Film Categories: Politics + Policy

  • Name Your Poison It’s a Scream Channel No. 5

    A nasty little movie about violation and contamination – physical, geographical and ideological. The sound, built and mixed on a 4-track cassette recorder, was culled from shortwave radio, Italian B-movies, and a perfume advertisement. Chernobyl, AIDS, and sexual assault in a lament for our times.

  • Neurosis

    “Neurosis” makes a powerful anti-war statement through its use of animated still photos as well as live-action footage of a political demonstration. At points the animation of still photos is so dynamic as to create a sense of live-action footage, while at other points it is the very stasis of the imagery that is so effective.

  • New Shoes: An Interview in Exactly 5 Minutes

    “New Shoes” is an interview in exactly five minutes, which gives a candid portrait of a male-female relationship that terminated with dire consequences. Symbolic imagery of a fairy princess intercut with the interview and a temporal distance from the experience itself bring a quick sense of irony to the event. Originally produced as a segment of “Five Feminist Minutes.”

  • Niagara

    Drawing on both the substance and spirit of hardcore music, “Niagara” sets in motion a number of male-female scenarios designed to challenge male aggression. A couple’s argument in the back seat of a car erupts into violence when the man suspects his lover of having an affair in Niagara Falls. Another couple arrives home from a dinner party and encounter an intruder in their home. As a gang runs around and commits random acts of violence, they sing the film’s chorus: Do you think he did it?/Wouldn’t be right. Would it?/he’s not the type anyway. Is he?/Hit!Hit!Hit!/He’s all rage and…

  • Nice Girls Don’t Do It

    “Nice Girls Don’t Do It” is a not-quite-conventional documentary about female ejaculation. While referencing some of the codes of pornography (i.e. out-of-focus, leather, explicit close-ups), the film clearly works against conventional pornography in its use of black and white film, text, and in its positioning of the spectator. The film serves less as a treatise than as an invitation to its spectators to fill in the gaps created by the film – to query, challenge, investigate, object, corroborate, perhaps inveigh against, but ultimately to create a space for others to speak about a part of female experience long-shrouded in silence.

  • Nice Step to Take, A

    The radical change from an institutional residence to an apartment complex promoting independence sets the stage for this film about the people at Bellwoods Park House in Toronto. Founded in 1967 by the Adult Cerebral Palsy Institute, Bellwoods is one of the first residences for the disabled in North America. This film puts a face on people too often masked by our perception of disability. Produced for The Adult Cerebral Palsy Institute of Metro Toronto.

  • No Choice

    “No Choice” is a short documentary that deals with the abortion issue and how it relates to women living in poverty. Five women, ranging in age from twenty to forty-five, speak about the lack of choice available to poor people and how, because of their poverty, their reproductive capabilities are often controlled by extraneous factors. Part of “Five Feminist Minutes.”

  • No Mime Game

    An effective mime-skit showing the perils of drinking and driving. A mixture of mime, camera work, and special effects prepares us to expect the inevitable crash. An excellent film for use in driver and health education or dramatic arts classes.

  • Now That We Are Persons

    Until 1929, Canadian women were told that they couldn’t be senators. Our Constitution, the British North American Act, (BNA) said that only qualified “persons” could be appointed. The government of the day understood that to mean men only. So, in 1927, five Albertan women challenged this definition of “persons” in court. On October 18, 1929, the British Privy Council, then the highest court of appeal in Canada, ruled that the word “persons” could include both men and women. With this new historical interpretation, women won the right to be eligible for the Canadian senate.

  • Nukie Takes a Valium

    This latest animation in the Nukie series finds our favourite talking atomic bomb once again seeking to convince the TV public that they need him to further their consumerist dreams. This time he takes on the role of a beautiful woman to demonstrate the glamour of destruction. A film that neatly cuts through both the nuclear and advertising industry.