Film Categories: Politics + Policy

  • Toronto Summit

    Photographed during the convening of the G7 leaders in Toronto, Kneller’s materialist documentary pits street activists against the forces of law and order. This inner-city portrait shows a metropolis battened down for possible conflict – its streets closed and cordoned off while helicopters circle overhead in perpetual surveillance. As the film proceeds through dialectical montage, the two sides gather: the black shirts from windowed enclaves, and the protesters who gather to sing, dance and make speeches. Finally, open conflict breaks out, as the barricades fall and both sides clash in order to lay claim again to streets too easily ceded…

  • Human Remains

    “Human Remains” illustrates the banality of evil by creating intimate portraits of five of this century’s most reviled dictators: Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco, and Mao Tse Tung. We learn the private and mundane details of their everyday lives – their favourite foods, films, habits, and sexual preferences. Their personalities and psychological make-up are revealed through the details they convey. There is no mention of their public lives or of their place in history. The intentional omission of the horrors for which these men were responsible hovers over the film. “Human Remains” addresses this horror from a…

  • Women Are Not Little Men

    Contemporary and archival images are contrasted against the text of a 1950’s industrial safety and training manual, exposing and critiquing the widespread belief in the existence of a weaker sex.

  • Our Hiroshima

    Setsuko Nakamura Thurlow, a relentless campaigner for peace, sets the tone of “Our Hiroshima”. She was thirteen when the first atomic bomb destroyed her city and killed several members of her family. By interspersing Setsuko’s vivid, eyewitness testimony with archival footage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Anton Wagner brings alive the reality of an unimaginable horror. This film also takes a long look at the US Army’s determination to test the new weapon before the end of the war, and delves deeply into the essential roles played by the Canadian government, uranium industry, and scientists in the Manhattan Project. In the…

  • El Valley Centro

    “In a media age dominated by rapid-fire imagery and pounding sound tracks, it is rejuvenating to encounter a film that invites the viewer to find rapture and meaning in the details of a single quiet frame. Veteran experimental filmmaker James Benning extends such an invitation as he turns his meditative gaze toward California’s Great Central Valley in his exceptionally beautiful film, ‘El Valley Centro.’ Employing natural sound and contemplative proscenium shots, Benning skillfully composes a series of pure and majestic images that at once evoke a sense of nostalgic splendor as well as deliver a subtle, yet penetrating, political commentary.…

  • On the Borders of Gardens (Part 1)

    A documentary about Palestinian refugees, Israelis, and dreams of homes beyond borders. This film deals with the seemingly intractable problem of Palestinian refugees.

  • On the Borders of Gardens (Part 2)

    A documentary about Palestinian refugees, Israelis, and dreams of homes beyond borders. This film deals with the seemingly intractable problem of Palestinian refugees.

  • Christian Porn

    When the Saskatchewan Opposition party whipped Regina into a frenzy over the spending of tax dollars on screening gay porn, all hell broke lose. To overcome the uproar and win the hearts of the Christians, in steps BROTHER LOVE.

  • Lost Heroes

    Francisco, the lead character, is a Portuguese-Canadian artist who has just been commissioned to work on a painting celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Portuguese revolution, which took place on April 25, 1974. His agent, upon realizing how distanced Francisco feels from his home, sends him to Portugal to rediscover it. Once there, he goes to meet Catarina, a childhood friend who lives with her family in a small village. Conflict arises when Catarina’s father discovers that Francisco has returned. An ex-captain of the notorious PIDE, the Portuguese equivalent to the KGB, he had Francisco’s father imprisoned, tortured, and killed…

  • Born to Shop (L’Age d’mall)

    Live action and animation with biting commentary on the religion of rampant consumerism.