

Made for the landmark anthology series, For the Record, Seer Was Here is an example of the bold dramatic programming made at the CBC in the mid-70s, while theatre director John Hirsch was serving as the head of the drama department. Saul Rubinek plays an inmate of a cruel Vancouver prison who brings humour, warmth, a little joy and self-understanding to the fellow prisoners of his cell block. An irreverent satire also featuring Eric Peterson and Martin Short. “Absolutely great, It’s also funny. Very Funny. Very Warm. Very touching… in some ways, a Canadian One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” (Calgary Herald, 1978)


Made for the landmark anthology series, For the Record, Seer Was Here is an example of the bold dramatic programming made at the CBC in the mid-70s, while theatre director John Hirsch was serving as the head of the drama department. Saul Rubinek plays an inmate of a cruel Vancouver prison who brings humour, warmth, a little joy and self-understanding to the fellow prisoners of his cell block. An irreverent satire also featuring Eric Peterson and Martin Short. “Absolutely great, It’s also funny. Very Funny. Very Warm. Very touching… in some ways, a Canadian One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” (Calgary Herald, 1978)
1978-12-10
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7.4Divine G, imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn't commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other incarcerated men in this story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art.
7.8A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.
7.2Three juvenile delinquents arrive at a correctional center and are put under the care of an experienced guard.
7.0A young man who was sentenced to 7 years in prison for robbing a post office ends up spending 30 years in solitary confinement. During this time, his own personality is supplanted by his alter ego, Charles Bronson.
6.7Richard, a lonely and well-meaning prison officer, is put in charge of reading and censoring the letters received by inmates.
6.9While participating in a rehabilitation program training wild mustangs, a convict at first struggles to connect with the horses and his fellow inmates, but he learns to confront his violent past as he soothes an especially feisty horse.
7.1A prisoner leads his counterparts in a protest for better living conditions which turns violent and ugly.
7.3Timeworn Joe Collins and his fellow inmates live under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey. Only Collins' dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey's chains?
6.4Brash hoodlum Tom Connors enters Sing Sing cocksure of himself and disrespectful toward authority, but his tough but compassionate warden changes him.
6.9Five O. Henry stories, each separate. The primary one from the critics' acclaim was "The Cop and the Anthem". Soapy tells fellow bum Horace that he is going to get arrested so he can spend the winter in a nice jail cell. He fails. He can't even accost a woman; she turns out to be a streetwalker. The other stories are "The Clarion Call", "The Last Leaf", "The Ransom of Red Chief", and "The Gift of the Magi".
7.4The story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a boxer wrongly imprisoned for murder, and the people who aided in his fight to prove his innocence.
7.5After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud's life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.
7.0The story of two radically different men thrown together in a Latin American prison cell. One is Valentin, a journalist being tortured for his political beliefs. The other is Molina, a gay window-dresser who fills their lonely nights by spinning romantic fantasies drawn from memories of old movies.
7.4Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of a country. The courts decide to make an example of him, sentencing him to more than 30 years in prison. Hayes has two opportunities for release: the appeals made by his lawyer, his family, and the American government, or the "Midnight Express".
5.9A trio of interweaved transgressive tales, telling a bizarre stories of suburban patricide and a miraculous flight from justice, a mad sex experiment which unleashes a disfiguring plague, and the obsessive sexual relationship between two prison inmates.
6.2Frank Perry is an institutionalized convict twelve years into a life sentence without parole. When his estranged daughter falls ill, he is determined to make peace with her before it's too late. He develops an ingenious escape plan, and recruits a dysfunctional band of escapists - misfits with a mutual dislike for one other but united by their desire to escape their hell hole of an existence.
6.6A weak con man panics when he learns he's going to prison for fraud. He hires a mysterious martial arts guru who helps transform him into a martial arts expert who can fight off inmates who want to hurt or love him.
6.7Ray Breslin is the world's foremost authority on structural security. After analyzing every high security prison and learning a vast array of survival skills so he can design escape-proof prisons, his skills are put to the test. He's framed and incarcerated in a master prison he designed himself. He needs to escape and find the person who put him behind bars.
7.3Henri “Papillon” Charrière, a safecracker from the Parisian underworld, is wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, where he forges a strong friendship with Louis Dega, a counterfeiter who needs his protection.
8.5Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as the Joker.
10.0A man must express his true passion of music and rhythm in a world where it is repressed and outlawed.
7.5A chronicle of country music legend Johnny Cash's life, from his early days on an Arkansas cotton farm to his rise to fame with Sun Records in Memphis, where he recorded alongside Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins.
8.3Derek Vineyard is paroled after serving 3 years in prison for killing two African-American men. Through his brother, Danny Vineyard's narration, we learn that before going to prison, Derek was a skinhead and the leader of a violent white supremacist gang that committed acts of racial crime throughout L.A. and his actions greatly influenced Danny. Reformed and fresh out of prison, Derek severs contact with the gang and becomes determined to keep Danny from going down the same violent path as he did.
0.0Pedro, an indigenous migrant, returns to his village for his mother's funeral. When he learns of the serious problem his brother Ismael is involved in, he decides to stay and face the consequences of his absence.
7.3In the deep south during the 1930s, three escaped convicts search for hidden treasure while a relentless lawman pursues them.
7.8Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds — with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk — that it might be possible for him to take human form.
7.1A ship sent to investigate a wave of mysterious sinkings encounters the advanced submarine, the Nautilus, commanded by Captain Nemo.
7.5Welcome to Sin City. This town beckons to the tough, the corrupt, the brokenhearted. Some call it dark… Hard-boiled. Then there are those who call it home — Crooked cops, sexy dames, desperate vigilantes. Some are seeking revenge, others lust after redemption, and then there are those hoping for a little of both. A universe of unlikely and reluctant heroes still trying to do the right thing in a city that refuses to care.
5.4When Martin, a former GDR citizen, is released from jail, he lately becomes confronted with the consequences of the German re-unification.
7.8During the Nazi occupation of Poland, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy.
8.2Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why.
6.7A hard-nosed cop reluctantly teams up with a wise-cracking criminal temporarily paroled to him, in order to track down a killer.
6.8The story of Salvador Puig Antich, one of the last political prisoners to be executed under Franco's Fascist State in 1974.
7.6A young man struggles to access sublimated childhood memories. He finds a technique that allows him to travel back into the past, to occupy his childhood body and change history. However, he soon finds that every change he makes has unexpected consequences.
7.0Justin Quayle is a low-level British diplomat who has always gone about his work very quietly, not causing any problems. But after his radical wife Tessa is killed he becomes determined to find out why, thrusting himself into the middle of a very dangerous conspiracy.
3.3The Best of Boys in Love is a wildly diverse collection of films that mixes styles, settings, and stories ranging from "elegant gay romance" (Frontiers), to a musical send-up of Hollywood, to an "exquisite period piece" (Village Voice) set in New Zealand. The DVD features seven audience favorites selected from our collection of award-winning gay short films.
7.2The lives of six German-Turkish immigrants are drawn together by circumstance: An old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother putting the shattered pieces of her life back together.