolutionizing our knowledge of Jewish history.

    Exile travels from Sepphoris to Masada, from Jerusalem to the catacombs of Rome, and features interviews with leading historians and archaeologists. Throughout the film we also follow a group of tourists visiting sites in the Holy Land and hear the traditional interpretation of events such as the siege of Masada—an interpretation which stands in sharp contrast to recent evidence.

    The issues raised in Exile are of more than passing historical interest. The myth of exile is an essential narrative in Middle Eastern and European history, and of critical importance to both Christian and Jewish theology. And the possibility that many Jews, such as those of Sepphoris, simply remained where they lived, raises uncomfortable questions. Could some Palestinians actually be their descendants?
  • The Fight for True Farming
    The Fight for True Farming
    Eve Lamont 2005 1 h 29 min
    In this documentary, crop and animal farmers in Quebec, the Canadian West, the US Northeast and France offer solutions to the social and environmental scourges of factory farming. Driven by the forces of globalization, rampant agribusiness is harming the environmemt and threatening the survival of farms. The proliferation of GMO crops is a further threat to biodiversity as well as to farmers' autonomy. In Europe as well as North America, a current of resistance bringing together farmers and consumers insists that it is possible - indeed imperative - to grow food differently.
  • Growing Up Canadian: Media
    Growing Up Canadian: Media
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    Susan Terrill 2003 46 min
    Canadian children in the 20th century witnessed an explosion of innovations in communication and entertainment . Witnesses recall the first time that they saw the telephone, a movie, the television, the computer. Media intrigued children and often made parents suspicious. Canadians of all ages talk about the books, radio shows, TV programs, music and movies they loved as children.

    From listening in on the party line to watching newsreels, children became connected to an ever-expanding world. Media changed the definition of growing up Canadian.

    Media is one of a 6-part series entitled Growing Up Canadian. These documentaries explore the myths and realities of Canadian childhood through family life, schooling, work, play, health and the media. The series marks the contribution of childhood and youth experience in defining Canada as it grew into full nationhood in the 20th century.
  • Grierson
    Grierson
    Roger Blais 1973 57 min

    This feature film is a portrait of John Grierson, the first Canadian Government Film Commissioner and founder of the National Film Board in 1939. Interweaving archival footage, interviews with people who knew him and footage of Grierson himself, this film is a sensitive and informative portrait of a dynamic man of vision.

    Grierson believed that the filmmaker had a social responsibility, and that film could help a society realize democratic ideals. His absolute faith in the value of capturing the drama of everyday life was to influence generations of filmmakers all over the world. In fact, he coined the term "documentary film."

  • The Clock
    The Clock
    Iris Boudreau  &  Francis Papillon 2019 2 min
    Cathon has found something wonderful in the recycling bin—a birdsong clock. But Iris isn’t totally on board with her friend’s taste, so she seeks a compromise. She wonders how people told time before clocks.
  • Make Money?
    Make Money?
    Tina Keeper 1999 4 min
    In How Do They Make Money?, shiny discs dance their way through the mint, emerging as brand new pennies! A film without words.
  • How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels
    How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels
    Craig Welch 1996 11 min
    The main protagonist of this short, surreal film is a man obsessed with control. In an automated world drained of all emotion, he is tortured by vague longings. Will he be able to transcend his obsessions and fears?
  • Henry Ford's America
    Henry Ford's America
    Donald Brittain 1977 56 min
    This feature documentary studies the automobile and its pervasive effect on the history of North America. Focusing on the Ford dynasty, from the original Henry car through to Henry II, the film demonstrates how society has adapted to fit the needs of the automobile.
  • The Internal Combustion Engine
    The Internal Combustion Engine
    Claude Cloutier 2000 1 min
    Four strokes of genius.
  • Live TV
    Live TV
    Annie O'Donoghue 1996 21 min
    This short live-action comedy satirizing TV's violent ways tells the story of 4 children who go searching for their school’s 2 missing turtles. In this task, the children are assisted by a television set that morphs to life as a goofy action superhero. As the search progresses, the children discover that TV solutions and real-life solutions don't always mix. When the kids take charge and use their own wits, the turtle mystery is solved in a jiffy.
  • My Child, My Land
    My Child, My Land
    Francine Desbiens 1998 4 min
    This animated short deals with the difficult subject of antipersonnel land mines. Each year, hundreds of men, women and children are wounded or killed by these land mines. This film reveals the hideous nature of these weapons along with the complicity of the industrial nations.
  • Mirrors of Time
    Mirrors of Time
    Jean-Jacques Leduc 1990 23 min
    This short animated film delves into the mysteries of time: how calendars came to be; why the seasons change; why the year is divided into days, etc. From Babylon to 16th-century Europe, this film presents the history of the measurement of time.
  • Nails
    Nails
    Phillip Borsos 1979 13 min
    This documentary short tracks the shift in the relationship of an individual to his work between the 19th century and today. Focusing on how nails are made, we first see a blacksmith laboring at his forge, shaping nails from single strands of steel rods. The scene then shifts from this peaceful setting to the roar of a 20th century nail mill, where banks of machines draw, cut, and pound the steel rods faster than the eye can follow.
  • Operation Lever
    Operation Lever
    Sylvain Charbonneau 2000 1 min
    A clip in the Science Please! collection, Operation Lever uses archival footage, animated illustrations and amusing narration to explain how a lever increases force.