Tolerance takes many forms and learning to turn that tolerance into inclusion is one of life’s great lessons. The films included in this playlist will guide older children down that path on issues such as antisemitism, racism, self-acceptance and persecution. Pour visionner cette sélection en français, cliquez ici.
Tolerance takes many forms and learning to turn that tolerance into inclusion is one of life’s great lessons. The films included in this playlist will guide older children down that path on issues such as antisemitism, racism, self-acceptance and persecution.
Pour visionner cette sélection en français, cliquez ici.
This animated short tells the story of an epic basketball game between kids attending Jewish camp and students of a notorious local Holocaust denier. Nine-year-old Hart is attending Jewish summer camp for the first time. He is both curious and afraid. What awaits him on the basketball court?
Borealis is a unique cinematic documentary that travels deep into the heart of Canada’s iconic wilderness to explore how the plants and animals that live there communicate and survive the destructive forces of fire, insects, and human encroachment.
Renee Thompson is trying to make it as a top fashion model in New York. She's got the looks, the walk and the drive. But she’s a black model in a world where white women represent the standard of beauty. Agencies rarely hire black models. And when they do, they want them to look “like white girls dipped in chocolate.”
The Colour of Beauty is a shocking short documentary that examines racism in the fashion industry. Is a black model less attractive to designers, casting directors and consumers? What is the colour of beauty?
Flawed is nothing less than a beautiful gift from Andrea Dorfman's vivid imagination, a charming little film about very big ideas. Dorfman has the uncanny ability to transform the intensely personal into the wisely universal. She deftly traces her encounter with a potential romantic partner, questioning her attraction and the uneasy possibility of love. But, ultimately, Flawed is less about whether girl can get along with boy than whether girl can accept herself, imperfections and all.
This film is both an exquisite tribute to the art of animation and a loving homage to storyboarding, a time-honoured way of rendering scenes while pointing the way to the dramatic arc of the tale.
With a bright palette and witty dialogue, the film tells the charming story of a seven-year-old girl and her sisters, who ask for a bicycle knowing full well that their loving yet unconventional parents will likely disappoint them.
The bombing of the American naval base at Pearl Harbor thrust 9-year-old Minoru Fukushima into a world of racism so malevolent he would be forced to leave Canada, the land of his birth. Like thousands of other Japanese Canadians, Minoru and his family were branded as an enemy of Canada, dispatched to internment camps in British Columbia and finally deported to Japan. Directed by Michael Fukushima, Minoru's son, the film combines classical animation with archival material. The memories of the father are interspersed with the voice of the son, weaving a tale of a birthright lost and recovered.
In this short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower.
Director Mina Shum makes her foray into feature documentary by reopening the file on a watershed moment in Canadian race relations – the infamous Sir George Williams Riot. Over four decades after a group of Caribbean students accused their professor of racism, triggering an explosive student uprising, Shum locates the protagonists and listens as they set the record straight, trying to make peace with the past.
In this feature-length documentary, Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond takes an entertaining and insightful look at the portrayal of North American Indigenous people throughout a century of cinema. Featuring hundreds of clips from old classics as well as recent releases, the film traces the evolution of the “Hollywood Indian.” Diamond guides the audience on a journey across America to some of cinema’s most iconic landscapes and conducts candid interviews with celebrities like Clint Eastwood, Robbie Robertson and Jim Jarmusch. The film is a loving look at cinema through the eyes of the people who appeared in its very first flickering images and have survived to tell their stories in their own way.
Join filmmaker Brett Gaylor and mashup artist Girl Talk as they explore copyright and content creation in the digital age. In the process they dissect the media landscape of the 21st century and shatter the wall between users and producers. Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, Brazil's Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow also come along for the ride.
A compelling hybrid of drama and documentary, this feature film covers the events that led up to the infamous destruction of an extraordinary 300-year-old tree held sacred by the Indigenous Haida Nation of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. Inspired by John Vaillant’s award-winning book The Golden Spruce, the film introduces us to the complex character of Grant Hadwin, a logging engineer and survivalist who lived and worked happily for many years in BCʼs ancient forests. Witnessing the devastation wrought by clear-cutting, Hadwin was finally driven to commit what some would say was an extraordinary and perverse act, one that ran contrary to all he had come to value. Interweaving speculation, myth and reality, the film charts Hadwin’s emotional crusade against the destruction of the world’s last great temperate rainforest and explores the possible motives for his unprecedented crime.
On August 9, 2016, a young Cree man named Colten Boushie died from a gunshot to the back of his head after entering Gerald Stanley’s rural property with his friends. The jury’s subsequent acquittal of Stanley captured international attention, raising questions about racism embedded within Canada’s legal system and propelling Colten’s family to national and international stages in their pursuit of justice. Sensitively directed by Tasha Hubbard, nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up weaves a profound narrative encompassing the filmmaker’s own adoption, the stark history of colonialism on the Prairies, and a vision of a future where Indigenous children can live safely on their homelands.