In an increasingly urban nation, Canada’s national parks are a treasured escape into extraordinary beauty and rugged wilderness. If the Group of Seven were an introduction to the landscape’s majesty, National Parks Project is the next logical chapter. Fifty-two contemporary artists from across the country, whose talents are as diverse as the parks they set out to explore, used their surroundings as a source of inspiration to blend musical and cinematic skills into collaboratively crafted vignettes. Epic in its ambition to celebrate these locales during Parks Canada’s centennial year, this omnibus film resonates with the knowledge that our unprotected land is more vulnerable than ever. Including films by Zacharius Kunuk, Peter Lynch, Sturla Gunnarsson and John Walker, and music by Sarah Harmer, Sam Roberts, Cadence Weapon and The Besnard Lakes, among many others, National Parks Project is a one-of-a-kind documentary experience.

In an increasingly urban nation, Canada’s national parks are a treasured escape into extraordinary beauty and rugged wilderness. If the Group of Seven were an introduction to the landscape’s majesty, National Parks Project is the next logical chapter. Fifty-two contemporary artists from across the country, whose talents are as diverse as the parks they set out to explore, used their surroundings as a source of inspiration to blend musical and cinematic skills into collaboratively crafted vignettes. Epic in its ambition to celebrate these locales during Parks Canada’s centennial year, this omnibus film resonates with the knowledge that our unprotected land is more vulnerable than ever. Including films by Zacharius Kunuk, Peter Lynch, Sturla Gunnarsson and John Walker, and music by Sarah Harmer, Sam Roberts, Cadence Weapon and The Besnard Lakes, among many others, National Parks Project is a one-of-a-kind documentary experience.
2011-04-30
4
13 filmmakers, 39 musicians, 13 National Parks of Canada
5.9When an overeager community officer and a reckless ex-detective are forced to team up, plenty of chaos ensues on the streets of Rotterdam.
8.1When K-pop superstars Rumi, Mira and Zoey aren't selling out stadiums, they're using their secret powers to protect their fans from supernatural threats.
6.2Forced out of his elite unit, a troubled cop launches his own rogue investigation when mysterious killings claim the lives of his former colleagues.
5.4While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur Fleck not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that's always been inside him.
6.0Battles in virtual reality, survival in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a Soviet spaceship giving a distress signal - Fantastic stories created with advanced special effects and passion.
6.1Composer Steven Lauddem is plagued by a creative block which leaves him unable to finish the score for his big comeback opera. When his former therapist-turned-wife Patricia suggests he rekindle his creativity by getting lost in the city, Steven sets out in search of inspiration. His epiphany comes after he meets a spirited woman named Katrina and discovers his life has much more potential than he bargained for, or ever could have imagined.
6.9Three years after his sister's death, Yak relentlessly searches for the dark spirit that killed her in hopes of seeking revenge.
6.4A father and daughter accidentally hit and kill a unicorn while en route to a weekend retreat, where his billionaire boss seeks to exploit the creature’s miraculous curative properties.
7.3After the underlying tech for M3GAN is stolen and misused by a powerful defense contractor to create a military-grade weapon known as Amelia, M3GAN's creator Gemma realizes that the only option is to resurrect M3GAN and give her a few upgrades, making her faster, stronger, and more lethal.
7.2When an American family is invited to spend the weekend at the idyllic country estate of a charming British family they befriended on vacation, what begins as a dream holiday soon warps into a snarled psychological nightmare.
6.7Ex-con Russell Gaines is attempting to rebuild his life with the help of his father, Mitchell. However, the arrival of Maben sends his new life into chaos, leading the pair to go on the run - as their violent pasts catch up to them, the pair must learn to trust each other if they hope to live out the rest of their days.
6.7Levon Cade left behind a decorated military career in the black ops to live a simple life working construction. But when his boss's daughter, who is like family to him, is taken by human traffickers, his search to bring her home uncovers a world of corruption far greater than he ever could have imagined.
6.7When his family is murdered, a deaf-mute named Boy escapes to the jungle and is trained by a mysterious shaman to repress his childish imagination and become an instrument of death.
5.6A young restorer travels to a small village to restore a medieval painting to its former glory. She will put her life in danger due to a curse attached to the painting.
7.0In the sweltering back kitchen of a Times Square restaurant, undocumented cook Pedro is caught between mounting pressures at work and a complicated romance with waitress Julia. When money goes missing, suspicion spreads, igniting tensions that threaten to upend the fragile hopes of the staff.
7.3Mincheol and Suhee go to greet Minchul father (grandmother) before marriage. Dae - sik welcomes her daughter - in - law, Su - hee. But before marriage, Minchol and Suhee are separated by the difference in personality. Soon-hee, who was only preparing for marriage, is soon to live.
5.8Diagnosed with a black hole growing inside her chest and stuck in a loop reliving the last five days of her life, a 55-year-old wife and mother from Miami, Florida decides to solve time travel in order to go back and be the person she always intended to be.
6.5FBI Agent Lee Harker is a gifted new recruit assigned to the unsolved case of an elusive serial killer. As the case takes complex turns, unearthing evidence of the occult, Harker discovers a personal connection to the merciless killer and must race against time to stop him before he claims the lives of another innocent family.
7.6A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.
