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Ontario (21)
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The Black SquirrelFadel Saleh 1999 57 minThis feature film is a different portrait of Ottawa, as transfigured by the loving but provocative gaze of well-known Francophone writer Daniel Poliquin. In his novels, the national capital metamorphoses, like the dreaded rat that supposedly changed into the city's ubiquitous black squirrel in a bid to win our affection. Alternating reality and fiction, the film reveals another Ottawa through the dreams and desires of his novels' characters - all portrayed by Poliquin himself. -
Bonjour Toronto!Clément Perron 1965 28 minA young Montrealer explores Toronto for the first time. Despite some ready-made notions, the visitor is eager to look and learn, and before long is caught by the excitement of the Queen City. Although some of his prior convictions are confirmed, he finds, somewhat to his surprise, that the city has much to offer, including a French bookstore.
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A Capital PlanBernard Devlin 1949 11 minThis short documentary features a portrait of Ottawa in the mid-20th century, as the nascent Canadian capital grew with force but without direction. Street congestion, air pollution, and rail traffic were all the negative results of a city that had grown without being properly planned. French architect and urban designer Jacques Gréber stepped in to create a far-sighted plan for the future development of Ottawa. With tracks moved, factories relocated, and neighbourhoods redesigned as separate communities, Ottawa became the capital city of true beauty and dignity we know today.
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Canada's Capital: Behind the ScenesIan Ferguson 1989 24 minThis short film presented in a TV news-magazine format, is hosted by 2 young Canadians and a zany reporter on location in Ottawa. Their mission: to explore the capital "behind the scenes." The result is an intriguing look at Canada's capital and how it serves people across the country.
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Capital CityFergus McDonell 1957 30 minThis short documentary presents Ottawa through the eyes of a veteran tourist guide who knows all the answers, from the height of the Peace Tower to the reason the Rideau Canal was built.
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Eye Witness No. 401952 11 minThe Eye Witness series is a collection of short documentaries featuring Canadian news stories from the 1940s and '50s. This segment includes Prairie Harbour: The Port of Flowing Grain, a look at the lakehead cities of Fort William and Port Arthur, funnelling centres for western grain on its way to world markets. In Modern Miracle: Surgery is Safe, the appendectomy of patient Henry Brown demonstrates the advances in modern medicine. Co-Op Carpenters: Home-Made Community illustrates the principles behind the cooperative housing program for veterans in Carleton Heights near Ottawa.
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Flemingdon Park: The Global VillageAndrew Faiz 2002 47 minThis documentary examines the history and current reality of Toronto’s Flemingdon Park. Now a subsidized housing project, it was built in 1961 as a trendy urban utopia. A decade later it was sold, and Flemingdon became home to refugees and new immigrants. Once a model of urban planning, Flemingdon Park's flip side is a history of violence and racism that residents have fought to overcome. Yet despite challenges, the community succeeds in making people from around the world feel at home in a different kind of utopia–one where differences are celebrated and new visions are possible.
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Farewell Oak StreetGrant McLean 1953 17 minThis documentary presents a before-and-after picture of people in a large-scale public housing project in Toronto. Due to a housing shortage, they were forced to live in squalid, dingy flats and ramshackle dwellings on a crowded street in Regent Park North; now they have access to new, modern housing developments designed to offer them privacy, light and space.
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Flowers on a One-way StreetRobin Spry 1968 57 minYorkville Avenue, Toronto, received newspaper prominence after it became what the papers called a "hippie haven." This film records what happened after the young people staged demonstrations to have the street closed to traffic, and civic authorities used corresponding persuasions to keep it open as a necessary traffic artery. The main confrontation takes place at a council meeting in City Hall, to which spokesmen for the young people have come to present their case. Here the film provides opportunity to judge both their attitudes and those of the city administration.
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Home Feeling: Struggle for a CommunityJennifer Hodge & Roger McTair 1983 57 minThis feature documentary takes us to the heart of the Jane-Finch "Corridor" in the early 1980s. Covering six square blocks in Toronto's North York, the area readily evokes images of vandalism, high-density subsidized housing, racial tension, despair and crime. By focusing on the lives of several of the residents, many of them black or members of other visible minorities, the film provides a powerful view of a community that, contrary to its popular image, is working towards a more positive future.
