Essay
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Silence of the Tides
Subscription access
Silence of the Tides is a cinematic portrait of the largest tidal wetlands in the world: the Wadden Sea. The film plays witness to the rough, yet fragile relationship between man and nature as it pulsates with the inhaling and exhaling of the tides. It’s a hypnotizing large screen look into the cycles and contrasts of the seasons: life and death, storm and silence, the masses and the individua...
Night Falls
Duration: 1h00
Subscription access
A historian with the gift of clairvoyance roams the streets of the old City of Lights. In the falls of Shawinigan, he finds a meditation on human history and its loss of meaning.
In the Eyes of a Beast
Duration: 1h13
Subscription access
Filmmaker Dominique Loreau set out to explore the relationships between people and animals sharing the same spaces. In farms, alongside an ethologist in the field, in slaughterhouses, zoos, museums, urban settings, a dance rehearsal room, and even during a performance where an actor transforms into an animal, she captures the gazes of animals observing humans and humans observing animals. She t...
NDDJ (Notre-Dame-du-Jambon)
Duration: 38 minutes
Subscription access
Karan and Rohan, two biracial brothers raised in an alternative, unique, and marginal environment, creatively find ways to pass the time. Like many kids, a trip to buy candy often feels like the perfect escape from boredom. This short film is an ode to the power of reality and fiction, the love between two brothers, and the beauty of the Quebec countryside.
Magic Mountain
Subscription access
After recovering from tuberculosis, Mariam has a recurring nightmare about being kept high up in the mountains, in the middle of the forest in an old palace where outcasts live. The building is majestic but inhabitants are rejected from society. One day, Mariam goes to meet the secret community to overcome her fear. In becoming friends with the tuberculosis patients of Abastumani and in sharing...
Vampires, It's Nothing to Laugh At
Vampires, It's Nothing to Laugh At
Duration: 1h14Subscription access
In the 1960s, an anthropologist thinks he has discovered the existence of a vampire woman in a Kashub community in Wilno, Ontario. Kinga Michalska returns to the village still recovering from the trauma of this coverage, using a skilful blend of archival footage and performance to question the relationship between lived reality and scientific "truth".
The King is Not My Cousin
Subscription access
In 2017, author Elzéa Foule Aventurin engaged in a series of interviews with her granddaughter. Together, they retrace, not without mischief, a family history sailing from one end of the Black Atlantic to the other. A story of silence, pride and revolt.
I AM A FILM
Subscription access
Shot on location at the Low Four studio in Manchester, this film features poet Stephen Watts reciting his poem _I AM A FILM_, a coda to _The Liberated Film Club_ by Stanley Schtinter. Accompanied by the filmmaker who films him in a way that merges his presence with the recitation, the process unfolds through the use of analog material, close-ups of his face and expressions, and the grain of hi...
To Hell With Culture
Subscription access
Co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Herbert Read (1893-1968) was an influential art critic, poet and committed anarchist. In his 1943 essay, _To Hell with Culture_, Read laid out his ideas for a civilisation based on cooperation in which culture would no longer be a commodity, separated from society, but an integral part of everyday life. In this film, director Huw Wahl engages in...
The Seven Last Words
Subscription access
_The Seven Last Words_ sounds out experiential states and rituals particular to humanity, based on the seven themes expressed in a musical composition: forgiveness, salvation, relationship, abandonment, distress, triumph, and reunion. Seven award-winning Canadian filmmakers of diverse origins and art practices explore a wealth of human experience and feeling, based on the seven phrases at the o...
Dear Director
Subscription access
In 1980, American jazz pianist Kazzrie Jaxen watched Ingmar Bergman’s _From the Life of the Marionettes_. Afterwards, she wrote a sixteen-page letter to Bergman, explaining how the film had changed her life. _Dear Director_ is based on this real fan letter, which Swedish director Marcus Lindeen discovered while researching unfinished Bergman scripts for a play.
UWD
Subscription access
A poetic crossover in a ruined world where each person survives alone amid collective disarray. Bodies in motion, dance and physical prowess, replace words, embodying and revealing bruised characters haunted by a past that feels sweeter than this crumbling world.
The Bloodettes
A science-fiction film and erotic thriller, _The Bloodettes_ follows two sex workers as they attempt to dispose of the corpse of one of their clients, a political leader. As usual, Jean-Pierre Bekolo mixes genres in this hybrid film, which is part female revenge film, part antisexist denunciation and part open criticism of the systemic corruption of Cameroonian politics.
