Open Field
Here is a shared space to showcase documentaries with film festivals, affinity groups and artists' organizations of all kinds!
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Life then and now
A conversation between a mother and her daughter; memories of passing from the hut to the house.
The World Is Ours
Currently, post pandemic, one in two young people show symptoms of anxiety and depression. The World Is Ours is a film that gives the opportunity to six Montreal teenage girls to leave their urban environment for the first time to take part in a nature canoe-camping expedition. By presenting their struggles and small victories, the film poetically and luminously embraces their vulnerability, em...
Summer 2000
Nine year-old Sarah is quietly discovering love when an assault derails her sexual awakening. _Summer 2000_ is an intimate and delicate tale in which the play between different mediums offers an insight into gender performativity and consent.
ژن (Woman)
_ژن (Woman)_ is the first part of a trilogy that, from the perspective of the Iranian diaspora, engages with the feminist revolution in Iran. Through documentary media featuring female protesters in the streets, the film presents their civil disobedience as a collective performance, and probes the emerging discourse of woman, life and freedom.
Casa Bonjardim
From a narrow street in the city of Porto, curious and perplexed eyes meet in front of the slow demolition of a ruined Portuguese house. As this ruin crumbles day by day, the busy street changes its face. What will be left once the ruin will be gone?
Monangambéee
Subscription access
With a jazz soundtrack from the Art Ensemble of Chicago, this film denounces the crimes committed by the Portuguese in Angola. Here, we see the torture of a prisoner that results from the colonizer’s ignorance. A song whose meaning is “White Death”, _Monangambéee_, is a rallying cry against the colonial abuses in Angola.
And the Dogs Were Quiet
Subscription access
_And the Dogs Were Quiet_ is based on recorded excerpts from Aimé Césaire’s play of the same name where the rebel expresses himself in a long pain-racked poem in front of the mother, crying out loud his revolt against the enslavement of his people. Gabriel Glissant and Sarah Maldoror appear as actors at the Museum of Man in Paris which is devoted to Black Africa, integrating three spectators in...
Sarah Maldoror ou la nostalgie de l'utopie
Sarah Maldoror ou la nostalgie de l'utopie
Duration: 52 minutesPortrait of the Guadeloupean filmmaker Sarah Maldoror and her political struggle for the freedom of African peoples. A committed filmmaker, she has always believed in the importance of cinema to depict political and social changes and struggles for independence. Having gained real-life experience during the bloody conflicts stemming from colonialism, she expresses herself through cinema, claimi...
Afrique 50
It's the post-war period. Europe has been rebuilt. Everything is going well in the "model colonies" where the French Republic leads its wards with a maternal hand towards the lights of reason and progress. However, not everyone shares this view. The first anti-colonial film in France, banned and recently awarded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this effective pamphlet against colonialism in ...
Letter from Beirut
Three years after the start of the civil war, the director returns to her city for a few months. Straddling a country at war and one at peace, she finds it hard to readjust to life. By restarting a bus when public transport was no longer available, she was able to bring a new sense of normalcy to the war-torn city: people boarded the bus, seeing it as a safe space.
Sons and Daughters of Vietnam
They are part of the first generation after the Indochina War. They were born in Vietnam or Martinique. They have inherited a unique and conflicting history. They are wounded by silence, rejection, and misunderstandings. Their fathers, Martinican soldiers, took part in this conflict alongside mainland French forces and all other colonial forces from 1946 to 1954. Their Vietnamese mothers experi...
J'me marie, j'me marie pas
Subscription access
What value, whether radiant or destructive, does love hold in women's lives? Does marriage enable them to realize their full potential? Can motherhood be separated from a relationship with a man, or is it a choice to be refused? To shed light on these questions and many others, four women in search of their liberation, belonging to the generation of 28-30-year-olds in the early 1970s, express t...
Markets of London
Subscription access
The story of two characters we hear but never see. Like an old manuscript tucked away at the back of a drawer, the film begins as a young student films the markets of London in 1969. Twenty-five years later, she invites a man to watch the film that captures her youth. The couple engages in a dialogue about the images of that era, and a budding love emerges as the film comes to an end. Much like...
Entre elle et moi
Subscription access
Madeleine Dansereau was the first female jeweler in Quebec. She began her career at the age of 47, just as doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer. Her daughter, filmmaker Mireille Dansereau, reflects on their relationship over the last twenty years while maintaining her film career as a backdrop.
One Day...
Subscription access
A 15-year-old girl evokes the boredom of her bourgeois environment and brings charges against her father and mother. A walk with her dog serves as a pretext to see life through the eyes of this teenager who feels alienated from the world around her.
