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Europe (29)
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Caught in the CrossfireGarth Pritchard 1995 47 minCaught in the Crossfire is an in-depth and moving look at how Canadian soldiers keep peace in wartorn former Yugoslavia. Seen through the soldiers' eyes, it pays tribute to a community of men and women who have earned the respect of all sides in a bloody dispute. Throughout the film, we gain an awareness of the difficult work of our peacekeepers and of the successes that have resulted from our Canadian policy of refusing to take sides in the conflict. -
Canada at War, Part 11: Crisis on the Hill1962 27 minSeptember 1944 - March 1945. On the eve of victory Canada faces an internal crisis: an acute shortage of men for overseas service precipitates the conscription issue, threatens national unity and the King government. In Europe, Canadian divisions fight their way to the top of the Italian boot, then regroup for the final onslaught on Germany. They fight in the battles of the Reichswald and Hochwald forests, and finally cross the Siegfried Line.
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Canada at War, Part 1: Dusk1962 27 min1936 - March 1940. In Europe war clouds gather as Germany re-arms and Hitler propounds his 'master race' doctrine. Chamberlain's appeasement fails. Germany overruns Czechoslovakia. Britain declares war; Canada makes an independent decision to join. The first Canadian troopship sails from Halifax.
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Canada at War, Part 5: Ebbtide1962 27 minJuly - September 1942. A time of defeat and disaster. Hitler is at the apex of his power. A Canadian division probes at Dieppe and is repulsed with heavy casualties. Canadian factories take over production of the fabled Lancaster night bomber; Canadian bush pilots ferry the big planes across the Atlantic. German U-boats penetrate the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
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Canada at War, Part 7: Road to Ortona1962 27 minJuly 1943 - January l944. The objective at last--Fortress Europe. The Canadian 1st Division, flanked by the British and Americans, pushes into Italy. Italians surrender but the Germans resist. Ortona, a 15th-century town, riddled with bullets and grenades, is taken by Canadians in fierce and costly street fighting.
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Canada at War, Part 12: V Was for Victory1962 27 minApril-August 1945. Hitler had said: 'Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos.' By 1945, Germany is beaten. V-Day celebrations verge on the hysterical, but occupying armies uncover the staggering atrocities of Belsen, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald. Franklin D. Roosevelt dies. The world's first atomic bomb is dropped on Japan.
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Canada at War, Part 6: Turn of the Tide1962 27 minOctober 1942 - July 1943. The inherent strength of the Allies begins to be felt. Canadian munitions factories operate at peak capacity. U.S. Marines land on Guadalcanal and the Solomons. Montgomery's 8th Army strikes Rommel at Alamein; the R.C.A.F. joins in air strikes against Germany.
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Canada at War, Part 8: New Directions1962 27 minDecember 1943 - June 1944. Canada, war-seasoned, girds for the final assault. In London, Commonwealth prime ministers meet and Mackenzie King holds out for Canadian independence in foreign policy. In the Arctic, Canadian ships sail the Murmansk run with supplies for beleaguered Russia. The Italian campaign intensifies. In the south of England the Allies poise for attack.
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Canada at War, Part 2: Blitzkrieg1962 27 minApril - November 1940. With devastating speed Germany takes Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. Italy declares war. The British withdraw from Dunkirk. Mackenzie King feels the Canadian pulse on conscription. England is strafed by the Luftwaffe, and Britons accept Churchill's challenge of 'blood, sweat and tears.'
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Canada at War, Part 4: Days of Infamy1962 27 minDecember 1941 - June 1942. The war is now global and pressures on Canada mount. Without warning Japan strikes at Pearl Harbor. Canadians adjust to food rationing, salvage drives. The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan is inaugurated in Canada. In Ottawa, Winston Churchill makes his 'some chicken, some neck' speech.
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Canada at War, Part 10: Cinderella on the Left1962 27 minJune - December 1944. V-1 rockets, and later V-2s, rain death and destruction on Britain; their launching sites are mopped up by Canadians advancing on Pas de Calais. The Third Division spearheads the attack on the Scheldt estuary. Germans make a last-ditch stand in the Battle of the Bulge. In the English Channel, Canadian sailors man swift motor torpedo boats against German E-boats.
