A Foreign Language

Festival in Puerto Rico(en)

This short documentary features Canadian contralto Maureen Forrester as she sings at the Festival Casals, a musical event founded by the great Spanish cellist and conductor Pablo Casals and sponsored annually by the Puerto Rican government. Part concert film, part tourism film, Festival in Puerto Rico offers viewers candid glimpses of mid-20th century Puerto Rico intercut with performance footage of Forrester and her husband, violinist-conductor Eugene Kash.

Pilgrimage(en)

St. Joseph's Oratory, a picturesque shrine silhouetted against Mount Royal, draws pilgrims by the thousands every year. They come from California by Greyhound bus, from Vancouver by plane, and on foot from many parishes surrounding Montréal. What is the fame of this shrine, that it attracts the devout and the curious alike? The story is told by Brother Placide Vermandère of the Order of the Holy Cross, who was personally acquainted with Brother André, after whom the shrine's famous temple is named. Cameras follow a procession of the League of the Sacred Heart through the streets of the city to the famous sanctuary and show many of the religious observances conducted in the church, including Mass attended by invalids who come in the hope of being healed of various afflictions.

Emergency Ward(en)

This 1959 documentary short is a frank portrait of the daily operations inside the Montreal General Hospital’s emergency ward.

Police(en)

The misbehaving public performs for the camera in a half-hour miscellany of misdeeds. In a behind-the-scenes look at the hour-by-hour operation of a large metropolitan police force, this film presents a fair sampling of what keeps Toronto's police officers busy twenty-four hours a day.

Memory of Summer(en)

An attempt to recapture the magic of childhood as the cameras follow children at play.

The Cars in Your Life(en)

A light, humorous look at the motor car and the great North American itch for a place on the road. From the comparative peace of Honest Joe's used-car lot, this film hustles you onto our public speedways, where hot rubber erases any distance between all points. Slow-motion and pop-on-pop-off photography make this a provocative, revealing study of motormania unlimited. A 1960 black and white production. (Also released under the title 1/3 Down and 24 Months to Pay.)

Jimmy Murakami: Non-Alien(en)

A documentary film about acclaimed filmmaker Jimmy T. Murakami and his emotional return to Tule Lake concentration camp in America.

Hunting Hitler's Stolen Treasures: The Monuments Men(en)

The true story of an unlikely World War II band of brothers: the unsuspecting group of scholars, academics, historians and architects headed to the front lines to rescue thousands of years' worth of European art and culture from Nazi-occupied Europe.

The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World(en)

Paul Otlet was a Belgian, *1868, died 1944, who perfected the Dewey Classification system as "the Universal Decimal Classification", in his lifetime alone totalling 17 million index cards of human knowledge.

Giuseppe Makes a Movie(en)

While the rest of America slept, DIY filmmaker/musician Giuseppe Andrews has made over 30 experimental features. Set in some demented alternate universe (i.e. Ventura, California), they are populated by real-life alcoholics and drug addicts, trash-talking senior citizens and trailer park residents dressed in cow outfits and costume-shop wigs. Director Adam Rifkin creates a wildly surreal, outrageously funny and strangely touching portrait of a truly Outsider Artist inhabiting a world few of us even know exists.

One Cut, One Life(en)

When seminal documentarian Ed Pincus is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he and collaborator Lucia Small team up to make one last film, much to the chagrin of Jane, Ed’s wife of 50 years. Told from two points of view with vulnerability, intimacy and humor, ONE CUT, ONE LIFE challenges the form of first person documentary while offering a complex story of love, loss, legacy, and the delicacy of capturing the preciousness of life while time is fleeting.

Untold Odyssey: Reindeer Wrangling(en)

A lyrical and haunting portrait of reindeer herding in the twilight expanses of the Lappish wilderness.

Voices from the Front(en)

In New York City, a distraught activist confronts the mayor with a story of a friend who languished on a cot in an emergency room hallway for nine days, only to die 48 hours after leaving the hospital. In 1988, thousands of activists hold the Food and Drug Administration under siege, demanding speedier drug approval. In 1990 AIDS activists converge on the National Institute of Health, calling for a more equitable clinical trial system and expanded research into new drugs and treatment. Voices From the Front, the first feature-length documentary on AIDS activism in America, makes clear the emotional and political effects of community activism using the voices of those directly engaged. It is a powerful distillation of pictures and words from events organized to change public consciousness, expose the failure of the health care systems, and challenge government inaction and neglect concerning AIDS.

Elstree Story(en)

Starting in 1927 when the first film, The White Sheik, was made there, Elstree Story features excerpts from over forty productions – including Hitchcock’s Blackmail, the first feature-length British talkie ever shown – with early appearances by some of cinema’s greatest stars; it is a most memorable and evocative journey through the years.

Berlin 10⁄90(en)

In 1990, Robert Kramer receives a grant from the Ford Foundation. He goes to Berlin for 6 months, where he makes an hour long single video shot (for a festival) in the bathroom of his apartment. Facing the camera, the filmmaker thinks, alone, about the fall of the Berlin wall. "I've already spent 6 weeks here. With all the events in eastern Europe, it was like a hurricane. Berlin is a city where you feel the biggest changes, where you meet Polish immigrants, or others, escaping. Berlin will become a very violent city. What happens in eastern Europe is a bit like the end of the civil war in the US. The North, and all it's power stimulated by years of war, took over the South, who has lost everything. And there is this German past, the war, on all levels.

Polvere - Il grande processo dell'amianto(it)

What's Up, Fatlip?(en)

During the filming of Fatlip's debut solo music video for "What's Up, Fatlip?" Spike Jonze compiled a series of interviews with the rapper and put them together in a documentary.

Les Scandales de « La Religieuse »(fr)

Released in 1796 posthumously, The Nun, a novel that Diderot did not dream of publishing during his lifetime, as he knew it to be revolutionary, caused the same explosion in the 19th century France as in that of the 1960s, when Jacques Rivette decided to adapt it, with Anna Karina in the title role. “This film is banned and it will remain so!” said the General de Gaulle. Exploration of an indictment of incredible modernity which, through the tragedy of the young Suzanne, locked up in the convent against her will, denounces the inequity of a society denying women all moral, political and sexual freedom.

Brexit(en)

A look at the streets of London in 2016 with Churchill's speech on the importance of a unified Europe.

Gordon Ramsay’s American Road Trip(en)

Gordon Ramsay hits the road with Gino D’Acampo and Fred Sirieix, traveling across the U.S. by RV.