Genres: documentary

  • Brief Life, A

    “A Brief Life” is a poetic homage to a farmer and the cows he raises. Shot over the course of a year on a small farm in rural Ontario, it follows the same cow through the cycle of the seasons from hours after its birth right on through until it is sold for meat. It is a film concerned with documenting an entire process from beginning to end and allowing the viewer to watch it unfold. “A Brief Life” is not an anti-meat film. It comes out of the concern that by living in an urban environment we can become…

  • My Life in Dance

    A romp across the filmmaker’s dance floor of life. A personal reflection on film, dance and living queer.

  • Mothercraft

    In part, a thank you to his mother, and in part a musing over how he became so “arty.” Filmmaker Roy Mitchell looks at his mother, her life, and the inspiration she gave him.

  • Brig, The

    The Living Theatre production of Kenneth Brown’s play ‘The Brig’, filmed on the stage of The Living Theatre and with the original cast. “‘The Brig’ is a raw slice of new American cinema filmed on an off-broadway stage by Jonas and Adolfas Mekas with such brutish authenticity that it won a Venice Film Festival grand prize as best documentary. Part drama, part polemic, with shock-wave sound and a nightmare air that suggests Kafka with a Kodak, the movie does exactly what it sets out to do – seizes an audience by the shirt-front and slams it around from wall to…

  • Brothers in Music

    John T. Davis (pianist/organist/vocalist) and Jim Heineman (saxophonist) are two Canadian jazzmen who have had to wage the war between the compulsion and the passion that they feel towards their music and the struggle that is involved with trying to make a living in the field of jazz music in Canada. John T. Davis is a Black musician from a poor rural environment. Jim Heineman is a white musician from a white middle-class urban environment. “Brothers in Music” begins by exploring the personalities, experiences and inspirations of these two very talented and different musicians and then moves on to examine…

  • Death to Everyone

    “Using the drawings of Bruno Schulz, who must be numbered among the great writers of the 20th century for his two slim books of short stories, Torossian builds up a disturbing imagescape of sexual malice and voyeurism. Torossian’s films are characterized as much by her reuse of other artists’ work as they are by her trademark collage techniques.” – Chris Gehman, Images Festival of Independent Film & Video, 2001

  • BROWNSNOW

    “‘Brownsnow’ presents a fascinating combination of two artistic visions: Carl Brown’s and Michael Snow’s. The form of this expressionistic documentary on Michael Snow’s artwork is a complete melding of Carl Brown’s rich manipulation of the photographic image with the fundamental concepts of Michael Snow’s aesthetic vision. “Brown’s strengths as a portrait photographer are also well-translated to the filmic medium as he situates key commentators on Snow’s artwork (Dennis Reid, R. Bruce Elder, Jonas Mekas, Peggy Gale and Regina Cornwell) in various dramatic Canadian landscapes. Like an abstract expressionist painting in motion, Brown’s brilliant work as a colourist deftly employs photographic…

  • Traces

    Stunning hand-tinted imagery intermingles with a love letter to the artist’s departed dog Mica. Bittersweet as any country song, so familiar you swear you’ve heard it before – but it’s just your heart breaking, worn and sure.

  • Budworks

    Aerial insecticide spraying of forests is the most ignored environmental problem in North America today. In Canada, every province east of Saskatchewan, with the exception of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, sprays annually to control the spruce budworm. New Brunswick forests have been sprayed since 1952, longer than anywhere else in the world. “Budworks” investigates the controversy surrounding the spraying and goes directly to the people who are involved.

  • Burden of Dreams

    A film about the importance of dreams and how far one person is willing to go to make those dreams reality. It chronicles German director Werner Herzog’s making of “Fitzcarraldo” in the Peruvian Amazon. Disaster after disaster befalls Herzog and “Burden of Dreams” grows into a fascinating record of an obsessed genius in the grips of an artistic passion that knows no bounds. Besieged by torrential rains, attacks by armed Indians and the loss of his leading actors, Werner Herzog endures the storm.