Michel Brault, l'instinct de vue(NaN)

Belle famille(fr)

A working class family leaves St-Henri quarter in Montréal to build a new home in the countryside.

Little Burgundy(fr)

"This film is one of the first French Unit productions of the “Société Nouvelle/Challenge for Change” program. When an old area of Montréal is to be demolished to make way for a new low-income housing development, is there anything the residents can do to protect their own interests? The film documents such a situation in the Little Burgundy district of Montréal and shows how the residents organized themselves into a committee that successfully influenced the city’s housing policy." - Anthology Film Archives

Cesar's Bark Canoe(fr)

"This documentary depicts a canoe being built in the traditional manner. Cesar Newashish, a 67-year-old Attikamek of the Manawan Reserve North of Montréal, uses only birchbark, cedar splints, spruce roots, and gum. With a sure hand he works methodically to fashion a craft unsurpassed in function or beauty of design. Building a canoe solely from the materials that the forest provides may become a lost art, even among the Native Peoples whose traditional craft it is. The film is free of spoken commentary but text appears on the screen in Cree, French, and English." - Anthology Film Archives

Friday: About Cars(en)

"Montréal under the snow and the cold winter. It is the period of the year when the garage owners strike it rich. The automobile at the service of man? This small opus would rather show the contrary. This is one in a series of eight films titled “Chronicle of Everyday Life,” a project that filmmaker Jacques Leduc took four years to realize, and whose goal was to revisit Direct Cinema at a moment when it was already heavily “contaminated” by mainstream TV." - Anthology Film Archives

Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment(en)

A documentary about direct-cinema from its very beginnings (Nanook of the North) to the fake-direct-cinema of the Blair Witch Project. All the important direct-cinema filmmakers are portrayed and/or interviewed: Leacock, Wiseman, Maysles, Pennebaker, Reisz and others.

Back to the Land(fr)

Feature-length documentary as part of Pierre Perrault's Abitibian Cycle. The filmmaker questions the past and present of Abitibi and draws up, face to face, the promises of colonization in the 1930s and the great disappointment caused by the closing of the land in the 1970s. There are witnesses to the heroic era, including the cultivator Hauris Lalancette, as well as extracts from films by Father Maurice Proulx (1934-1940).

The Things I Cannot Change(en)

"This feature documentary is considered to be the forerunner of the NFB's Challenge for Change Program. The film offers in inside look at 3 weeks in the life of the Bailey family. Trouble with the police, begging for stale bread, and the birth of another child are just some of the issues they face. Through it all, the father tries to explain his family's predicament. Although filmed in Montreal, the film offers an anatomy of poverty as it occurs throughout North America." - NFB

La meilleure façon, c'est par accident(fr)

I Am My Own Woman(de)

The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.

Football Under Cover(de)

David Asmmann's Football Under Cover documents the hard work involved in setting up an exhibition soccer match, known as a "friendly," between a German girls squad and Iranian women's team. In addition to showing how the two groups come from very different cultures, the documentary showcases what playing the game means to the members of both teams, and displays how passionate the fans of these two squads are.

Tamagotchi(en)

The circumstances surrounding the creation of the work Tamagotchi are not entirely clear. The electronic toy of the same name was released in 1996, but the author and other contemporaries place the film’s creation a few years earlier. The animated dog character in the film calls for the viewer to feed it. The inability to respond to the virtual pet’s needs reveals the nature of the emotions evoked in the viewer by this digital interaction.

Bridges-Go-Round 2(xx)

Accompanied by ambient electronic music, this visual experiment presents New York with its industrial architecture as an unknown dystopian city. With everyday urban elements the author creates impressive abstract collages which evoke an extraterrestrial gloomy valley.

Body Bureaucracy(lv)

The film focuses on a bizarre state of affairs in the northern city of Valmiera where the corpse of a man has lain for nine years because of complex and contradictory communications between the relatives and various responsible institutions. The situation could easily have come from the pen of Gogol or Kafka, but is all too real and prompts questions about the more general problem of bureaucracy in Latvia.

Inside Total: The Greenwashing of Oil Majors(fr)

An exclusive investigation on TOTAL, the world's largest oil and gas company, which is struggling to maintain its hegemony in a world where the climate crisis is becoming increasingly worrying. Never-before-seen interviews with Total's top experts and executives. Diving into the heart of one of the 5 oil supermajors, TOTAL. The company with 1,000 subsidiaries, which has built its empire in 130 countries by producing oil and gas, has become TotalEnergies in this year 2021 with a change of name and logo. But how does an oil company become an energy company? Can TotalEnergies really be a credible player in the energy transition? From the company's French headquarters to the wind farm in New Mexico, people believe in it, convinced that this transformation is real.

Einarrative(lv)

Instead of Einars Pelšs' eighth poetry book, he publishes his collected works, but the buyer of the book receives an ordinary brick. He translates the authors of the Russian Golden Age and publishes them under his own name, challenging the boundaries of literature. Is a poet who makes fun of art unique or exactly what we expect from contemporary authors? Einarrative is an extraordinary story that portrays the narrative of the life of Einārs Pelšs. In the film, this narrative is an experience of contrasting changes both in its visual style and in Einars’ poetic works and personality, allowing him to get involved in the depiction of the narrative himself, making the film as Einārs Pelšs' audiovisual collected works.

Free Rider(en)

Sam Anthamatten (ski) and Victor de Le Rue (snowboard) push new boundaries in the wildest corner of Alaska. A bush pilot drops the small crew of five on a remote, unexplored glacier to conquer the spine walls in a series of ascents, each one more committed. Narrator Jérôme Tanon describes with honesty and a touch of sarcasm what exactly is going on here. Above all, he wants to feel what it’s like to be in their shoes, to understand what so called “free riders” are made of, and what could be the purpose and beauty of “freeriding”.

Behind the Ears: The True Story of Roger Rabbit(en)

The complete documentary on the production of the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit".

La Zone(en)

In the early 2000's, David Vladyka and a handful of snowboarders discovered the Col de Cou, a major crossing point on the French-Swiss border used by smugglers after the Second World War. This area with its hilly terrain became a legendary place for freestyle snowboarding. 20 years later, Mat Schaer and David Vladyka still come back from time to time to film, but the immaculate slopes are becoming rare. The excitement of the great freestyle years has given way to the hikers. A new page is being turned.

Taming Speed(no)

With 2 Olympic gold medals, 5 world championships and 36 world cup race wins - Aksel Lund Svindal is one of the greatest alpine skiers in history. But does being a great skier give you an edge in Porsche auto racing?

On the Morning You Wake (to the End of the World)(en)

On the Morning You Wake uses innovative documentary storytelling and virtual production techniques to viscerally recreate the lived experiences of people who, for 38 minutes, had to react and make impossible decisions in the face of nuclear violence.