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

Women (30)

  • Camera Test
    Camera Test
    Joyce Wong 2019 5 min

    What gets lost when female voices are stymied during the creative process? Pairing intimate interviews with absurdist re-enactments, Joyce Wong crafts a tartly subversive look at patriarchy and racism in the film industry.

  • Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary
    Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary
    Pepita Ferrari 2008 1 h 37 min
    In this feature-length film on the art of the documentary, director Pepita Ferrari interviews 33 leading documentarians and shows clips from over 50 films. From cinéma-vérité pioneers like Albert Maysles and Michel Brault to mavericks like Errol Morris and Nick Broomfield, it explores the challenges of capturing reality on film. Directors as diverse as Pakistani feminist Sabiha Sumar and new media guru Peter Wintonick reflect on ethical issues and the contested status of the “truth.”

    Featured interviews include German iconoclast Werner Herzog; Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán; British director Kim Longinotto and Alanis Obomsawin, the First Lady of First Nations cinema.
  • The Creative Process: Where Do I Start?
    The Creative Process: Where Do I Start?
    Scott Smith 2009 12 min
    This short documentary captures the savvy of great Canadian storytellers on film. Sharing their insights on inspiration, authenticity, tenacity and what compels them in their creative endeavors are Double Happiness director Mina Shum, Oscar® winner Denys Arcand, The Hockey Sweater author Roch Carrier, Emporte-moi director Léa Pool and Zacharias Kunuk, the filmmaker behind Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner).
  • Crazy, Quilt
    Crazy, Quilt
    Donald McWilliams 1997 27 min
    This film is part of a series of television programs including interviews with the directors of short animated films as well as the films themselves. This video includes 2 animated shorts: Quilt (by Gayle Thomas), an animated tribute to patchwork quilting and Scant Sanity (by John Weldon), an exploration into the nature of the mind and reality in which a person seeking job counseling receives psychiatric treatment instead, thereupon becoming convinced of the reality of his own internal world.
  • Daughter of the Crater
    Daughter of the Crater
    We're sorry, this content is not available in your location.
    Nadine Beaudet  &  Danic Champoux 2019 1 h 15 min
    A woman with a deep love of the land, Yolande Simard Perrault sees her life as having been shaped by a planetary upheaval in Charlevoix, Quebec, millions of years ago. As enduring as the Canadian Shield, she’s a woman of strength and spirit, a child of the crater left by the meteor’s impact. This documentary portrays a determined woman who’s the reflection of a land created on an immense scale. She was the creative and life partner of filmmaker Pierre Perrault, who gave up everything to be by her side. The film charts the influence of her unquenchable dreams and her contribution to the building of a people’s collective memory. In a stream of images and words, Simard Perrault recounts the splendours of the landscape and the people who shaped it. Generous and boundless, she embarks on a quest for identity that nurtures and perpetuates the oeuvre of the man who breathed new life into Quebec cinema.
  • Dream Magic
    Dream Magic
    Katerina Cizek 2008 6 min
    This revealing portrait of NFB filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin was shown at a gala ceremony in 2008, where Obomsawin received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement. Her work has captured some of the most startling events in Canadian history, including the armed standoff between the Canadian Army and Mohawk warriors in 1993. Her films cross a spectrum of social issues, but they are always human. Obomsawin explains in the interview, "For me, a real documentary is when you're really listening to somebody; they are the ones that will tell you what the story is, not you."
  • Dear Audrey
    Dear Audrey
    We're sorry, this content is not available in your location.
    Jeremiah Hayes 2021 1 h 29 min
    Acclaimed activist-filmmaker Martin Duckworth has devoted his life to peace and justice. But now he’s put down his camera to fight for the most important cause he’s ever faced. While caring for his wife through the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease, Martin’s love deepens as he looks back on an epic life and career.
  • Eleven Moving Moments with Evelyn Lambart
    Eleven Moving Moments with Evelyn Lambart
    Donald McWilliams 2017 1 h 3 min
    This feature-length documentary shines a much-deserved spotlight on Evelyn Lambart, who stood side-by-side with Norman McLaren for 21 years. Dubbed The First Lady of Canadian Animation, Lambart was an accomplished animator in her own right. This compilation, playfully contextualized by filmmaker Donald McWilliams, aims to prove just that.
  • Evelyn Lambart
    Evelyn Lambart
    Éric Barbeau 2005 5 min
    A profile of Norman McLaren’s main collaborator, animator Evelyn Lambart, who worked as his assistant for several years and co-directed six of his films, including the celebrated Begone Dull Care.
  • Goldwood
    Goldwood
    Kathleen Shannon 1975 20 min
    Goldwood is a search for the early self. A woman describes the look and feel of her childhood to an artist friend. The story of her days at Goldwood unfolds through his paintings and live footage of their visit to the site. Nature has reclaimed the land. The adult attempts to reclaim the child. The woman discovers pieces of her doll's plate, lost thirty years before. "I haven't been a figment of my own imagination," she says. The film evokes the universal feelings of a child in an adult's world and the awareness of self.
  • Hand-Crafted Cinema Animation Workshop with Caroline Leaf
    Hand-Crafted Cinema Animation Workshop with Caroline Leaf
    Eric Roberts 1998 35 min
    This short film brings together animation workshops led by award-winning independent animator Caroline Leaf. The film, which discusses and demonstrates Leaf’s artisan's approach to narrative filmmaking, explores 3 techniques she pioneered during her 20-year tenure at the NFB: sand, paint-on-glass and scratch animation.
  • Interview
    Interview
    We're sorry, this content is not available in your location.
    Caroline Leaf  &  Veronika Soul 1979 13 min
    A freewheeling cinematic experience, this film is the work of two filmmakers who relate their perceptions of each other through their respective animation techniques. Images and words are paired in startling associations. Each does a visual portrait of the other, based on characteristic gestures and impressions. A combination of techniques and materials produces a film of rich visual texture shaped by the hands and heads of two very different people.
  • In Pieces
    In Pieces
    Paule Baillargeon 2011 1 h 21 min
    Paule Baillargeon is 37 years old, 11 years old, 65 years old. . . In this film composed of fragments, she tells her story: the story of a woman, a filmmaker, a mother, a feminist, an artist. Of an actress, too, who delivers a powerful narrative that is both soothing and unsettling. These potent images, her images—filmed, painted, photographed, drawn, animated—merge into the portrait of a life that has been wild, rebellious and gentle. The tableaux are not so much autobiography as an authentic tale, as unpredictable and unique as any life.