Aristotle’s Plot
In a South African city, a group of thugs has taken over a cinema, screening only American films. A filmmaker, dedicated to promoting African cinema, decides to reclaim the theater in order to program films aligned with his vision. However, his efforts are met with hostility from the group. This story serves as a meta-discourse on cinema and the dominance of non-African works on African screens.
Les mots/maux du silence
Fragments of poems, readings, texts, excerpts from plays, songs, and reflections, pieced together like a patchwork quilt. What’s the purpose of medications, electroshock therapy, institutions? What if all of it only serves to suppress rebellion? What’s the purpose of psychiatry and our prejudices, the daily responses… to those women we label as _mad_?
This Is No Time for Romance
Subscription access
In the midst of summer pleasures and her children's play, a young woman questions the meaning of her life as a wife and mother, and her chances of happiness. Filmed in the 1960s, this film starring Monique Mercure and Marc Favreau depicts the "female condition" from various perspectives.
Joseph Samuel Jacques Julien
Jacques is 59 years old and has spent his entire career as a salesman in Quebec City. The past few months have been especially challenging for him: mourning the loss of his wife, he finds it difficult to regain his footing. Should he change his life? Change his identity? Amidst a growing political turmoil, the narrator remains hopeful, insisting that Jacques still has reason to hope.
Idle Times
Beginning in the late 19th century, the history of baseball tells the story of the transformation of pastures and mindsets in North America. Slow and repetitive, the game makes ample room for daydreaming and boasting. Full-bodied and mannered, it evokes the vastness of a new continent while also recalling its British origins. Filmed at the Victoria Stadium in Quebec and developed with the colla...
Passiflora
Subscription access
Montreal, September 1984. Within a span of five days, Montreal’s Olympic Stadium hosts Pope John Paul II and Michael Jackson. A perfect opportunity to explore the impact of the media on the masses. With caustic irony, this film gives voice to people excluded by Church doctrine: the gay and lesbian community, and women who’ve had abortions or been abused. Beyond documentary, fiction or news repo...
Silence of the Tides
Subscription access
Silence of the Tides is a cinematic portrait of the largest tidal wetlands in the world: the Wadden Sea. The film plays witness to the rough, yet fragile relationship between man and nature as it pulsates with the inhaling and exhaling of the tides. It’s a hypnotizing large screen look into the cycles and contrasts of the seasons: life and death, storm and silence, the masses and the individua...
Night Falls
Duration: 1h00
Subscription access
A historian with the gift of clairvoyance roams the streets of the old City of Lights. In the falls of Shawinigan, he finds a meditation on human history and its loss of meaning.
In the Eyes of a Beast
Duration: 1h13
Subscription access
Filmmaker Dominique Loreau set out to explore the relationships between people and animals sharing the same spaces. In farms, alongside an ethologist in the field, in slaughterhouses, zoos, museums, urban settings, a dance rehearsal room, and even during a performance where an actor transforms into an animal, she captures the gazes of animals observing humans and humans observing animals. She t...
NDDJ (Notre-Dame-du-Jambon)
Duration: 38 minutes
Subscription access
Karan and Rohan, two biracial brothers raised in an alternative, unique, and marginal environment, creatively find ways to pass the time. Like many kids, a trip to buy candy often feels like the perfect escape from boredom. This short film is an ode to the power of reality and fiction, the love between two brothers, and the beauty of the Quebec countryside.
Magic Mountain
Subscription access
After recovering from tuberculosis, Mariam has a recurring nightmare about being kept high up in the mountains, in the middle of the forest in an old palace where outcasts live. The building is majestic but inhabitants are rejected from society. One day, Mariam goes to meet the secret community to overcome her fear. In becoming friends with the tuberculosis patients of Abastumani and in sharing...
Vampires, It's Nothing to Laugh At
Vampires, It's Nothing to Laugh At
Duration: 1h14Subscription access
In the 1960s, an anthropologist thinks he has discovered the existence of a vampire woman in a Kashub community in Wilno, Ontario. Kinga Michalska returns to the village still recovering from the trauma of this coverage, using a skilful blend of archival footage and performance to question the relationship between lived reality and scientific "truth".
