Memory of Summer

Emergency Ward(en)

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

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.)

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.

A Foreign Language(en)

This film observes, in a Montréal public school, the teaching of English to immigrant children. To thousands of children arriving in Canada from Greece, Italy, France, Germany or Japan, English is "a foreign language." Under able coaching they begin to understand and even enjoy the vagaries of the English language.

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.

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.

Style Wars(en)

Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant's PBS documentary tracks the rise and fall of subway graffiti in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price(en)

This documentary takes the viewer on a deeply personal journey into the everyday lives of families struggling to fight Goliath. From a family business owner in the Midwest to a preacher in California, from workers in Florida to a poet in Mexico, dozens of film crews on three continents bring the intensely personal stories of an assault on families and American values.

Children of Winter(en)

Warren Miller's Children of Winter showcases incredible cinematography that will get you craving deep powder, fresh lines, and outrageous adventure! It will take you on a daring escape to electrifying global destinations, including Japan, Austria, Iceland, and more! Don't forget to breathe as snowboarding's Olympic Gold Medalist Seth Westcott charges down the Alaskan backcountry, as surf legend Gerry Lopez shreds the Oregon steeps, and as Chris Anthony takes on Leadville Colorado's legendary Skijoring competition.

Candeias: Da Boca pra Fora(pt)

So Near... So Far(en)

The young American Pablo Menéndez came to Cuba to study Music at the National School of Art. Here he formed a family and became one more Cuban. Member of the Sound Experimentation Group of ICAIC and promoter of the teaching of the electric guitar in Cuba, he is, together with his group Mezcla, one of our most original musicians.

Edward Abbey: A Voice in the Wilderness(en)

When Edward Abbey died in 1989 at the age of sixty-two, the American West lost one of its most eloquent and passionate advocates. Through his novels, essays, letters and speeches, Edward Abbey consistently voiced the belief that the West was in danger of being developed to death, and that the only solution lay in the preservation of wilderness. Abbey authored twenty-one books in his lifetime, including Desert Solitaire, The Monkey Wrench Gang, The Brave Cowboy, and The Fool's Progress. His comic novel The Monkey Wrench Gang helped inspire a whole generation of environmental activism. A writer in the mold of Twain and Thoreau, Abbey was a larger-than-life figure as big as the West itself.

Someone Else's Country(en)

Someone Else’s Country looks critically at the radical economic changes implemented by the 1984 Labour Government - where privatisation of state assets was part of a wider agenda that sought to remake New Zealand as a model free market state. The trickle-down ‘Rogernomics’ rhetoric warned of no gain without pain, and here the theory is counterpointed by the social effects (redundant workers, Post Office closures). Made by Alister Barry in 1996 when the effects were raw, the film draws extensively on archive footage and interviews with key “witnesses to history”.

In a Land of Plenty(en)

The story of unemployment in New Zealand and In A Land of Plenty is an exploration of just that; it takes as its starting point the consensus from The Depression onwards that Godzone economic policy should focus on achieving full employment, and explores how this was radically shifted by the 1984 Labour government. Director Alister Barry's perspective is clear, as he trains a humanist lens on ‘Rogernomics' to argue for the policy's negative effects on society, as a new poverty-stricken underclass developed.

BlauWeissRot(de)

The Allins(en)

In New Hampshire, a legend is buried. GG Allin, the most outrageous singer in rock'n roll history. He was known for defecating on stage, fighting and having sex with the audience. He died a mythological death from a heroin overdose in 1993, aged 37. Directed by the award-winning director Sami Saif, THE ALLINS is a loving and entertaining look at the family of the departed rock singer.

Einstein's Universe(en)

A documentary produced in 1979 to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Albert Einstein. Narrated and hosted by Peter Ustinov and written by Nigel Calder.

Nous, ouvriers : « Nos rêves ont façonné la société » (1963-1983)(fr)

Nous, ouvriers : «Nos cœurs battent encore » (1983 à nos jours)(fr)

Pyhä(fi)