Genres: documentary

  • Lake Odyssey

    The problem of overgrown lakes detracts from the great tourism industry of Northern Canada, so researchers discovered weed harvesting as a means of restoring the delicate plant balance. This film looks at the process of harvesting lake weeds and recycling the material for animal fodder and compost. Excellent nature photography presents this case of creative environmental management.

  • Last Days of Contrition, The

    Shot in the late 1980s in deserts of the American southwest, LAST DAYS is a poetic, harrowing vision of the apocalyptic consequences of militarism and the bankruptcy of the American ideal. Set after the fall, disembodied voices prophesize and attest over a swirling ménage of unsettling desert landscape, weaponry, and dystopian nationalist symbolism.

  • Leftovers

    In “Leftovers”, Janine Fung’s wild narration about misunderstandings in her traditional Chinese family plays over images of her mother carving turkey. Also available on QUEERS ON THE VERGE.

  • Letter from Violet, A

    “A Letter from Violet” is dedicated to the memory of Violet McNaughton, a Saskatchewan woman who was instrumental in women getting the vote in the province in 1916. Violet saw the vote as a tool towards social reform rather than the ultimate goal. She lived by the motto “the welfare of each is the concern for all” and firmly believed in both the equality of the sexes and the need for men and women to work together. Part of “Five Feminist Minutes.”

  • Letters from Home

    Begun with a speech by Vito Russo, “Letters” enjoins a chorus of speakers to sound off on AIDS, love and death. Impelled with a variety of formal procedures, this series of mini-portraits are generously furbished with found footage extracts, hand-processed dilemmas, home movies, super-8 psychodramas, pixilated phantasms, intergalactic warfare and a hot kiss in a cool shower. “Mike Hoolboom has produced an absolutely sensational work, not only by the extreme density and intelligence of the witnesses who appear in the film, but also by the visual quality and inventiveness of his cinematographic language. Each shot, each edit has a message…

  • Ley Lines

    “Taking her own last name as her primary organizing principle in approaching the past, Patricia Gruben has constructed one of the most inventive personal archeologies and family histories ever filmed. Over six years in the making, ‘Ley Lines’ eschews conventional narrative storytelling in favour of associative and cumulative revelation… “Gruben criss-crosses the globe as she traces the Gruben family back to Texas and then to Germany, only to end up in the present in Tuktoyaktuk. Her magical and unpredictable exploration makes innumerable stops along the way to consider such matter as satellites, DNA, geomancy, dowsing, Jimmy Dean, Hitler, the Thule…

  • Licking the Window

    Cape Breton-based filmmaker Neil Livingston’s documentary is a psychedelic road movie about restlessness, breakfast recipes, the usefulness of male nipples and other assorted sundry. In other words, it’s a probing examination of the psyche in winter. Witty, irreverant, indulgent and self-mocking, “Licking the Window” confronts the filmmaker’s image of himself. The ensuing battle is entertaining, enlightening and worth the trip.

  • Life Force

    “Life Force” is a documentary on the life of the late Canadian artist Jack Chambers. It is a film that interweaves art and reality, recreating the significant moments in the artist’s life. Like Chambers’ own work, it is about the universal themes of life, death and transcendence.

  • Little Mountain: An Election from the Inside

    A rare behind-the-scenes look at the political process. An NDP election campaign is followed from the point of view of the organizers and volunteers in the riding of Vancouver Little-Mountain. The film captures the tensions and intensity of people working together, resulting in an energetic documentary that nicely balances entertainment with information.

  • Lotería

    “Lotería” is an impressionistic documentary comprised of a series of interviews with street vendors, lottery officials, and the children responsible for drawing the winning numbers. These children, referred to as “gritones” (they literally shout out the numbers), are employed because their innocence is considered incorruptible. Rather than taking a conventional reportage approach, “Lotería” presents Mexico’s lottery as a visual and auditory phenomenon. The illusionary quality of the lottery as a part of Mexico’s cultural history is represented through the textured layers of the film’s sound and photography. Shot on both colour and black and white, Super 8 and 16mm, with…