The King is Not My Cousin
Subscription access
In 2017, author Elzéa Foule Aventurin engaged in a series of interviews with her granddaughter. Together, they retrace, not without mischief, a family history sailing from one end of the Black Atlantic to the other. A story of silence, pride and revolt.
I AM A FILM
Subscription access
Shot on location at the Low Four studio in Manchester, this film features poet Stephen Watts reciting his poem _I AM A FILM_, a coda to _The Liberated Film Club_ by Stanley Schtinter. Accompanied by the filmmaker who films him in a way that merges his presence with the recitation, the process unfolds through the use of analog material, close-ups of his face and expressions, and the grain of hi...
To Hell With Culture
Subscription access
Co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Herbert Read (1893-1968) was an influential art critic, poet and committed anarchist. In his 1943 essay, _To Hell with Culture_, Read laid out his ideas for a civilisation based on cooperation in which culture would no longer be a commodity, separated from society, but an integral part of everyday life. In this film, director Huw Wahl engages in...
The Seven Last Words
Subscription access
_The Seven Last Words_ sounds out experiential states and rituals particular to humanity, based on the seven themes expressed in a musical composition: forgiveness, salvation, relationship, abandonment, distress, triumph, and reunion. Seven award-winning Canadian filmmakers of diverse origins and art practices explore a wealth of human experience and feeling, based on the seven phrases at the o...
Dear Director
Subscription access
In 1980, American jazz pianist Kazzrie Jaxen watched Ingmar Bergman’s _From the Life of the Marionettes_. Afterwards, she wrote a sixteen-page letter to Bergman, explaining how the film had changed her life. _Dear Director_ is based on this real fan letter, which Swedish director Marcus Lindeen discovered while researching unfinished Bergman scripts for a play.
UWD
Subscription access
A poetic crossover in a ruined world where each person survives alone amid collective disarray. Bodies in motion, dance and physical prowess, replace words, embodying and revealing bruised characters haunted by a past that feels sweeter than this crumbling world.
The Bloodettes
A science-fiction film and erotic thriller, _The Bloodettes_ follows two sex workers as they attempt to dispose of the corpse of one of their clients, a political leader. As usual, Jean-Pierre Bekolo mixes genres in this hybrid film, which is part female revenge film, part antisexist denunciation and part open criticism of the systemic corruption of Cameroonian politics.
Aristotle’s Plot
In a South African city, a group of thugs has taken over a cinema, screening only American films. A filmmaker, dedicated to promoting African cinema, decides to reclaim the theater in order to program films aligned with his vision. However, his efforts are met with hostility from the group. This story serves as a meta-discourse on cinema and the dominance of non-African works on African screens.
Les mots/maux du silence
Fragments of poems, readings, texts, excerpts from plays, songs, and reflections, pieced together like a patchwork quilt. What’s the purpose of medications, electroshock therapy, institutions? What if all of it only serves to suppress rebellion? What’s the purpose of psychiatry and our prejudices, the daily responses… to those women we label as _mad_?
This Is No Time for Romance
Subscription access
In the midst of summer pleasures and her children's play, a young woman questions the meaning of her life as a wife and mother, and her chances of happiness. Filmed in the 1960s, this film starring Monique Mercure and Marc Favreau depicts the "female condition" from various perspectives.
Joseph Samuel Jacques Julien
Jacques is 59 years old and has spent his entire career as a salesman in Quebec City. The past few months have been especially challenging for him: mourning the loss of his wife, he finds it difficult to regain his footing. Should he change his life? Change his identity? Amidst a growing political turmoil, the narrator remains hopeful, insisting that Jacques still has reason to hope.
Idle Times
Beginning in the late 19th century, the history of baseball tells the story of the transformation of pastures and mindsets in North America. Slow and repetitive, the game makes ample room for daydreaming and boasting. Full-bodied and mannered, it evokes the vastness of a new continent while also recalling its British origins. Filmed at the Victoria Stadium in Quebec and developed with the colla...
Passiflora
Subscription access
Montreal, September 1984. Within a span of five days, Montreal’s Olympic Stadium hosts Pope John Paul II and Michael Jackson. A perfect opportunity to explore the impact of the media on the masses. With caustic irony, this film gives voice to people excluded by Church doctrine: the gay and lesbian community, and women who’ve had abortions or been abused. Beyond documentary, fiction or news repo...