  • Kathleen Shannon: On Film, Feminism & Other Dreams
    Kathleen Shannon: On Film, Feminism & Other Dreams
    Gerry Rogers 1997 49 min
    With quiet intelligence and wry humour, retired documentary filmmaker Kathleen Shannon takes us through the arc of her life and career. Beginning with childhood, moving through her formative years, to her overwhelming desire to give women a chance to tell their stories, this film paints a vibrant portrait of one woman who blazed the way. It's a story of struggle, persistence, and success… and of course, of the NFB's Studio D.
  • The Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-Blaché
    The Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-Blaché
    We're sorry, this content is not available in your location.
    Marquise Lepage 1995 52 min
    This feature documentary is a portrait of Alice Guy-Blaché, one of cinema's most fearless pioneers. A filmmaker before the word even existed, Guy-Blaché made her first film at the end of the last century, when cinema was still brand-new. After directing, producing and writing more than 700 films, she slipped into oblivion. This film rescues her brave and shining memory.
  • Margaret Perry—Filmmaker
    Margaret Perry—Filmmaker
    We're sorry, this content is not available in your location.
    Les Krizsan 1987 24 min
    Margaret Perry, now in her eighties, is the unsung heroine of the Nova Scotia film industry. For over a quarter of a century, she shot, directed, wrote and edited all the tourist films for the province. Through her camera, we view changes in the landscape, in lifestyles, and in film technology.
  • Making Movie History: Alanis Obomsawin
    Making Movie History: Alanis Obomsawin
    Joanne Robertson 2012 5 min
    Alanis Obomsawin talks about how she got her start at the NFB and the overarching importance of sound/story in her work.
  • Making Movie History: The Women
    Making Movie History: The Women
    Denys Desjardins 2013 11 min
    This short documentary profiles a selection of pioneering French female filmmakers from the history of the NFB, including Paule Baillargeon, Aimée Danis, Mireille Dansereau, Marthe Blackburn, and Anne Claire Poirier. These women speak frankly of the challenges and joys of making films for, by, and about women.
  • Nunavut Animation Lab: I Am But a Little Woman (Inuktitut Version)
    Nunavut Animation Lab: I Am But a Little Woman (Inuktitut Version)
    2010 4 min
    Inspired by an Inuit poem first assigned to paper in 1927, this animated short evokes the beauty and power of nature, as well as the bond between mother and daughter. As her daughter looks on, an Inuit woman creates a wall hanging filled with images of the spectacular Arctic landscape and traditional Inuit objects and iconography. Soon the boundaries between art and reality begin to dissolve.
  • Making Movie History: Sylvia Hamilton
    Making Movie History: Sylvia Hamilton
    Joanne Robertson 2014 4 min
    Director Sylvia Hamilton reflects on her work with the NFBs Atlantic Studio and the birth of New Initiatives in Film - A Studio D initiative for women of colour and aboriginal women.
  • Nunavut Animation Lab: I Am But a Little Woman
    Nunavut Animation Lab: I Am But a Little Woman
    Gyu Oh 2010 4 min
    Inspired by an Inuit poem first assigned to paper in 1927, this animated short evokes the beauty and power of nature, as well as the bond between mother and daughter. As her daughter looks on, an Inuit woman creates a wall hanging filled with images of the spectacular Arctic landscape and traditional Inuit objects and iconography. Soon the boundaries between art and reality begin to dissolve.
  • Making Movie History: Bonnie Sherr-Klein
    Making Movie History: Bonnie Sherr-Klein
    Joanne Robertson 2012 5 min
    Bonnie Sherr-Klein recalls the early days of Studio D, the women's studio, and the birth of the seminal film Not a Love Story which she co-directed.
  • NFB Pioneers II: Her Voice, the Studio D Story
    NFB Pioneers II: Her Voice, the Studio D Story
    Lucia Piccinni 2007 55 min
    Part of the NFB Pioneers series with the Doc Channel, this episode deals with the Studio D, the first permanent, state-funded women's film unit in the world created in 1974. Studio D gave a number of women the unprecedented opportunity to work consistently on women-centred film projects. Features interviews with Gerry Rogers, Bonnie Sherr-Klein, Zoe Dirse, Susan Trow, Gail Singer, Dorothy Henault and Beverly Shaffer.
  • Our Dear Sisters
    Our Dear Sisters
    Kathleen Shannon 1975 14 min
    Alanis Obomsawin, an Indigenous woman who earns her living by singing and making films, is the mother of an adopted child. She talks about her life, her people, and her responsibilities as a single parent. Her observations shake some of our cultural assumptions.
  • A Return to Memory
    A Return to Memory
    Donald McWilliams 2024 1 h 58 min
    “We learned to work with chaos.”

