Film Categories: history

  • Helpless

    Based on a tale from the work of Maritime folklorist Helen Creighton, “Helpless” is set in a fogbound world of superstition and magic. When a strange and terrifying illness befalls Walton Collins’ son Mortimer, the fisherman turns to a mysterious stranger with elemental powers to heal the helpless boy. An unsettling tale from the past, “Helpless” mines the dark realms of sorcery and desire. “Helpless” is conceived as both a cultural film work and an homage to Helen Creighton. The script for “Helpless” comes out of a collaboration with respected visual artist Eric Walker. A native Nova Scotian, Maritime history…

  • Silent Song

    “Silent Song” brings new life to a remarkable piece of 1945 footage found by chance in an archive. “Silent Song” completes a deeply personal trilogy on family history and Holocaust memory. The first two films of the trilogy, “Zyklon Portrait” (13min. 1999) and “The Walnut Tree” (11min. 2000) have been seen in 20 countries around the globe, garnering numerous awards. In the pandemonium of the liberation of Nazi concentration camp Dachau, a U.S. army cameraman filmed a young boy playing the accordian. This strangely poetic moment offers an unusual contrast to the all-too-familiar WWII liberation images of emaciated prisoners in…

  • Réveille (Wake Up)

    This simple and engaging animated film tells of an event which changed the course of French history in North America: the deportation of the Acadians, or “neutralist French,” from Nova Scotia by the English and Americans. The French Canadians are burned out of their homes, displaced to Louisiana. The image of soldiers/oppressors transformed into children’s toy soldiers has been called one of the most quietly powerful moments in animation history. The anger and poinancy of “Reveille” is enhanced by a haunting Acadian folk song.

  • Promised Land

    “Promised Land” is an experimental documentary film that mixes the personal and the political. It follows the story of my family in Peru, from the middle of the last century through to the present day. It is told from a personal point of view and also in relation to the political developments taking place throughout the Latin American continent. This film waves together these various viewpoints, forming a unique perspective on memory, history and identity. (MA)

  • Portrait of a Street: The Soul and Spirit of College

    Eight Canadians vividly recall their childhood and youth growing up in Toronto’s Jewish, Italian and black communities during the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s. They captivate us with engaging and poignant stories on the immigrant experience, growing up poor and ethnic in the city, enduring discrimination, and keeping the spirit alive with music, friends and family. Their reminiscences on the joy and hardships of growing up in Toronto’s Little Italy paint a portrait of a time, a place and a generation. Featuring Johnny Lombardi, the Sherman Brothers, Sam (The Record man) Sniderman, Rose Grieco, Fanny Brass and Stanley G. Grizzle.

  • Memories That Sing

    “Memories That Sing” is how filmmaker Isabel Fryszberg captures the unsung stories and songs of her mother, just before her unexpected death. She reveals the songs and stories of her mother’s childhood in Poland just before the Holocaust. At the end Fryszberg becomes the song and story of her mother’s forgotten world.

  • My Mother at the Consulate

    “My Mother at the Consulate” is a montage-based exploration of absence and presence and the passage of time. It is an addition to a series of personal pieces about the filmmaker’s mother.

  • Past Perfect

    “Past Perfect” is a spirited meditation on the elusiveness and inaccessibility of (Jewish) history as conveyed through sightseeing tours of “Jewish” Poland, a grandmother’s recollection of life in America during War II, and memoir-like “last moments” of a great aunt believed to have died in Treblinka. Shot almost entirely in contemporary Poland, “Past Perfect” lyrically portrays the relentless yet ultimately futile attempt to resuscitate a history literally gone up in smoke. “It is not entirely out of line to call ‘Past Perfect’- filmmaker Cynthia Madansky’s meditation on Jewish history, notably the Shoah – spirited and darkly amusing. After all, Madansky’s…

  • Through Your Eyes

    “Through Your Eyes” tells the story of Maria, a young Latin-American woman whose parents disappeared under the Argentinian military dictatorship when she was a child. Risking it all to uncover the mystery of their disappearance, Maria delves into her memories and history – a history which struggles to stay alive in a society which attempts to silence it. In Spanish with English sub-titles.

  • Retrato Oficial 1 | Official Portrait 1

    After declared unfit to stand trial in England, former dictator Augusto Pinochet stands up out of his wheelchair and greets supporters.