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Indian Relocation: Elliot LakeD'Arcy Marsh & David Hughes 1967 29 minVocational and academic education programs are introduced as a way to prepare Indigenous people for city life in this short documentary film. As families move out to northern Ontario's Elliot Lake from neighbouring reserves, programs such as these are used to integrate them into society. Through this film, we hear from some of the families who stayed, and some who returned.
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Invisible CityHubert Davis 2009 1 h 15 minInvisible City is a moving story of two boys from Regent Park crossing into adulthood – their mothers and mentors rooting for them to succeed; their environment and social pressures tempting them to make poor choices. Turning his camera on the often ignored inner city, Academy-award nominated director Hubert Davis sensitively depicts the disconnection of urban poverty and race from the mainstream.
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Love Affair with Politics: A Portrait of Marion DewarTerre Nash 1987 26 minIn this short documentary, Oscar®-winner Terre Nash turns her lens on Marion Dewar, one of Canada's most successful female politicians, while she was mayor of Ottawa. In her 7 years as mayor, Dewar was instrumental in the Rideau Centre project, introduced disarmament referendums into municipal politics, was the leading force in raising Canada's quota for Vietnamese refugees, and became known for her social responsibility and common sense.
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Redevelopment in Windsor - The First Step1964 13 minThis film shows how the city of Windsor, Ontario, solved the need for the redevelopment of old sections of the city by employing the available resources of the provincial and federal governments. A first low-rental housing project, Glengarry Court, was undertaken and completed, and plans were extended to include the redevelopment of a choice riverfront area.
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The Superior ScrapbookJim Farrell , Bill Lemmon , … 1970 20 minMade by students of the Thunder Bay Community Film/VTR project, this film records the social history of the Lakehead from 1880-1913 through the use of old photographs.
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There’s No Place Like This Place, AnyplaceLulu Wei 2020 1 h 16 minThere’s No Place Like This Place, Anyplace chronicles the transformation of a much-loved Toronto landmark, the Honest Ed’s block, through the stories of its community members who are forced to relocate when it is sold to a developer.
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Toronto Boom TownLeslie McFarlane 1951 10 minThis short documentary studies the contrast between the sedate Toronto of the turn of the century and the thriving, expanding metropolis of 1951. Aerial views give evidence of the conversion of the old Toronto into the new--the city with towering skyscrapers, teeming traffic arteries, vast industrial developments and far-reaching residential areas housing over a million people.
Toronto's mid-century progress is also Canada's, as manifested in the building of Canada's first subway, and in the bustle of the nation's greatest trading centre--the Toronto Stock Exchange. -
Unarmed VersesCharles Officer 2016 1 h 25 minThis feature documentary presents a thoughtful and vivid portrait of a community facing imposed relocation. At the centre of the story is a remarkably astute and luminous 12-year-old black girl whose poignant observations about life, the soul, and the power of art give voice to those rarely heard in society. Unarmed Verses is a cinematic rendering of our universal need for self-expression and belonging.
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V.T.R. Rosedale1974 31 minUsing video recording technology, the citizens of Rosedale, once referred to as "the rear end of Alberta" by a frustrated citizen, pulled themselves together as a community. They formed a citizens' action committee, cleaned up the town, built a park, and negotiated with the government to install gas, water and sewage systems. And all this happened within five months.
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Where Do We Go from Here?James Carney 1973 22 minToronto is the example used in this film, which deals not only with the mechanics of urban transportation, but also with many of the underlying political and economic tensions. Perhaps more important than any answers it offers, are the questions it raises.
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World In a CityBrett Story 2016 13 minWorld in a City is a portrait of Toronto and the steps Torontonians are taking to create a society that welcomes and encourages new immigrants to flourish. Join photographer Colin Boyd Shafer as he celebrates diversity in this short film, Canada’s contribution to the Big Cities project, an exciting international collaboration that uses documentary storytelling to outline both the challenges facing growing urban areas and the bold solutions to these ongoing problems.
