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- "Bangkok Girl" is a 'remarkably accomplished, beautifully photographed and intimate debut documentary that puts a human face on the devastating social issue that, sadly, is the fate of too many impoverished girls.' The documentary provides a glimpse of Thailand's sex tourism told through the experiences of a 19-year-old bar girl named Pla.
- This compelling documentary explores Canadian film culture and tries to discover what defines Canadian film through interviews with notable filmmakers.
- On a summer day in the 1950s, a native Cree girl watches the countryside go by from the backseat of a car. A woman at her kitchen table sings a lullaby in her Cree language. When the girl arrives at her destination, she undergoes a transformation that will turn the woman's gentle voice into a howl of anger and pain.
- What would happen if a country of 97 million people were taught at a young age that the boogie man was real. In the Philippines for the last 400 years, the 'aswang' has been used as propoganda and social control by Spanish Colonizers, the Catholic Church, the Philippine Administration, and even the CIA.
- The story of how Little Sister's, a small bookstore in the heart of Vancouver's gay and lesbian community, has flourished in the face of book seizures and bombings.
- Art, a Victoria filmmaker, struggles with his conservative moral values when he visits his son Kole who works as a writer and actor in the pornography business in Prague. Appalled by the sexual abuse Kole experienced as a child, Art believes Kole's current lifestyle is directly linked to that sad event. Art wants to get Kole out of an existence that, in his eyes, is soul-destroying. Amidst the hard-core pornography industry, Art and Kole strive to reconcile their relationship and their perceptions of a difficult past. As we follow their story, Art finds a surprising humanity in the world of porn even as he attempts to convince Kole to return to Canada and confront the past. Art hires a private detective to track the abuser down and, as the detective unearths clues that bring them nearer to the pedophile, Art discovers how close to violence he himself can come. MY SON THE PORNOGRAPHER follows the journey of two men as they reflect on the stresses and strains that tear families apart, on moral values, guilt and life choices. Ultimately, it is a story about the love between a father and a son.
- An interracial gay couple adopting a newborn baby meets the pregnant Asian birthmother and receives a surprise that threatens their relationship.
- And you thought your family was mixed up.
- An intimate film portrait JEFF WALL- In Order to Make a Picture, examines this world-renowned photographers unique synthesis of art history, painting and cinema, in his defiant creation of the modernist photograph. At the close of the millennium, ArtNews numbered Vancouvers own Jeff Wall among the Ten Best Living Artists in the world. Jeff Wall is Canadas most internationally successful living artist. This is the first film to address his work and his working process. At the core, this film documents Wall at work on two contemporary projects an elaborately staged, cinematically realized, painterly photograph SPRING SNOW based on an image inspired by Yukio Mishimas 1971 novel of the same name, a story of forbidden love among the turbulent society of late-Imperial Japanese aristocracy and WOMAN WITH A COVERED TRAY, depicting a seemingly everyday event with his unique cinematic vision. To ground this portrait, select international art critics and curators weigh in on Jeff Wall's influence on the contemporary world art scene, as Jeff reflects on the influences that have shaped him as one of the worlds most interesting artists. Jeff Walls DEAD TROOPS TALK sold for more than $3.6 million US in 2012 at Christies making it the most expensive Canadian photograph ever sold and the worlds 4th most expensive photograph ever sold at auction after Cindy Sherman (UNTITLED #96, $3.89 million, USA sold 2011) and Andreas Gursky (RHEIN II $4.33 million, Germany, sold 2011) and most recently Australias Peter Liks PHANTOM that sold for $6.5 million in November 2014. Director Lu Nelson worked closely as a designer/production manager on Walls photographs AFTER "INVISIBLE MAN" BY RALPH ELLISON and THE PROLOGUE before embarking on this film project. With unfettered access to Wall, Nelson creates an intimate portrait of the artist, in the studio and on location, in the process of making two of Walls unique, cinematically inspired, large format, back lit, cibachrome photographs. Produced by Elizabeth Yake, True West Films (HADWIN'S JUDGEMENT, EVERYTHING'S GONE GREEN, IT'S ALL GONE PETE TONG)
- Lucy, an independent, young lesbian, hasn't spoken with her grandmother in years. Prejudice and a closed mind, on the part of the older woman, have come between them. Lucy has moved on. But suddenly, out of the blue, Lucy's grandmother shows up and wants to make amends. Is forgiveness in the cards for the two women? How will Lucy's grandmother react to meeting her granddaughter's lover? What will Lucy do?
- A ten-year-old Japanese-Canadian girl who struggles with family and school - a grandfather with alzheimer, a frustrated mother, an indifferent teacher, and intolerant peers. Chika's Bird is a coming-of-age story about a young girl finding her strength through her connection with her grandfather and the origami he folds.
- An inspiring story of South African women sowing the seeds of change.
