Genres: documentary

  • Portrait of Small Hydro, A

    A sister film to “Water Power,” “A Portrait of Small Hydro” concentrates on three hydro entrepreneurs who bought up old dam sites in New England and rebuilt them for production of power. In 1978, the US Congress passed the Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) which requires utilities to buy power at fair rates from private producers. With a guaranteed return, investors scurried all over the country looking for suitable sites. Charles MacArthur found his “bottomless oil well” in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine. In1977, his 600 kw output was worth $12,000 a year. In the early 1980s, it was worth $120,000. But,…

  • Potters at Work

    In Japan, a man works with his sons and apprentices fashioning pots. A woman scoops off water from a clay settling tank while another lifts out heavy, wet handfuls of clay. An ancient brick kiln is walled up at night. Working with understanding and affection, refusing such aids as commentary and music, th filmmaker, creating from the pattern of the potter’s work, shows precisely how pots are crafted and has captured a vision of creativity radically different from western concepts of art-making.

  • Poulet Poulet

    “Poulet Poulet” is a light-hearted sociological look at the many roles of poultry in human life. The emphasis is placed on the lesser-known aspects of human/chicken relationships. Writer and broadcaster Margaret Wisser discusses the evolution of the interaction between people and chickens, including their poor example as sexual role models. Members of the Feather Fancier display their prize-winning birds. Songs, toys and chickens round out this picture.

  • Priceville Prints

    “Priceville Prints” is a video about collaborative printmaking. Taped at Otis Tamasauskas’ Priceville Ontario studio, the video records the interaction between the printmaker Tamasaukas and the painters Robert Markle and Harold Klunder. The artists are followed through the various procedures of lithography and etching while Tamasauskas discusses and considers with the artists the possibilities and consequences of the media and its techniques. The artists speak about their attitudes to their art in general, their attitude toward printmaking and engage in a critical discussion about the products of the printmaking session. This is not a “how to” video. The video communicates…

  • Prison Art

    The son (and my Godson) of one of the Directors, Mr. Garegin Zakoyan, who is the founder and the General Manager of the Cenematheque Armenia, was imprisoned in 1994 on false charges. Trips to a prison became a routine for the family, and prompted us to make use of our access to otherwise forbidden domain of the penitentiary system. Thus the film was conceived. 90 percent of the narration is taken from the letters of my Godson and Sergey Paradjanov. (MB)

  • Private Property / Public History

    “Having acquired a set of family snapshots at an auction sale, Doyle traced their origins to an Ontario family. She talked with the now-elderly women and reconstructed the photographs and the dialogue in this film which confronts issues of photographic representation and its uses in family history.” – “Toronto: A Play of History,” The Power Plant, 1987

  • Puamana

    Aloha! This gentle portrait of Auntie Irmgard Farden Aluli, one of Hawaii’s best-loved composers, focuses on Hawaiian women’s contributions to family structure, art, music and dance. An intimate glimpse into the real culture of the islands.

  • Quatuor de l’exil, Le

    This film tells us the story of four francophones, aged 17 to 19, who have come from the war-torn and hunger-ravaged country of Somalia. Having just arrived in Canada, they are searching for cultural reference points that allow them to reconstruct their universe. But the way they live marginalizes them and they do not always recognize themselves in modernity. How can they reconcile old and new, past and present, myth and reality? It is this quest for remembrance, identity and freedom which the filmmaker seeks to capture.

  • Bad Brownies

    A mockumentary of memoires of childhood transgression. Former Brownies recall their lives in the organization, and two modern-day recruits – one a good Brownie and one a bad one – demonstrate different reactions to the rules and rituals of the Brownie circle.

  • Ranch: The Alan Wood Ranch Project

    “Ranch” is about The Alan Wood Ranch Project, a massive environmental art piece built on 320 acres in the foothills of the Rockies. Combining time-lapse photography, old Hollywood Westerns, television news and aerial photography, “Ranch” offers the viewer a refreshing new appreciation of the work. A film of breathtaking beauty and a document of surprising humour, “Ranch” is part experimental cinema, part documentary.