From cinema-verite; pioneers Albert Maysles and Joan Churchill to maverick movie makers like Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Nick Broomfield, the world's best documentarians reflect upon the unique power of their genre. Capturing Reality explores the complex creative process that goes into making...
In 2001, the government of Quebec announced a new program to issue permits for the construction of private hydroelectric dams at specific sites. Upset, the population took things into their own hands and decided to act. Citizens formed collectives to protect their waterways, among the most...
Dancing Around the Table: Part One provides a fascinating look at the crucial role Indigenous people played in shaping the Canadian Constitution. The 1984 Federal Provincial Conference of First Ministers on Aboriginal Constitutional Matters was a tumultuous and antagonistic process that pitted...
Guy Nadon is the rhythm incarnate. A jazz drummer who strikes on everything that makes noise. A king of musical improvisation, but also a king of improvisation, sometimes holding words bordering on surrealism.
A documentary that allows us to witness three births in their intimacy. Through their actions, the couples who agreed to participate in the film help to propose alternatives to the dominant medical interventions in hospitals.
Les Grands Enfants does not tell a story in the traditional sense. Instead, it offers an honest image of people's dreams of change : people often unemployed, dissatisfied in some way with their work, or caught up in complicated social relationships. The film is set in Montreal.
Feature-length documentary as part of Pierre Perrault's Abitibian Cycle. The filmmaker questions the past and present of Abitibi and draws up, face to face, the promises of colonization in the 1930s and the great disappointment caused by the closing of the land in the 1970s. There are witnesses to...
Shot in 1987 at the Montréal International Jazz Festival, this documentary film presents musical performances and conversations between three jazz pianists with remarkably different styles: Soviet Leonid Chizhik, Black Montrealer Oliver Jones, and French-Canadian Jean Beaudet. It introduces...
In this very personal and poetic film, veteran documentarian Serge Giguère pores through 100 letters written by his late mother to him and his 15 siblings. In them, she details the trials and tribulations of raising 16 children in rural Quebec, while helping to run a family carpentry business.
Raymond Roy is a 64-year-old idealist, an energetic social activist ready to give everything he has to those living on the edge: the alienated, impoverished and exploited members of society. Raymond is also a priest, doing what he has wanted to do ever since he was a teenager. Filmmaker Serge...
Before Daybreak is a film about how life is passed on, and about the privileged relationship people have with the land they inhabit. In her house on Providence Island, Florence performs her timeless gestures. In Lourdes-de-Blanc-Sablon, Simonne opens her house and heart to guests, friends, people...
Berri and Ste-Catherine, at 8:30 a.m. on June 19, traffic was paralyzed by 8 individuals, who appeared from who knows where. The hidden cameras see everything. This film won the Special Jury Prize at the 1st Montreal International Art Film Festival.
Temiscaming, Québec is the story of a town's struggle to survive after its main source of employment, the CIP mill, closed down. Part I tells what steps the workers, townspeople and ex-CIP managers took to reopen a mill co-owned and co-managed by the workers; Part II explains the new corporate...
Through the eyes of children and women of different generations, this film reveals the soul of a small village on the Upper North Shore. Mrs. Kennedy has a vital link with the forest: Diane, faced with the difficult path of her life, raises her head; Cathy, at 18, has the biting lucidity of those...
Toul Québec au monde sua jobbe stages the takeover of a factory by the workers. A 1978 film interpreted by non-professionals, it is one of the few examples of worker cinema in Quebec.
A summer in the life of a mother and her two children. Précis of the Everyday is a tender look at the memory, passing time, imagination and poetry that make every day a unique experience. In her desire to “record every moment”, the mother is humbled by how much escapes her.