Advanced search

Ten women, most of them in Vancouver or Toronto, talk about being lesbian in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s: discovering the pulp fiction of the day about women in love, their own first affairs, the pain of breaking up, frequenting gay bars, facing police raids, men's responses, and the etiquette of butch and femme roles. Interspersed among the interviews and archival footage are four dramatized chapters from a pulp novel, "Forbidden Love": Laura leaves her hick town and heads for the city, where she meets Mitch in a bar. Sparks fly, and so do laughter and joy. Ann Bannon, one of the writers of those paperback novels about forbidden love, talks about the genre.

A film about the noted American linguist/political dissident and his warning about corporate media's role in modern propaganda.

A victim of child abuse visits her family to heal the trauma she and her siblings experienced at the hands of their abusive father.

Chinese-Canadian Eve Eng was born in 1966, in the year of the fire horse. In Chinese culture, fire horse children are notorious for being troublesome. In 1975, nine year old Eve is looking for some meaning for her life, especially after her mother, May-Lin Eng, miscarries, and her paternal grandmother passes away, the latter event particularly concerning not so much for the event itself but the circumstances leading to the death. The Engs follow traditional Buddhist philosophy, primarily as a cultural tradition. While her husband Frank Eng is away in China dealing with his mother's burial, May-Lin doesn't stop their eldest daughter, Karena Eng, from pursuing knowledge of and eventual faith in Christianity, most specifically Catholicism. May-Lin sees it as a cushion for ensuring a good life and good after-life, as much of Christian teaching follows that of Buddhism anyway. Eve follows in her sister's footsteps. While Karena becomes a devout Catholic to the expense of her Buddhist upbringing, Eve takes whatever she can from wherever she can to apply to her life for it to make sense, often with disastrous or confusing results. It isn't until she comes face to face with the fire horse that life becomes a little more understandable for Eve.

Filmmakers Holly Dale and Janis Cole explore the culture of Davie Street, located in the underbelly of Vancouver, where dozens of prostitutes work and live every day. Surprisingly, they find that the sex trade there is stable and largely non-violent, and that the women who work on Davie Street meet daily to discuss safety and health issues and don't use pimps. The film also includes candid interviews with the prostitutes and footage of negotiations with potential clients.

The Burning Times is a Canadian documentary about the witchcraft trials & persecutions that swept through Europe in the 15th-17th centuries. This was a period when those accused of being heretics or witches were tortured & executed, often by fire.

An Australian pediatrician gives a speech on the consequences of a nuclear war.

The Impossible Takes a Little Longer documents the work and personal lives of five physically disabled women. It shows how they are coping with the problems they share with all women, the problems they share with other disabled women and those unique to their particular circumstances. The film affirms that disabled women can lead full and productive lives as workers, as mothers and as valued community members. It informs both disabled women and the able-bodied about the possibilities of adaptations in the workplace, the use of technological aids and the need for support systems if disabled women are to have satisfying and productive lives. The Impossible Takes a Little Longer undermines the stereotypes and prejudices that further hinder a large segment of our population.

In the year 1879, in a mountainous region of post-Rush California, a waning mining town is awakened when two brazen cowboys, GRADY and CHARLES, play a roulette duel for the hand of a woman, VICTORIA. But when Victoria interrupts the duel, she shocks the men in revealing she will instead marry the duel's overseer, RED. Enraged and humiliated, Charles and Grady fire at the departing couple, and in the luck of the draw, two bullets hit Red, killing him. The amused cowboys leave Victoria crouched over her dead Red, but as a lady's luck will have it, she outsmarts them. Victoria reveals she is a bounty hunter. She will collect the bounty on Red's head, alive or dead.

In the Great Bear Rainforest, on the rugged coast of British Columbia, two men in a zodiac drift quietly by a sleeping grizzly bear, hunkered down on the nearby river bank. A former hunter who ultimately traded his gun for a camera, filmmaker Robert Moberg retraces his evolving relationship with the natural world in Way of the Hunter. Robert grew up on a small farm in rural Alberta, where hunting was a way of life. Money was scarce, and moose meat got him and his family through the long, cold winter. Sustenance hunting gave way to sport hunting in Robert's adult life, a transition he grew more and more uneasy with. Turning away from the hunting lifestyle he'd always known, Robert took to the web to troll trophy hunters in increasingly hostile ways. As the toxicity of his actions began to catch up with him, Robert reached out to eco-wilderness guide Mike Willie of the Musgamakw Dzawada'enuxw First Nation. Mike had made national news in 2015 for convincing a sportsman to call off a long-awaited grizzly bear hunt. These two men from different cultures gradually develop a friendship, and on a wildlife-viewing trip deep into the rainforest, they discuss their love of the land and their hopes for a peaceful coexistence with all who live on it.

Mother's milk makes strong children, but a child who is a reluctant weaner may have developed a mother-addiction. "Mother's Meat & Freud's Flesh" ironically explores the resulting triangle of a mother, psychiatrist, and mother's boy.

A comedy documentary featuring America's top stand-up female comedians, with performance clips, interviews and archive footage.

This feature documentary presents a thoughtful and vivid portrait of the predominantly Black Canadian residents in Toronto facing imposed relocation.

Five Black women talk about their lives in rural and urban Canada between the 1920s and 1950s. What emerges is a unique history of Canada's Black people and the legacy of their community elders. Older Stronger Wiser is the first film in a Studio D series entitled Women at the Well

A short doc about teenagers from war and conflict zones. It focuses on the 1985-86 International Youth for Peace and Justice Tour - featuring young people from Central America, southern Africa and Northern Ireland - and depicts their interaction with Canadian high school students. Contains graphic accounts of violence.

This short film recreates the experience of Sylvie, a battered woman who seeks shelter in a Montréal transition house.

Five women are black belts in karate, which to them is more than self-defense, it's a philosophy for life.

The short documentary looks at some innovative approaches to providing services and accommodation for battered women in rural, northern, and Native communities.

Canadian women with disabilities seek and develop physical, intimate relationships.

The women who seek help at Aurora House share a common illness: they are physically and psychologically dependent on alcohol, prescription drugs, street drugs, or a combination of these. This documentary focuses on the lives of five women at various stages of rehabilitation. In the supportive and healing atmosphere of women helping other women, they are confronting the issues and feelings they had previously drunk or drugged out of consciousness. Turnaround is a film that will be of special interest to the families, friends and colleagues of people who suffer from addiction, as well as to professionals who are interested in exploring alternative methods of treatment.

An evil man steals the dreams of an entire village over several nights, until the villagers, with no dreams left, cannot sleep properly, and become increasingly restless. Then the man audaciously advertises the dreams for sale, so, naturally, everyone comes to buy something, even a quick nap. But young Sarah hears a familiar sound in his dream vault, and steals it, realising it is her very own dream bird. The others catch on, and all take back their dreams, leaving the evil man to be haunted by all the nightmares nobody wanted...