Monchoachi, An Untamed Wor(l)d
Monchoachi, An Untamed Wor(l)d
Duration: 2h18Retired from the world and residing in the foothills of the Vauclin mountain in Martinique, Monchoachi writes every afternoon after his morning walk through the island's forests. A poet (he insists one should pronounce this word trembling), philosopher and essayist, he endeavours to construct a thought he describes as untamed—a thought detached from the Occident, and therefore inherently free. ...
Sheroes
Chantal Birman, a liberal midwife and feminist, has dedicated her life to defending women's rights. At nearly seventy years old, she still provides care and advice to women who have just given birth. From painful moments to intensely joyful experiences, witnessing her visits provides unique insight into the delicate moment of going home. Through the portrait of this committed woman, Aude Pépin ...
Histoires d'entrejambes
"You will give birth in pain." Why? Are there other narratives? Because birth does not always rhyme with pain, Crotch stories transmits a new imaginary : women who are on their way to reclaiming their bodies and their labors.
Pushing Through
In the stark Québec winter, ice floes cover the St. Lawrence River. Otherworldly, determined silhouettes appear, and we fall into the cadence of ice canoes rowing into an unfathomable landscape. Producing sensations as extreme as the surroundings, the voyage immerses us in the elements and confounds us with a close focus on astonishing, minute details. The film explores how our interior and ext...
Métis Femmes Bodies
_Métis Femme Bodies_ is an exploration into the experiences of what has become a repressed identity in both Indigenous and femme forms. _Métis Femme Bodies_ aims to offer visibility and voice to those who have been denied such luxury in order to accurately represent themselves and correct misleading narratives imposed by greater power structures.
Unakuluk, Dear Little One
Subscription access
Rooted in tradition, adoption is a reality that all Inuit families have experienced. In Inuit culture, adopting a child from a relative, friend or acquaintance is a common practice. This documentary explores Inuit family relations through the personal histories of women who have experienced adoption in one way or another.
Sol
Subscription access
Solomon Tapatsiaq Uyarasuk was a charismatic young Inuk – an amateur acrobat, musician and poet. A beautiful soul, tormented by his people’s lot, who died far too young. This film is a stirring tribute to the young man. Starting with a celebration of Sol’s life, which ended suddenly in a holding cell under suspicious circumstances, the filmmakers shift into an investigative mode, seeking to unc...
A Labour of Sharing
The birth of a child is a basic expression of life. It constitutes the renewed awareness of the essence of men and women, in the respectful, dignified context of founding a family. While expecting their first child, Sylvie Van Brabant and Serge Giguère looked for a welcoming place to give birth. The place and the choice of the people they wished to be present motivated them to question the cond...
We Are Speaking Our Language Again
We Are Speaking Our Language Again
A look into the efforts of a small group of people as they fight to keep their language alive via the Tahltan Language Revitalization Program in Northern British Columbia.
Burning Rubber
When I leave my house in rural Nova Scotia, I often encounter black marks that twist and turn along the road, weaving their way through my community and daily route into the city. While many find this illegal activity annoying and disturbing, I’ve become increasingly intrigued by the form and intricacy of the marks left by a vehicle’s tires when they’re "squealed" in order to "la...
Medicine Walker
Among the First Nations of Canada there are still those who know the old songs, the ancient trails where the strong medicine grows, and how to gather and use it in healing ways. Dr.Dale Auger is a remarkable Cree artist, educator, and medicine man, and our host. Medicine walks in the rich boreal forest of the northern Alberta Cree, as well as with the Haida on their enchanted north Pacific arch...
Still Here: A Journey to Triumph
Still Here: A Journey to Triumph
A group of African Canadian youth were challenged to retrace the paths of their ancestors from former enslavement in the United States to Canada. Through a series of interviews with community elders, historians, and others, youth travel back in time, as far back as the American Revolutionary War, when the first major migration of Blacks arrives on the shores of Shelburne County in Nova Scotia. ...
This Stained Dawn
Faced with persistent violence against women and high levels of sexual assault and domestic violence, feminists in the city of Karachi, Pakistan, organize a women's march, facing threats from the state, the media and the country's radical religious right. Director Anam Abbas follows the march's organizers as they negotiate amidst surveillance, paranoia and insecurity, hoping to spark a revoluti...
Arctic Mosque
In September 2010, a little prefabricated mosque made its way across the trials and beauty of the Canadian landscape in an epic and unprecedented 4000km journey by road and river from the prairie city of Winnipeg to the small arctic town of Inuvik. As the northernmost mosque in the western hemisphere established its roots in the arctic permafrost, so, too, did the small yet eclectic community o...