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Canada at War, Part 13: The Clouded Dawn1962 27 minAugust 1945 - 1946. Japan surrenders. World War II is over, but the scars are deep. Canadian prisoners are released from Japanese war camps. In Canada, as elsewhere, the monumental task of rehabilitation begins. In Ottawa the Gouzenko case shocks the nation. The trials at Nürenberg begin. The United Nations is formed. Canada, now a much stronger, independent nation, enters the Cold War.
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Canada at War, Part 3: Year of Siege1962 27 minSeptember 1940 - October 1941. The Battle of the Atlantic begins. German U-boats take their toll of Canadian convoys. The purge of Jews begins. German armies march into Russia. Mackenzie King is booed at Aldershot. Men of the Winnipeg Grenadiers and Royal Rifles leave for a fateful mission in Hong Kong.
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Canada at War, Part 9: The Norman Summer1962 27 minJune - September 1944. D-Day, June 6, 1944. In early morning hours, infantry carriers, including one hundred and ten ships of the Royal Canadian Navy, cross a seething, pitching sea to the coast of France while Allied air forces pound enemy positions from the air. Cherbourg, Caen, Carpiquet, Falaise, Paris are liberated. Canadians return, this time victorious, to the beaches of Dieppe.
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Front Lines - Nurses at the Front2008 8 minThis short documentary made in 2008 looks at the role of nurses and health workers during wartime. Long days, brutal injuries and both sad and triumphant outcomes are part of their reality. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year 2008, 90 years will have passed since the signing of the Armistice ending the Great War in Europe. More than 600,000 men and women crossed the Atlantic with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and more than 60,000 of them never returned. Front Lines features veterans' letters to their families and images from the NFB archives, the Canadian War Museum and Library and Archives Canada.
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Front Lines - Faith and Hope2008 9 minThis short documentary made in 2008 reflects on how religion and faith became a solace to many Canadians serving in the First World War. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year 2008, 90 years will have passed since the signing of the Armistice ending the Great War in Europe. More than 600,000 men and women crossed the Atlantic with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and more than 60,000 of them never returned. Front Lines features veterans' letters to their families and images from the NFB archives, the Canadian War Museum and Library and Archives Canada.
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Front Lines - The Trenches2008 9 minThis short documentary made in 2008 looks at life in the trenches in the First World War. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year 2008, 90 years will have passed since the signing of the Armistice ending the Great War in Europe. More than 600,000 men and women crossed the Atlantic with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and more than 60,000 of them never returned. Front Lines features veterans' letters to their families and images from the NFB archives, the Canadian War Museum and Library and Archives Canada.
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Front Lines - The Officer's Role2008 8 minThis short documentary made in 2008 looks at First World War officers. They often wrote reports and updates to headquarters. With all the devastation that they would see, they still needed to encourage their troops to not give up hope. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year 2008, 90 years will have passed since the signing of the Armistice ending the Great War in Europe. More than 600,000 men and women crossed the Atlantic with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and more than 60,000 of them never returned. Front Lines features veterans' letters to their families and images from the NFB archives, the Canadian War Museum and Library and Archives Canada.
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Front LinesClaude Guilmain 2008 33 minA tribute to the combatants in the First World War, this film traces the conflict through the war diary and private letters of five Canadian soldiers and a nurse. Hearing them, the listener detects between the lines an unspoken horror censored by war and propriety.
The film mingles war footage, historical photos and readings of excerpts from the diary and letters. The directorial talent of Claude Guilmain breathes life into these 90-year-old documents and accompanying archival images so that we experience the human face and heart of the conflict.
For the educational sector, five documentary vignettes have been drawn from the film: Nurses at the Front, The Officer's Role, The Life of the Soldier, Faith and Hope and The Trenches, each with further information on its particular subject. -
Front Lines - The Life of the Soldier2008 9 minThis short documentary made in 2008 looks at the gruelling life of a soldier in the First World War. The letters home speak of the physical and emotional hardships and the mental strain of what they witness on the battlefield. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year 2008, 90 years will have passed since the signing of the Armistice ending the Great War in Europe. More than 600,000 men and women crossed the Atlantic with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and more than 60,000 of them never returned. Front Lines features veterans' letters to their families and images from the NFB archives, the Canadian War Museum and Library and Archives Canada.
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In God's CommandGarth Pritchard 1995 47 minThis documentary introduces us to Captain Mark Sargent, chaplain to the Canadian peacekeepers (soldiers of the First Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry) stationed in former Yugoslavia. It offers an intimate look at the work of this remarkable man as he travels from bunker to bunker and from village to village, ministering to soldiers and civilians caught in the bloody conflict that has torn apart the Balkans.