0.0FLY BY NIGHT follows artist Duke Riley as he embarks on his biggest project to date -- training thousands of pigeons outfitted with tiny LEDs to twirl, swoop, and glide over the East River at dusk from a decommissioned naval vessel in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Commissioned by the public arts nonprofit Creative Time, the visually mesmerizing project received acclaim from the art world and the thousands of New Yorkers who witnessed the performances during the spring of 2016. The Village Voice awarded Riley a lifetime achievement award for "elevating the prestige of pigeons in the public consciousness." This piece follows Riley's process from conception to final performance, and ultimately like the project itself, examines urban humanity's relationship to the natural world.
As Ariel Ortega thinks about the history of contact of the Mbya-Guarani, he tries to understand how his people got expelled from their land.
0.0A film about the Tibetan Freedom Concert in San Francisco in 1996.
7.0Every winter for decades, the Northwest Territories, in the Canadian Far North, changes its face. While the landscape is covered with snow and lakes of a thick layer of ice, blocking land transport, ice roads are converted to frozen expanses as far as the eye can see.
Extravagantly expensive massaging mats, rejuvenating ampoules and sets of steam pots are only a few of the vast spectrum of objects sold by young salesmen at suspicious commercial presentations for old-age pensioners. Protagonists of the film are five friends fascinated by such presentations. They spend their savings on such products not out of necessity, but in the attempt to fill the emptiness in their lives. The absurdity of these purchases shows their fight against getting old and against their loneliness.
6.5A family falls prey to the manipulative charms of a neighbor, who abducts their adolescent daughter. Twice.
6.3In 2010, the iconic Tote Hotel – last bastion of Melbourne’s vibrant music counterculture – was forced to close by unfair laws. Filmed over 7 years, “Persecution Blues” depicts the struggle of more than 20,000 fans – and the bands who inspire them – to preserve their history and protect their future, and puts the audience on the front line of an epic-scale culture war.
7.8Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper, was gang raped by six white boys in 1944 Alabama. Common in Jim Crow South, few women spoke up in fear for their lives. Not Recy Taylor, who bravely identified her rapists. The NAACP sent its chief rape investigator Rosa Parks, who rallied support and triggered an unprecedented outcry for justice. The film exposes a legacy of physical abuse of black women and reveals Rosa Parks’ intimate role in Recy Taylor’s story.
5.3Susan Sontag scrutinizes the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and the growing divisions within Jewish thought over the question of Palestinian sovereignty. Shot in Israel during the final days of the Yom Kippur War. Promised Lands is less straight documentary than visual collage. There are images of combat zones and soldiers, but also everyday street life, desert landscapes, funerals, supermarkets, the Wailing Wall. The soundtrack is snatches of radio, bursts of church bells and gunfire, and an extended voiceover from two politically opposed Israeli thinkers.
0.0Where do you find the essence of your existence? On the peaks of the highest mountains in the world? Even higher, on an uninhabited planet from which you can never escape? Or is it in the deepest sorrow, by leaving a trail of destruction that will never be forgotten? This documentary essay follows various people on their quest and inevitably leads to the question: how far do you want to go?
6.2This is an animated documentary about FOOD! I interviewed vegetarian, vegan, pescetarian and meat eater about their opinions about food and life choices. Then I animate real food with stop-motion technique based on the interviews. By putting the conversations in different context, the food speak for themselves.
10.0Canada was led to war by a bigoted, ignorant, self-obsessed Minister of Militia, who may well have been clinically insane, but the importance of Canada's contribution in that war owes a great deal to him. The man of course, was Colonel - later made Lieutenant General by his own hand - Sam Hughes. Sam's Army is a compelling portrait of a complex man and the formidable military he built. Sam Hughes was not your standard-issue military leader. Canada's World War I Minister of Militia and Defence concentrated power in his own hands, insisted that the Canadian military use the ill-conceived Ross rifle and liberally promoted his cronies. But there was no denying Hughes was a visionary. He assembled the world's largest-ever volunteer army and bucked superiors to keep his ferocious fighting force together in one Canadian Corps.
10.0A two-hour documentary which recreates for the viewer one of the greatest battles in Canadian military history. The film was made to show that Canadian character at its best, forging an identity for a country that before the First World War had been seen only as a British colony - an identity and a character that became recognized and respected throughout Europe.
10.0Canadian military accomplishments in the last hundred days of World War I, when the German Army was destroyed, surpassed those of any other army. The Canadian success was, in no small measure, due to Arthur Currie, whom a recent British historian describes as "the most successful Allied General and one of the least well known."
5.5A single mother in London's Camden Town hears music when she meets a handsome stranger with a past. But she's not sure she's ready to open her heart.
6.9Beyond Silence is about a family and a young girl’s coming of age story. This German film looks into the lives of the deaf and at a story about the love for music. A girl who has always had to translate speech into sign language for her deaf parents yet when her love for playing music grows strong she must decide to continue doing something she cannot share with her parents.
5.6Rahul Seth is a dashing young millionaire who believes he is "western" enough to rebel against his mother and grandmother. They are not too keen about his Caucasian girlfriend Kimberly who, to make matters worse, is a pop star. Before you can say "karmic intervention," Kimberly dies in a freak accident and Rahul is devastated. Instead of allowing him to mourn in peace, Rahul's mother sees the opportunity she's been waiting for. She threatens to call off his sister's wedding unless he finds himself a "nice Indian girl." Rahul enlists the services of Sue, a fiercely independent escort whom he believes to be Hispanic, and therefore not "married" to the conventions taught to young Indian women. With a wink in her eye, Sue accepts the deal to pose as his Indian bride-to-be. She needs the money and having never been a fan of the typical Indian male, she feels her heart is safe. The charade begins....