- Young native Indian Shi-Shi-Etko will soon be taken away from her home to begin her formal western education at a residential school, which were designed to solve the Indian "problem". Her mother, father and grandmother want her to remember her native roots and they wait for her return in the spring to continue passing down those ideals to her. In the meantime, the Indian community is barren of children.
- Labeled a "terrible savage" for allegedly killing two men, Indigenous businessman-turned-outlaw Simon Gunanoot hides out during a brutally cold winter, evading a bounty hunter who's also looking over his own shoulder.
- From her first day of competition, reigning Canadian downhill mountain bike champion Michelle Dumaresq has been shaking up the world of sports. But it's not her riding talent that's sparked controversy and international media attention - it's the fact that for the first 20 years of her life Michelle was Michael. Shot over two years, 100% Woman is an adrenaline-fueled ride-along on Michelle's controversial foray into international women's competition. Combining verite scenes, interviews, home movies and dynamic footage of some of the best mountain bikers in the world, we follow Michelle from her first local race, to the World Championships where she makes history as the first transgendered athlete on a national team, to the glare of the media spotlight. 33-year old Michelle is witty, charming and confident. Like any athlete, she dreams of being the best. But from her very first race she faces active protest from the other racers - some of whom she once considered friends. While some of her opponents merely question her right to compete, others challenge her very identity as a woman. As Michelle struggles for acceptance - as an athlete and a woman - we're forced to ask questions ourselves, not just about fairness in sport, but also about the nature and definition of gender.
- Traceable is a documentary set against the backdrop of the fast-fashion industry and our increasing disconnect of where and how clothing is made, and the hands that create a garment.
- Michelle is struggling to manage family and get back into the workforce, all while dealing with her mother's advancing dementia.
- IF YOU HAD TO WALK OUT OF YOUR PRESENT LIFE IN 48 HOURS, POSSIBLY NEVER TO RETURN, WHAT WOULD YOU TAKE WITH YOU? WHAT WOULD YOU LEAVE BEHIND? STOLEN MEMORIES is a detective story about filmmaker Kagan Gohs personal quest to return a photo album stolen from a Japanese Canadian family during the Japanese internment. The filmmakers brother bought a photo album along with a framed photograph of a Japanese samurai warrior that once belonged to a Japanese Canadian family, at a garage sale for a mere $5 apiece. When his brother asked the Caucasian man who sold him the album how he had come to possess such a precious family heirloom, he replied indifferently that he found it in the attic collecting dust and he just wanted to get rid of it. The photographs are dated 1939. Three years before the Japanese internment. After the bombing of Pearl Harbour in 1942, Japanese Canadians were ordered to turn over property and belongings to the Custodian of Enemy Alien Property as a protective measure only. Caught in the whirlwind of anti-Japanese hysteria and paranoia, all of the Japanese descendents living in Canada at the time were rounded from their homes and herded off to internment camps and declared enemy aliens. They had no choice but to leave everything behind. The album was left behind when the family was interned and their possessions were either seized by the Canadian government and sold for a pittance, or stolen by looters. They lost everything. Kagan Goh, aided by Mary Seki, his 70-year old detective sidekick, embarked upon a quest to find the rightful owners, find out what happened to them and return their lost photo album to them. Documenting the search as well as redressing the wrongs of the past is a symbolic homecoming coming home in terms of returning to a place of self-acceptance, belonging, wholeness and healing.
- The Canyon War uncovers the tumultuous events of 1858 in British Columbia, an untold story of a war swept under the carpet for 150 years. It was the days of the Fraser River Gold Rush, which saw some 30 to 40 thousand gold seekers flood into the Fraser Valley, culminating in the Fraser River War in August of that year. Many lives were lost, both Native and non-Native, until peace was finally concluded in Lytton through diplomatic efforts of N'lakapamux Chief, Spintlum, and an American miner and militia Captain Henry Snyder. The film documents the roots of the war, as well as how two leaders managed to bring it to an end despite heavy odds and higher stakes. The efforts of Chief Spintlum of Lytton and Capt. Henry Snyder of San Francisco prevented the war from spreading south of the border something that would have almost certainly resulted in U.S. troops occupying the mainland of B.C. The significance of the conflict was downplayed by Gov. James Douglas, who was helpless to intervene in the war despite having instructions to prevent bloodshed between the miners and the First Nations. The full extent of the struggle has never been told until now.
- An insightful and emotional look at several orphaned children from China who have been adopted by Canadian families.
- Alan Goldman is Jewish, or maybe he isn't, he's just not sure anymore. Alan identifies with his Judaism culturally but not religiously. He feels disconnected from his Judaism. He now faces a dilemma: how to raise his son Sacha as a Jew if he, himself, is ambivalent about what his Judaism means to him?
- The story of an Aboriginal Veteran who has discovered the woman next door is the child who's life he saved in Holland in WWII.
