Surplus: Terrorized into Being Consumers
Why is the lifestyle of consumerism a source of such rage today? How come the privilege of buying goods does not automatically lead to happiness? Why all this emptiness despite our wealth? Shot in the US, India, China, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Canada and Cuba over three years, it is the result of a complicated editing […]
The Take
“…a story of every-day heroism, that also offers a model for productive change by repositioning the people as the power-brokers…” – THE VANCOUVER SUN “Lewis and Klein have done something extraordinary…The workers in THE TAKE are so admirable, displaying a melancholy eloquence and a genuine revolutionary spirit.” – THE NEW YORKER THE TAKE opens in […]
Blockade
A 22,000 square mile tract of land in northern British Columbia is the site of an explosive set of competing ownership claims. In 1984, the Gitxsan people launched a land claim for the entire area, claiming it as unceded Indigenous territory. But since the 1880s, white settlers known to the Gitxsan as the “visitors who […]
Culture Jam: Hijacking Commercial Culture
A new breed of revolutionary stands poised along our information highways waging war on logos and symbols. They’re “Culture Jammers” and their mission is to artfully reclaim our mental environment and cause a bit of brand damage to corporate mindshare. Director Jill Sharpe’s subversively savvy one-hour documentary film – culturejam – Hijacking Commercial Culture- bursts […]
In Spring One Plants Alone
An aged woman lives with her fully grown and wholly dependent son. This Vincent Ward film is a rare view of an enclosed world where an 82-year-old woman, alone, is ‘The Burdened One’. Filmed over a period of one and a half years, this emerges as a haunting and powerful portrayal of their life together, […]
Ngāti
A boy is dying from leukemia; a young Australian doctor uncovers his own Māori heritage; the industrial freezing works that provide employment for the local community are threatened to close down. Set in and around the fictional coastal town of Kapua in 1948, NGĀTI is the story of a Māori community, weaving together threads about […]
Making Utu
MAKING UTU is a making of documentary filmed on the set of New Zealand’s first epic, UTU (REDUX), produced with little money and dealing respectfully with matters of cultural protocol. “It’s like football innit? You set up the event and cover it…” says Murphy, as he prepares to shoot a battle scene. The film’s insistence […]
Borderless
My film tells the story of undocumented workers in Canada who take the low-paying jobs that Canadians refuse to. They sew clothes in Montreal, clean high rises in Vancouver and build houses in Toronto. Their low wages subsidize our first world economy. Using silhouetted interviews and stylized imagery shot on Super 8 and mini-dv, Borderless […]
Between Midnight & The Rooster’s Crow
In the aggressive search for the ‘black gold’ that drives Western economies, multinational corporations are working to extract billions of dollars of oil reserves from beneath Ecuador’s rainforest. BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND THE ROOSTER’S CROW investigates the operations of the EnCana Corporation, a firm that, despite proud public declarations of its social responsibility, is shown to […]
Be Like Others
An intimate and unflinching look at life in Iran, seen through the lens of those living at its fringes, BE LIKE OTHERS is a provocative look at a generation of young men choosing to undergo sex change surgery. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, a country with strict social mores and traditional values, sex-change operations […]
Tracing Blood
When Maria falls asleep while trying to find a connection to her estranged family, a mysterious figure appears to her and leads her on a surreal journey that is full of surprises and unexpected lessons. In this experimental film-made debut, Tracing Blood tells the story of one woman’s search for family and the deep-rooted connectedness […]
ONICKAKW! (Wake up!)
Onickakw is a reflection on Aboriginals and the dominant society. By surveying what makes up life within a community on the political, social, economic and environmental levels, this film is a call for change within the community.
Gaza Strip
Gaza Strip follows a range of people and events following the election of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, including the first major armed incursion into “Area A” by IDF forces during this intifada. The film is filmed almost entirely in a verite style, presented without narration and with little explanation, focusing on ordinary Palestinians rather […]
The Farm: Angola, USA
The Farm: Angola, USA is a 1998 award-winning documentary set in America’s infamous maximum security prison in Angola, Louisiana. The film follows the lives of six prison inmates who convey their own personal stories of life, death, and survival in a world that few manage to ever leave.
Waiting for Martin
An innovative collaboration between a veteran documentarian and a young animator/editor, Waiting for Martin updates the proud tradition established by Mike Rubbo’s Waiting for Fidel and Michael Moore’s Roger and Me. The film tells the dramatic and entertaining story of an activist who won’t take no for an answer. David Bernans has been trying to […]
Please Vote for Me
Is democracy a universal value that suits human nature? Do elections inevitably lead to manipulation? Please Vote for Me is a portrait of a society and a town in through a school, its children and its families. Wuhan is a city about the size of London located in central China. It is here that director […]