Life then and now
A conversation between a mother and her daughter; memories of passing from the hut to the house.
The World Is Ours
Currently, post pandemic, one in two young people show symptoms of anxiety and depression. The World Is Ours is a film that gives the opportunity to six Montreal teenage girls to leave their urban environment for the first time to take part in a nature canoe-camping expedition. By presenting their struggles and small victories, the film poetically and luminously embraces their vulnerability, em...
Summer 2000
Nine year-old Sarah is quietly discovering love when an assault derails her sexual awakening. _Summer 2000_ is an intimate and delicate tale in which the play between different mediums offers an insight into gender performativity and consent.
ژن (Woman)
_ژن (Woman)_ is the first part of a trilogy that, from the perspective of the Iranian diaspora, engages with the feminist revolution in Iran. Through documentary media featuring female protesters in the streets, the film presents their civil disobedience as a collective performance, and probes the emerging discourse of woman, life and freedom.
Casa Bonjardim
From a narrow street in the city of Porto, curious and perplexed eyes meet in front of the slow demolition of a ruined Portuguese house. As this ruin crumbles day by day, the busy street changes its face. What will be left once the ruin will be gone?
Monangambéee
Subscription access
With a jazz soundtrack from the Art Ensemble of Chicago, this film denounces the crimes committed by the Portuguese in Angola. Here, we see the torture of a prisoner that results from the colonizer’s ignorance. A song whose meaning is “White Death”, _Monangambéee_, is a rallying cry against the colonial abuses in Angola.
And the Dogs Were Quiet
Subscription access
_And the Dogs Were Quiet_ is based on recorded excerpts from Aimé Césaire’s play of the same name where the rebel expresses himself in a long pain-racked poem in front of the mother, crying out loud his revolt against the enslavement of his people. Gabriel Glissant and Sarah Maldoror appear as actors at the Museum of Man in Paris which is devoted to Black Africa, integrating three spectators in...
Sarah Maldoror ou la nostalgie de l'utopie
Sarah Maldoror ou la nostalgie de l'utopie
Duration: 52 minutesPortrait of the Guadeloupean filmmaker Sarah Maldoror and her political struggle for the freedom of African peoples. A committed filmmaker, she has always believed in the importance of cinema to depict political and social changes and struggles for independence. Having gained real-life experience during the bloody conflicts stemming from colonialism, she expresses herself through cinema, claimi...
Afrique 50
It's the post-war period. Europe has been rebuilt. Everything is going well in the "model colonies" where the French Republic leads its wards with a maternal hand towards the lights of reason and progress. However, not everyone shares this view. The first anti-colonial film in France, banned and recently awarded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this effective pamphlet against colonialism in ...
Letter from Beirut
Three years after the start of the civil war, the director returns to her city for a few months. Straddling a country at war and one at peace, she finds it hard to readjust to life. By restarting a bus when public transport was no longer available, she was able to bring a new sense of normalcy to the war-torn city: people boarded the bus, seeing it as a safe space.
Sons and Daughters of Vietnam
They are part of the first generation after the Indochina War. They were born in Vietnam or Martinique. They have inherited a unique and conflicting history. They are wounded by silence, rejection, and misunderstandings. Their fathers, Martinican soldiers, took part in this conflict alongside mainland French forces and all other colonial forces from 1946 to 1954. Their Vietnamese mothers experi...
J'me marie, j'me marie pas
Subscription access
What value, whether radiant or destructive, does love hold in women's lives? Does marriage enable them to realize their full potential? Can motherhood be separated from a relationship with a man, or is it a choice to be refused? To shed light on these questions and many others, four women in search of their liberation, belonging to the generation of 28-30-year-olds in the early 1970s, express t...
Markets of London
Subscription access
The story of two characters we hear but never see. Like an old manuscript tucked away at the back of a drawer, the film begins as a young student films the markets of London in 1969. Twenty-five years later, she invites a man to watch the film that captures her youth. The couple engages in a dialogue about the images of that era, and a budding love emerges as the film comes to an end. Much like...
Entre elle et moi
Subscription access
Madeleine Dansereau was the first female jeweler in Quebec. She began her career at the age of 47, just as doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer. Her daughter, filmmaker Mireille Dansereau, reflects on their relationship over the last twenty years while maintaining her film career as a backdrop.
One Day...
Subscription access
A 15-year-old girl evokes the boredom of her bourgeois environment and brings charges against her father and mother. A walk with her dog serves as a pretext to see life through the eyes of this teenager who feels alienated from the world around her.