    The intrepid women who helped create Canadian cinema come to vibrant life in A Return to Memory, a documentary masterwork illuminating their vital but little-known role in establishing Canada’s National Film Board.

    Juxtaposing a dazzling array of archival material with dynamic animation by NFB infographics artist Mélanie Bouchard, director Donald McWilliams evokes the heady wartime years, when women played a key part in transforming the NFB into a major international studio.

    With men engaged elsewhere in the war effort, hundreds of women pursued careers at the newly formed public producer—and pioneering figures like Evelyn Spice Cherry, Red Burns and Jane Marsh Beveridge made movie history, creating work that spoke to the world with a distinctive Canadian voice.
  • Stories Sarah Tells
    Stories Sarah Tells
    Ann Marie Fleming 2013 4 min
    This short film pays tribute to director, screenwriter and actress Sarah Polley. Her latest film, Stories We Tell, a feature length documentary about her family history, premiered at the 2012 Venice Film Festival, then screened to unanimous acclaim at the Telluride Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival. It was called “a brilliant film: an enthralling, exquisitely layered masterpiece” by Maclean’s film critic Brian D. Johnson. Here, a whimsical, playful film tells the story of the kinds of stories Polley tells. Using humorous, simple line animation, the film comments on the messiness of life and art.

    Produced by the NFB in co-operation with the National Arts Centre and the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards Foundation on the occasion of the 2013 Governor General's Performing Arts Awards.
  • Salt
    Salt
    Amber Goodwyn Morgan Gage , … 2000 1 h 17 min
    These provocative 20-minute movies made by high school students provide an insider's look at youth culture. Made by four 17-year-old directors with help from a professional crew, Salt is a four-part filmzine: four films, four flavours, four windows into youth culture that explore alternative education, Montreal's flourishing independent music scene, the troubling practice of self-mutilation and a quest for the punk subculture.
  • Stories We Tell
    Stories We Tell
    We're sorry, this content is not available in your location.
    Sarah Polley 2012 1 h 48 min
    This feature documentary is an inspired, genre-twisting film directed by Oscar®-nominee Sarah Polley. Polley's playful investigation into the elusive truth buried within the contradictions of a family of storytellers paints a touching and intriguing portrait of a complex network of relatives, friends, and strangers.
  • Twenty Years of Feminist Filmmaking
    Twenty Years of Feminist Filmmaking
    Cheryl Sim  &  Janice Brown 1994 5 min
    A clip montage for presentation at the National Action Committee on the Status of Women to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Studio D and the National Action Committee.
  • Western Eyes
    Western Eyes
    Ann Shin 2000 39 min
    This documentary presents two Canadian women of Asian descent who are contemplating eyelid surgery. Maria and Sharon, of Philippino and Korean heritage respectively, believe their looks--specifically their eyes--get in the way of how people see them. Layering their stories with pop culture references to beauty icons and supermodels, filmmaker Ann Shin looks at the pain that lies deep behind the desire for plastic surgery.