- On August 3, 2014, ISIS extremists began a campaign of genocide against the Yazidi, a religious minority in Northern Iraq. They murdered the men, forced the boys into ISIS military training camps, and enslaved the women and girls subjecting them to torture and rape in a fate that survivor Nadia Murad describes as "worse than death." The Least We Can Do follows a small group of women in British Columbia, Canada, who are relieved when the Canadian government votes to bring Yazidi women and girls as refugees to Canada and provide them with comprehensive trauma care for their unimaginable suffering. The women are horrified to later discover the government has not followed through on all its promises. The Yazidi were brought to Canada and then neglected. Trauma services are inadequate, unplanned and failing. As the group urges the government to keep its promise, they encounter unexpected support along the way. Featuring Yazidi survivor Adiba and Rev. Majed El Shafie, founder of One Free World International.
- A First Nations woman, Kanahus, defies the laws that oppress and colonize her people by not registering her four children with the Canadian government, living off the land and raising her children in a traditional earth pit house. She's been imprisoned and beaten, the police have broken into and ransacked her home without a search warrant, but she is as determined as the day she began this journey thirteen years ago. She educates her children decolonized as Freedom Babies.
- A personal account of one woman's 20-year struggle with eating disorders. Images from her childhood and her modeling career, as well as medical slides, are projected onto her body as she reveals her story. She gazes upon infinite reflections of self while bathing in shadows. The result is and abstract, fragmented and disturbing portrait of a body at war with itself.
- Alexandra Morton, the anti-fish farm activist and biologist, appears at a federal inquiry and faces tough questions from Government and Industry lawyers.
- Time-lapsed photography from a fixed camera on the Canadian rail yards that captures trains, ships, and the changing landscape.
- Following 10-year journey of a Chinese couple searching for the truth behind their son's death in Canada, the film is a rare revelation of immigration, mental health and a Kafkaesque state bureaucracy at the heart of global migration.
- A Latin American family in Canada is celebrating the birthday of their youngest child, until they get rudely interrupted by two immigration officers.
- Writer/director Karin Lee reflects on her father Wally Lee and the communist bookstore that he ran on Vancouver's Skid Row from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s. This experimental biography explores both the person and the effect that his ideological beliefs had on his family, set within the political landscapes of Canada and China at the time of the Cultural Revolution. It is also a little-known story about how a segment of Vancouver's Chinese community embraced Chinese socialism and how their idealism was affected by a changing political climate in China. Comrade Dad twists memories of a socialist-raised child into the reflection of an adult who is conflicted over the schism between idealism and pragmatism, socialism and capitalism, and personal desires and political activism.
- After working as a clear cut logger in what is now known as the Clayoquot Sound, master carver Joe Martin reconciles his past by revitalizing the ancestral knowledge and artistic practice of the traditional Tla-o-qui-aht dugout canoe. At the end of the road at a carving shed at Nachaks (which means "look out over the ocean") master carver Joe Martin carves through the layers of a 500 year old red cedar tree.
- Set in modern day Montréal C'est Moi explores the collision of the past as it meets the present in the forgotten story of an important figure in Black Canadian History and her efforts to fight against slavery in 18th Century New France.
- On a night so cold it hurts to breathe, Soft as Snow and Cold as Ice meet Thomas, a drunk young man, who's been dumped on the outskirts of town. When Thomas suggests the two men should walk back with him, they persuade him to stay the night. Each has a different motive...
- In 1988, an international campaign was launched with a formidable challenge -- to wipe polio off the face of the earth. Two decades later, 2 billion children have been immunized and 160 countries are certified polio-free. That leaves just a handful to go. And of all the challenges ahead, one of the biggest is India, which has more young children than any other country in the world. Polio Hunters follows Canadian doctor, Yacub Vaid. After an outbreak of the disease in North India, he's rushed in to stop it. His mission: to help immunize 750,000 children and do it in just 14 days.
- "Hope In The Time of AIDS" a film reflecting the hopes and brutal hardships of HIV and AIDS in Africa. HIV and AIDS does not have to be a death sentence - there is hope, and given the sheer wealth of this world, people have a right to treatment, to education, to protection and dignity.
- Not long ago, the Iban people of Borneo were elaborately decorated with boldly designed tattoos depicting the story of their life experiences. But today, among younger generations of Iban, this unique traditional art is dying out. In what little tattooing remains, the ancient method of hand-tapping has been replaced by electric machines, and the deeply spiritual and personal traditional designs have been replaced by widely adopted western images. In an attempt to document these ancient tattoo practices before they vanish, renowned Canadian tattoo artist Tom Lockhart and writer and historian of tattoo lore Vince Hemingson take a grueling journey deep into the heart of Borneo's jungle to meet the last remaining Iban tattoo artists.