The Tall Ships in Canada
2000 · 90m · Documentary
Captures the highlights of the weekend in July of 2000 when 80 of the world's tall ships arrived in Halifax Harbour before the start of the race back across the Atlantic Ocean for a trans-Atlantic race.
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The Dionne Quintuplets
1978 · ★ 7
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.
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There's Something in the Water
2019 · ★ 7.3
Elliot Page brings attention to the injustices and injuries caused by environmental racism in his home province, in this urgent documentary on Indigenous and African Nova Scotian women fighting to protect their communities, their land, and their futures.
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Qipisa
2017 · ★ 4
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.
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Wide Boyz II – Slender Gentlemen
2014
After their success climbing the world’s hardest offwidth, the Wide Boyz, Pete Whittaker and Tom Randall, embark on their next crack climbing mission. This time their sights are set on the thinner end of the crack climbing spectrum. Their goal is the mighty Cobra Crack in Squamish BC, considered to be the hardest finger crack in the world. First climbed by Canadian ‘rock star’ Sonnie Trotter after battling it out with Didier Berthod, the route hit the media spotlight in the film First Ascent. With no local hard cracks to train on, the Wide Boyz refit their underground training dungeon and commit to a year of torturous finger training. With only a short trip to Canada planned, the Boyz face their biggest challenge yet against the sharp granite bite of the mighty Cobra Crack!
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Lost Heroes
2014 · ★ 8
Lost Heroes is the story of Canada's forgotten comic book superheroes and their legendary creators. A ninety-minute journey to recover a forgotten part of Canada's pop culture and a national treasure few have ever heard about. This is the tale of a small country striving to create its own heroes, but finding itself constantly out muscled by better-funded and better-marketed superheroes from the media empire next door.
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In a Film by Allan King
2024
In 1968, Billy and Antoinette Edwards participated in a landmark documentary that would intimately observe their turbulent relationship. Over 50 years later, their son Bogart sat down to view and discuss the resulting film, A Married Couple.
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Bowling for Columbine
2002 · ★ 7.5
This is not a film about gun control. It is a film about the fearful heart and soul of the United States, and the 280 million Americans lucky enough to have the right to a constitutionally protected Uzi. From a look at the Columbine High School security camera tapes to the home of Oscar-winning NRA President Charlton Heston, from a young man who makes homemade napalm with The Anarchist's Cookbook to the murder of a six-year-old girl by another six-year-old. Bowling for Columbine is a journey through the US, through our past, hoping to discover why our pursuit of happiness is so riddled with violence.
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Nanook of the North
1922 · ★ 7.1
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.
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The Good Canadian
2025 · ★ 5.5
The world knows the image of the good Canadian. But what if there was a dark secret behind a national identity? THE GOOD CANADIAN exposes the truth behind the idea of a True North strong and free. In this unflinching and eye-opening documentary, directors Leena Minifie and David Paperny move us through the corridors of systemic inequity, from the Indian Act to residential schools, to modern-day family separation. Fusing shocking footage with detailed interviews with experts, advocates, whistleblowers and politicians, THE GOOD CANADIAN challenges national myth-making, while offering Canadians the chance to forge a new identity from the truth.
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Home Front
1940 · ★ 9
This short documentary is part of the Canada Carries On series of morale-boosting wartime propaganda films. In Home Front, the various WWII-era social contributions of women are highlighted. From medicine to industrial labour to hospitality, education and domesticity, the service these women provided to their country is lauded.
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Gentleman Bandit
2024
Documentary on the Canadian career of train robber Billy Miner, who became a folk hero in British Columbia. Locations near Kamloops and Mission are explored in present day.
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