Film Categories: Politics + Policy

  • Our Protection

    “I’m watching you watching me, watching you watching me, watching you watching me. You hit bodies, while we hit streets, say it’s for our protection, when was just your decision” “Our Protection” is a music video for the band LAL for their 4th CD release. The song and the video are inspired by the G20 protests of 2010 in Toronto. Animation, mixed with real time photo and clips of protests, protesters, police violence and LAL, gives you a glimpse into the reality of loss of civil liberties we are facing more and more. Soon we won’t be allowed to dance…

  • Eighth Day, The

    The film systematically shows man destroying man. It is about war and inhumanity. Largely assembled from newsclips and elaborate montage of still photographs. While working on the film, I came to realize that the strongest thing about violence and the most abstract thing about violence is its sequential nature, that war has never stopped, and that it is just the leading of one conflict into another conflict. I could keep this film going forever…. Available on DVD on “Charles Gagnon: 4 Films.”

  • Lecciones en Proceso (Lessons in Process)

    “Lessons in Process” is a poetic documentary about a film making workshop given by Canadian filmmaker Philip Hoffman at the famed Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión de San Antonio de los Baños in Cuba. Founded in 1986 by Argentinean poet and filmmaker Fernando Birri, Colombian writer Gabriel García Marquez and Cuban filmmakers Julio Garcia Espinosa, and Thomas Gutirres Alea, “the school of the three worlds” was established to give students from developing countries in Latin America and the Carribean, Africa and Asia, an opportunity to participate in the democracy of the image. Hoffman collaborates with the students to produce…

  • The Prince’s Sword

    “The Prince’s Sword” is based on the true story of the conflict that arose in the director’s pacifist home when her 5-year old son wanted a toy sword. Reflecting the changing face of family, this film explores how two mothers struggle to guide their son’s masculinity in a peaceful, feminist fashion, while still honouring his boyhood. It puts a contemporary twist on the universal challenge of parenting as a complex process of letting go of what you love the most. When our children challenge our values, when it is right to hold on and when is it right to reconsider?

  • Gay Women Will Marry Your Boyfriends

    Lesbians explain what will happen if you don’t support gay marriage.

  • Buffalo Death Mask

    A conversation with Canadian painter Stephen Andrews returns us to a pre-cocktail moment, when being HIV+ afforded us the consolation of certainty.

  • I Met A Man From Burma

    Inspired by the David Lynch Interview Project, this character-driven film explores the oldest going conflict in the world – the country of Burma (now Myanmar). Expressed through the personal pain of one man, Burmese Refugee and “Freedom Fighter”- Ler Wah Lobo, from personal loss, regret and hope – this is a tale of a man from Burma.

  • Fati et Aissatta (Fati and Aissatta)

    Fati, 23, and Aissatta, 16, live in the banlieue north of Paris, in a cité called “La Rose des Vents.” Their father emigrated from Mauritania to France 40 years ago to work on the assembly line at Citroën. Shot over a period of three years, the film follows the stories of the two sisters, their refusal of traditional ideas of French identity and their search for independence within a community where secularization, radicalization and patriarchal rule are continually in confrontation. Fati, 23 ans, et Aissatta, 16 ans, vivent dans la cité de La Rose des Vents, dans la banlieue nord…

  • Breathtaking

    Breathtaking takes on the asbestos industry through a moving and personal investigation into Kathleen’s father’s death from an asbestos-related disease and the current present-day use of asbestos in Canada and internationally. Valued since the beginning of time and commercially mined since the Industrial Revolution, asbestos was coined the ‘magic mineral’ for its extraordinary capacity to protect against fire, and was used in everything from brake pads to oven mitts. Discovered to be carcinogenic, the use of asbestos was banned in many countries and the use of it limited in others. Canada, along with Russia and several other countries, still mines…

  • Joaquin La Habana – LebenZwischenWelten (Joaquin La Habana – Living Between Worlds)

    Joaquín La Habana – Lebenzwischenwelten is a documentary portrait of the transformation artist Joaquín La Habana, an androgynous Cuban-born singer, dancer and entertainer, who currently resides in Berlin, Germany. As he plays effortlessly with changing gender and culture, his opera-trained voice switches easily from the baritone of a rebel to the soprano of a seductress. Now in his sixties, Joaquín La Habana reflects on his life and career during the ’70s and ’80s as part of New York City’s provocative underground scene. The film contains impressive archival material, including Joaquín La Habana’s performance at the famous nightclub, Studio 54.