Yellow Tobacco from Quebec(1951)

Holstein(en)

A portrait of a small Ontario town, this film introduces its audience to the people of Holstein by filming them in the old-fashioned general store, the blacksmith's shop and the town granary. Old-time residents reminisce, while old-fashioned sleighs travel down the main road bordered by beautiful old frame houses.

Living Wine(en)

Merging sweeping wine country footage with insightful interviews, filmmaker Lori Miller showcases the dynamic natural wine movement that is transforming a growing number of Northern California vineyards.

Pioneer Axe(en)

A short film about axe making in Oakland, Maine. It documents the process of creating fine axes in the Emerson Stevens shop -- the last axe factory to operate in Oakland. Oakland was once a world-famous center of quality blade-making.

The Circle(en)

Produced in 1967, this black and white film is an inmate's view of Daytop, a drug treatment centre on Staten Island, New York, where addicts learn to get along without drugs. Uncompromising, often brutal group therapy sessions are designed to shake loose the excuses a victim makes for himself. The people and situations shown are authentic; only one actor was employed. The results obtained at Daytop are regarded by some psychiatrists as a breakthrough.

Smoke and Mirrors: A History of Denial(en)

In the early 20th Century, tobacco merchants were unaware of the danger of their increasingly popular product. Smoke & Mirrors documents the rise of the cigarette, and the tobacco industry's subsequent attempts to conceal its emerging link with cancer and other smoking-related illnesses. Throughout the 1940's, the scientific case against the cigarette was building. However, despite the evidence that tobacco was a major cause of disease and death among smokers, tobacco companies began conducting successful campaigns of misinformation designed to weave cigarettes into the social fabric of America by emphasizing the "glamorous" and "sophisticated" side of smoking. Today fifty years of documented denial is finally coming back to haunt the industry. Smoke & Mirrors examines this sordid past, and illuminates the issues that threaten tobacco's future.This video is divided into two parts for your viewing convenience.

Milk Men(en)

As the global economics of dairy farming has winnowed out most small and medium-sized dairies, the surviving farmers confront pressures to intensify production, even as they find that getting bigger presents new problems.

Killing the Colorado(en)

The drought in the American West is predicted to be the worst in 1,000 years. Join five Academy Award-winning filmmakers as they explore the environmental crisis of our time and how to fix it before it's too late.

King Corn(en)

King Corn is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom – corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, two college buddies return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America. With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America’s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.

Canada Vignettes: The Move(en)

In this short documentary from the Canada Vignettes series, a Saskatchewan grain elevator is moved across the snow-covered prairie to a new home after nearly a half-century of use. The film follows the lifting and transporting of the 9-storey, 200-ton structure, and examines the feelings of the people as they witness the final passing of their town's one and only grain elevator.

DeLorean: Back from the Future(en)

John Z DeLorean’s extraordinary and doomed attempt to build the sports car of the future in 1980s Northern Ireland is the stuff of legend. A buccaneering American entrepreneur, DeLorean had film star looks, a famous fashion model as a wife, and an enormous ego that drove him to rival the giants of the US car industry.

Der kleine Held vom Hamsterfeld(de)

The Back-breaking Leaf(en)

Here is a graphic picture of the tobacco harvest in southwestern Ontario. At the end of July, transient field workers move in for a brief bonanza when the plant is ripe. The tobacco harvesters call it "the back-breaking leaf."

Legacy(en)

Is there a mental health crisis in agriculture in Colorado? Farming and ranching has become increasingly difficult over the years. An industry that is typically viewed as romantic, hardworking, and "salt-of-the earth" is actually a job full of tremendous stress outside of anyone's control. Combine that with the enormous generational pressure to continue the family farm, and you have a large group of people that are suffering silently. How do we take care of those that are taking care of us?

Les fils de la terre(fr)

Food, Inc.(en)

Documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner examines how mammoth corporations have taken over all aspects of the food chain in the United States, from the farms where our food is grown to the chain restaurants and supermarkets where it's sold. Narrated by author and activist Eric Schlosser, the film features interviews with average Americans about their dietary habits, commentary from food experts like Michael Pollan and unsettling footage shot inside large-scale animal processing plants.

Alexis Tremblay: Habitant(en)

This short documentary illustrates rural French Canadian life in the early 1940s. The film follows Alexis Tremblay and his family through the busy autumn days as they bring in the harvest and help with bread baking and soap making. Winter sees the children revelling in outdoor sports while the women are busy with their weaving, and, with the coming of spring young and old alike repair to the fields once more to plough the earth in preparation for another season of varied crops. One of the first NFB films to be produced, directed, written and shot by women.

747: The Jumbo Revolution(en)

At any given moment hundreds of people are soaring above us in a 747. From the moment the very first jumbo jet took off in 1969, it has been the aircraft against which all others are judged. But its 45-year journey has been anything but smooth. This is the definitive story of the Boeing 747, from its milestones and triumphs to its turning points and disasters. Witness its history through rare archival footage and tales from pilots, engineers, designers, and passengers who were there when it all began.

Fragile Harvest(en)

How safe is the future of the world’s food? This documentary explores a growing crisis in world agriculture. Plant breeding has created today’s crops, which are high yielding but vulnerable to disease and insects. To keep crops healthy, breeders tap all the genetic diversity of the world’s food plants. But that rich resource is quickly being wiped out. (NFB)

In Search of Balance(en)

An exploration of a new paradigm of health, science, and medicine, based on the interconnections between us and nature.

Trois oiseaux bleus(fr)

Ferial has lived in La Dauphine, an old Provençal countryside located on the foothills of the Alps, with Philippe and their three sons for over 20 years. Daughter of a German woman and a Palestinian man, born in Jordan, Ferial sees in this place where she lives today the realization of a strange dream she had when she was still living in Jordan with her parents many years ago. In this dream, Ferial found herself isolated on a small island lost in the middle of the ocean. On this island, there was a blue tree on which three blue birds were perched. She never forgot this dream.