The Kartemquin Collection

It all started in 1966 with a camera, a verite film, Home for Life, and three friends (Stan Karter, Jerry Temaner, and Gordon Quinn) coming together and deciding to take a risk to “try to make something happen.” And make something happen they did. The collective they formed has been home to over 200 filmmakers who […]

Chronicle of a Crisis

Sarah and Simon, a couple of young millennials are facing the repossession of their apartment in the midst of an unprecedented housing crisis in the province of Quebec. They decide to turn the camera on themselves to document their daily life during their challenging search for a new affordable place to live in. Filmed in […]

Fairy Creek

Forest defenders marching through a clear-cut logging site during the Fairy Creek protests

The Fairy Creek (Ada’itsx) valley sprawls across Pacheedaht First Nation territory on southwestern Vancouver Island and its old growth forest ecosystem thrives with lush foliage, ancient tree trunks, and a variety of wildlife. However, the decimating chainsaws and tractor machinery of the Teal Jones lumber corporation disrupt this equilibrium as they demolish an environmental haven […]

Sudan, Remember Us

In April 2019, the Paris-based filmmaker Hind Meddeb travelled to Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, at a jubilant moment in the country’s history. The long-time dictator Omar Al-Bashir had recently been overthrown after a 30-year regime marked by genocidal violence in Darfur. Meddeb began filming with young activists rallying for a citizen’s government by staging sit-ins, making […]

Silvicola Begins its Vancouver Island Tour

Promotional still for SILVICOLA

SILVICOLA returns to Vancouver Island for seven special events from October 5 to October 11 with the director and local guests in attendance. The film tour is organized in collaboration with and co-sponsored by Sierra Club BC.

From Ground Zero

Through striking authorial engagements with allegory and creative actuality, these filmmakers’ testimonies of confinement under relentless bombardment and imposed famine expose audiences to fragments of their daily struggle to survive — and to do so with dignity. Khamis Masharawi’s Soft Skin enters an animation workshop providing art therapy to children, many of whom are newly orphaned, as […]

The Ride Ahead

THE RIDE AHEAD is the feature-length version of the Emmy Award-winning New York Times Op-Doc, MyDisability Roadmap.After graduating high school Samuel Habib, who has serious health, communication, and mobility challenges, feels ‘stuck’ and falling behind his peers. He wants to go to college, make new friends, date, move out of his parents’ home. “But no […]

Diaries From Lebanon

Filmed during the maelstrom of Lebanon’s early 2020s, Myriam El Hajj’s DIARIES FROM LEBANON uses a diaristic structure to tell the story of a country plagued by legislative tyrants, state censorship, and a catastrophic ammonium nitrate explosion in Beirut. El Hajj’s deeply personal film renders the tireless attempts of the Lebanese people to restructure their […]

Direct Action

Direct action is a tactical strategy of protest that seeks to achieve an end directly and by the most effective means. DIRECT ACTION is a contemporary portrait of one of the most high-profile militant activist communities in France: a 150-person strong rural collective that successfully resisted an international airport expansion project in 2018, created an […]

Standing Above the Clouds

STANDING ABOVE THE CLOUDS highlights the movement to protect Mauna Kea through the intergenerational stories of women in three Native Hawaiian families as they stand for the sacred mountain. The film follows teacher and community organizer Pua Case and her two daughters — artist-activists Hāwane Rios and Kapulei Flores — who have been called to […]

My Stolen Planet

Oppressed by governmental restrictions that prevent her human rights, movement and autonomy, an Iranian filmmaker is forced to emigrate “inwards” and finds freedom in recording herself dancing and singing at home as an act of resistance. Using a personal diary-style narrative, Farah Sharifi traces her birth in post-revolution Iran to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement […]

Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam

Taqwacore chronicles the nascent Muslim punk rock movement in America. It was inspired by the work of Michael Knight, who converted to Islam in rebellion against his white-supremacist father. He went on to pen the novel The Taqwacores (a term combining the Muslim concept of God consciousness with hardcore punk), a manifesto for disillusioned Islamic […]