Hélène is a woman who already has, in her view, quite enough children. For some time she has secretly been taking birth control pills, but now she is too old to use them safely. When her husband Gabriel discovers the pills, he is distressed, since he wants a large family. The two of them discuss...
A young woman arrives to Montreal to find love. A fortune teller tells her that a wealthy man meant for her is right around the corner so she goes looking even among her odd rag tag group roommates.
Thanks to the development of techniques and the adventurous spirit of pioneering filmmakers, among whom Michel Brault occupies a central place, a new way of making cinema was born at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. This film relevantly retraces the history of a collective movement which...
From the lower St. Lawrence, a picture of whale hunting that looks more like a round-up, with a corral, whale-boys and all. In 1534, when he stopped at the island he named l'Île-aux-Coudres, Jacques Cartier saw how the Indians captured the little white beluga whales by setting a fence of saplings...
Friendship between two old men becomes love. Slightly-unkempt, tired, and frail, Philippe Lanctot moves into a rest home. The administrator says she wants him to be happy, but that seems far from his mind: he's waiting to die. Then, into his room, unannounced, rolls the voluble Victor Laprade, who...
Essay-film on a crucial issue: the notion of belonging to a country. Lingered sentimentalism or deep psychological reality if one believes it is rooted in the heart of man? The action here takes place in the context of a nation that seeks: the French Canadians, and other people without a country:...
A classic NFB documentary about the Golden Gloves boxing tournament, the Canadian amateur's hope for success in the boxing world. This Gilles Groulx film shows three Montreal boxers in training. In behind-the-scenes interviews they talk about their ambitions and what prompted them to take up the...
A compilation of seven shorts made for the National Film Board of Canada. Features the NFBC shorts, "Nahanni," "Le Merle," "A Chairy Tale," "The Cars in Your Life," "Corral," "Wrestling," and "Neighbors."
Short film about the underground part, both geographical and social, of the city of Montreal, through the obsession of a business magnate for a young woman.
In the late 1960s, with the triumph of bilingualism and biculturalism, New Brunswick's Université de Moncton became the setting for the awakening of Acadian nationalism after centuries of defeatism and resignation. Although 40% of the province's population spoke French, they had been unable to...
At the instigation of the filmmakers, the young men of the Ile-aux-Coudres in the middle of the St-Lawrence River try as a memorial to their ancestors to revive the fishing of the belugas interrupted in 1924.
Today it is the city of Montreal, but 3 centuries ago the tiny band of missionary founders called it Ville-Marie, the holy city of Mary. This film goes back to its beginning and those who felt called to plant an oasis of Christianity in the North American wilderness. In an imaginative, at times...
This short documentary features Canadian contralto Maureen Forrester as she sings at the Festival Casals, a musical event founded by the great Spanish cellist and conductor Pablo Casals and sponsored annually by the Puerto Rican government. Part concert film, part tourism film, Festival in Puerto...
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.
The misbehaving public performs for the camera in a half-hour miscellany of misdeeds. In a behind-the-scenes look at the hour-by-hour operation of a large metropolitan police force, this film presents a fair sampling of what keeps Toronto's police officers busy twenty-four hours a day.