Monchoachi, An Untamed Wor(l)d
Monchoachi, An Untamed Wor(l)d
Duration: 2h18Retired from the world and residing in the foothills of the Vauclin mountain in Martinique, Monchoachi writes every afternoon after his morning walk through the island's forests. A poet (he insists one should pronounce this word trembling), philosopher and essayist, he endeavours to construct a thought he describes as untamed—a thought detached from the Occident, and therefore inherently free. ...
Sheroes
Chantal Birman, a liberal midwife and feminist, has dedicated her life to defending women's rights. At nearly seventy years old, she still provides care and advice to women who have just given birth. From painful moments to intensely joyful experiences, witnessing her visits provides unique insight into the delicate moment of going home. Through the portrait of this committed woman, Aude Pépin ...
Histoires d'entrejambes
"You will give birth in pain." Why? Are there other narratives? Because birth does not always rhyme with pain, Crotch stories transmits a new imaginary : women who are on their way to reclaiming their bodies and their labors.
Pushing Through
In the stark Québec winter, ice floes cover the St. Lawrence River. Otherworldly, determined silhouettes appear, and we fall into the cadence of ice canoes rowing into an unfathomable landscape. Producing sensations as extreme as the surroundings, the voyage immerses us in the elements and confounds us with a close focus on astonishing, minute details. The film explores how our interior and ext...
Métis Femmes Bodies
_Métis Femme Bodies_ is an exploration into the experiences of what has become a repressed identity in both Indigenous and femme forms. _Métis Femme Bodies_ aims to offer visibility and voice to those who have been denied such luxury in order to accurately represent themselves and correct misleading narratives imposed by greater power structures.
Unakuluk, Dear Little One
Subscription access
Rooted in tradition, adoption is a reality that all Inuit families have experienced. In Inuit culture, adopting a child from a relative, friend or acquaintance is a common practice. This documentary explores Inuit family relations through the personal histories of women who have experienced adoption in one way or another.
Sol
Subscription access
Solomon Tapatsiaq Uyarasuk was a charismatic young Inuk – an amateur acrobat, musician and poet. A beautiful soul, tormented by his people’s lot, who died far too young. This film is a stirring tribute to the young man. Starting with a celebration of Sol’s life, which ended suddenly in a holding cell under suspicious circumstances, the filmmakers shift into an investigative mode, seeking to unc...
A Labour of Sharing
The birth of a child is a basic expression of life. It constitutes the renewed awareness of the essence of men and women, in the respectful, dignified context of founding a family. While expecting their first child, Sylvie Van Brabant and Serge Giguère looked for a welcoming place to give birth. The place and the choice of the people they wished to be present motivated them to question the cond...
We Are Speaking Our Language Again
We Are Speaking Our Language Again
A look into the efforts of a small group of people as they fight to keep their language alive via the Tahltan Language Revitalization Program in Northern British Columbia.
Burning Rubber
When I leave my house in rural Nova Scotia, I often encounter black marks that twist and turn along the road, weaving their way through my community and daily route into the city. While many find this illegal activity annoying and disturbing, I’ve become increasingly intrigued by the form and intricacy of the marks left by a vehicle’s tires when they’re "squealed" in order to "la...
Medicine Walker
Among the First Nations of Canada there are still those who know the old songs, the ancient trails where the strong medicine grows, and how to gather and use it in healing ways. Dr.Dale Auger is a remarkable Cree artist, educator, and medicine man, and our host. Medicine walks in the rich boreal forest of the northern Alberta Cree, as well as with the Haida on their enchanted north Pacific arch...
Still Here: A Journey to Triumph
Still Here: A Journey to Triumph
A group of African Canadian youth were challenged to retrace the paths of their ancestors from former enslavement in the United States to Canada. Through a series of interviews with community elders, historians, and others, youth travel back in time, as far back as the American Revolutionary War, when the first major migration of Blacks arrives on the shores of Shelburne County in Nova Scotia. ...
This Stained Dawn
Faced with persistent violence against women and high levels of sexual assault and domestic violence, feminists in the city of Karachi, Pakistan, organize a women's march, facing threats from the state, the media and the country's radical religious right. Director Anam Abbas follows the march's organizers as they negotiate amidst surveillance, paranoia and insecurity, hoping to spark a revoluti...
Arctic Mosque
In September 2010, a little prefabricated mosque made its way across the trials and beauty of the Canadian landscape in an epic and unprecedented 4000km journey by road and river from the prairie city of Winnipeg to the small arctic town of Inuvik. As the northernmost mosque in the western hemisphere established its roots in the arctic permafrost, so, too, did the small yet eclectic community o...
