Through the eyes of ex-engineer, now filmmaker Gillian McKercher, Orphaned explores the huge task of cleaning up thousands of idle oil and gas wells in the prairies before it's too late.
Every winter for decades, the Northwest Territories, in the Canadian Far North, changes its face. While the landscape is covered with snow and lakes of a thick layer of ice, blocking land transport, ice roads are converted to frozen expanses as far as the eye can see.
Highway zum Polarmeer Kanadas Eisstraßen
2017
7
PUMP is a documentary that tells the story of America’s addiction to oil, from its corporate conspiracy beginnings to its current monopoly today, and explains clearly and simply how we can end it — and finally win choice at the pump. Today, oil is our only option for transportation-fuel at the pump. Our exclusive use of it has drained our wallets, increased air pollution and sent our sons and daughters to war in faraway lands. PUMP shows how, through the use of a variety of replacement fuels, we will be able to fill up our cars — cheaper, cleaner and American made — and in the process create more jobs for a stronger, healthier economy. Narrated by Jason Bateman and featuring notable experts such as John Hofmeister former President of Shell Oil, and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, PUMP will forever change the way you think about your car — and the fuel that powers it.
Pump!
2014
7
Women have always sought ways to terminate unwanted pregnancies, despite powerful patriarchal structures and systems working against them. This film provides a historical overview of how church, state and the medical establishment have determined policies concerning abortion. From this cross-cultural survey--filmed in Ireland, Japan, Thailand, Peru, Colombia, and Canada--emerges one reality: only a small percentage of the world's women has access to safe, legal operations.
Abortion: Stories from North and South
1984
0
April 8, 2003: Karsten Heuer + Leanne Allison left the remote community of Old Crow,Yukon, to join the Porcupine Caribou Herd on their epic life journey. For 5 months the Canadians migrated on foot with the 123,000-member herd from wintering to calving grounds in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and back again — 1500km across snow and tundra. They completed their journey on Sept. 8, 2003.
Being Caribou
2005
0
In the mid-1950s, lured by false promises of a better life, Inuit families were displaced by the Canadian government and left to their own devices in the Far North. In this icy desert realm, Martha Flaherty and her family lived through one of Canadian history’s most sombre and little-known episodes.
Martha of the North
2009
0
A story of the exploits carried out by the oil technicians of Baku for the exploitation of the black gold deposit of the Caspian Sea.
Повесть о нефтяниках Каспия
1953
1
An intimate look into Demers family's experience raising children while dealing with the societal stigmas around disabilities and the consequences of Alberta's forgotten experiment in eugenics.
Tangled Roots
2022
0
A feature length documentary about extraordinary Canadian singer songwriter, Ron Hynes... an insightful and entertaining exploration of the creative process, the genesis of song, the meaning of performance and the vulnerability of an artist compelled to bare his soul through his music. The film is comprised of Ron performing his music (distinct and live for the camera), interwoven with very intimate black box 'interviews' with Ron (shot tightly and directly addressed to the camera), in which he discusses the songs and the life that informed them: late nights, dark alleys, marriage, children, divorce, his near death and recovery from drug addiction... and punctuated with back stage moments, insight from the street, and Ron's nephew author Joel Thomas Hynes, taking the role of 'chorus of the people'.
The Man of a Thousand Songs
2010
0
Oil is a primary energy source in the world. Global oil consumption reached approximately 95 million barrels per day but oil fields' quality is constantly declining. A team of Russian scientists came up with more accurate, cheaper, and faster technology that can increase the oil production rate. After all, modern civilization is built in the way that 'to live well' means 'consume more oil'
Да будет нефть
2022
0
As the most dammed, dibbed, and diverted river in the world struggles to support thirty million people and the peace-keeping agreement known as the Colorado River Pact reaches its limits, WATERSHED introduces hope. Can we meet the needs of a growing population in the face of rising temperatures and lower rainfall in an already arid land? Can we find harmony amongst the competing interests of cities, agriculture, industry, recreation, wildlife, and indigenous communities with rights to the water? Sweeping through seven U.S. and two Mexican states, the Colorado River is a lifeline to expanding populations and booming urban centers that demand water for drinking, sanitation and energy generation. And with 70% of the rivers’ water supporting agriculture, the river already runs dry before it reaches its natural end at the Gulf of California. Unless action is taken, the river will continue its retreat – a potentially catastrophic scenario for the millions who depend on it.
Watershed: Exploring a New Water Ethic for the New West
2012
6
When Canada entered World War II, the National Film Board suddenly had an urgent new mission—and hundreds of women stepped forward, helping to create Canadian cinema as we now know it.
A Return to Memory
2024
0
The director goes back to her roots in Pangnirtung, amongst her family and community. It leads her to another journey: to Qipisa, the outpost camp from where they were uprooted.
Qipisa
2017
4
In 1934, Elzire Dionne delivered five identical girls. The Dionne Quintuplets follows Cecile, Emilie, Marie, Yvonne and Annette through twenty-one years of strange upbringing. When the girls were just infants, the premier of Ontario issued a court order removing them from parental care. Cut off from the world and their family, over-publicized, viewed twice daily in a special viewing compound, they grew up as prize exhibits. Director Donald Brittain uses old newsreel footage, home-movie sequences and interviews to depict a historic event that became a tragic exploitation of a family.
The Dionne Quintuplets
1978
0
The “Prophecy of the 7th Fire” says a “black snake” will bring destruction to the earth. For Winona LaDuke, the “black snake” is oil trains and pipelines. When she learns that Canadian-owned Enbridge plans to route a new pipeline through her tribe’s 1855 Treaty land, she and her community spring into action to save the sacred wild rice lakes and preserve their traditional indigenous way of life. Launching an annual spiritual horse ride along the proposed pipeline route, speaking at community meetings and regulatory hearings. Winona testifies that the pipeline route follows one of historical and present-day trauma. The tribe participates in the pipeline permitting process, asserting their treaty rights to protect their natural resources. LaDuke joins with her tribe and others to demand that the pipelines’ impact on tribal people’s resources be considered in the permitting process.
First Daughter and the Black Snake
2017
5
Peter Westerveld, artist and visionary, doesn’t want institutions to resolve the problems linked to earth’s problems. Growing up in Africa, he witnessed the advance of the desert and dedicated himself to finding solutions for the ongoing erosion and desertification of the land. The film follows Peter and the NGO working with him to realise his project; to build contour trenches that capture and store rain water under the surface and replenish the desert land.
The Man Who Wanted to Change the World
2016
0
Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his becoming a foster child. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. Considered a milestone in documentary cinema, it addressed the country’s internal colonialism in a profoundly personal manner, winning a Special Jury Prize at Banff and multiple international awards.
Foster Child
1987
3
Developments in the Canadian forestry industry during the 1970s are shown being carried out both as lab experiments and in the field to protect and conserve the country's vast forests. These include turning a Newfoundland bog into woodland, fostering British Columbia seedlings that withstand mechanical planting, inoculating Ontario elms against the bark beetle, devising ways of controlling fire, and more.
Another Side of the Forest
1974
7
Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.
Koyaanisqatsi
1983
7
Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.
The Corporation
2003
7
Documentary on career criminal Jack Black during an episode of burglary in Victoria BC. Locations around Victoria and Vancouver are explored in present day, with narration from Black's autobiography.
Seven for Jack
2022
0