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John McCrae's War: In Flanders FieldsRobert Duncan 1998 46 minThis feature documentary profiles poet John McCrae, from his childhood in Ontario to his years in medicine at McGill University and the WWI battlefields of Belgium, where he cared for wounded soldiers. Generations of schoolchildren have recited McCrae’s iconic poem “In Flanders Fields,” but McCrae and Alexis Helmer—the young man whose death inspired the poem—have faded from memory. This film seeks to revive their stories through a vivid portrait of a great man in Canadian history.
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Letters from KareliaKelly Saxberg 2005 48 minThis feature-length documentary sheds light on "Karelia Fever," a phenomenon of the 1930s that led many Finnish Canadians to a tragic fate in the Soviet Union. Taimi Pitkanen last saw her brother Aate in Leningrad in 1931. She was returning to Canada from Moscow while her brother was heading to Soviet Karelia, where his skills as an English-Finnish electrician were in demand.
He wrote letters home until 1941, when Hitler attacked the USSR. After that, no one in Canada heard from him. Some 60 years later, letters (written but unmailed) were discovered that revealed his fate and brought together Taimi and Alfred, the son Aate never had a chance to meet. Alfred follows his father's journey from Thunder Bay to Karelia. With him, we learn about Aate and one of the great dreams of the 20th century. -
Los CanadiensesAlbert Kish 1976 57 minThis feature documentary profiles the brave Canadians who fought in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. To save Spain's constitutionally elected government from the threat of a fascist dictatorship (which eventually prevailed), over 40,000 volunteers from around the world fought in Spain, and 1200 of those were the Canadians of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. More than half of them never returned. This respectful, emotional and historically rich film is committed to the memory of those who truly believed in the cause of the Spanish Republic.
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My Mother's VillageJohn Paskievich 2001 1 h 41 minIn a documentary that spans two continents and several generations, acclaimed director John Paskievich delves into the experience of exile and its impact on the human spirit.
Almost fifty years after his family fled Ukraine for freedom in Canada, the filmmaker visits his parents' homeland. It's a place both familiar and foreign. Drawing on his years growing up in Winnipeg, Paskievich explores how children of refugees and immigrants are caught between two worlds. While they struggle to put down roots in a new country, they must also preserve traditions of a distant land they have never known.
Paskievich's journey through Ukraine is interwoven with stories of displacement from other prominent Ukrainian Canadians--authors George Melnyk and Fran Ponomarenko, filmmaker Bohdana Bashuk, director Halya Kuchmij and dancer Lecia Polujan. A rich tapestry of memory and history, My Mother's Village brings to light the humour, anger, joy and complexity of living between borders. -
My Grandmother Ironed the King's ShirtsTorill Kove 1999 10 minImagine that your grandmother used to iron the king’s shirts! This tall tale turned out to be true for Oscar®-winning filmmaker Torill Kove, who expanded a family myth to create an entertaining animated short with a historical twist. My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts is Kove’s surprising and whimsical recounting of an unlikely career in service of an unusual monarch. And when World War II comes to Kove’s native Norway and the king is forced to flee, her grandmother’s skills play a key role in the guerilla resistance against the invading Nazis.
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The Price of DutyGarth Pritchard 1995 47 minA tribute to Canadian peacekeeper Mark Isfeld, or "Issy" as he was known to his fellow soldiers. In the first 3 years of UN peacekeeping activity in former Yugoslavia, 10 Canadian soldiers died. Many others were seriously injured, a number of whom were "engineers" – soldiers assigned the dangerous task of clearing land mines to create a safer environment for the local people. As we see in dramatic close-up, this is a painstaking job requiring great personal risk, nerves of steel and unwavering trust among soldiers. It's a job that cost Canadian peacekeeper Mark Isfeld his life.
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Suffer Little ChildrenSydney Newman 1945 10 minThis short documentary is part of the Canada Carries On series. At the end of World War II there were sixty million sick and starving children in Europe. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration undertook to provide food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education and sympathetic attention to these terrorized victims of war.
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Twilight of an Era (1934-1939)1960 29 minThis documentary examines some of the important events in Canada during the Depression years: the Moose River mine disaster, the great drought on the prairies and the introduction of a transatlantic air service between Canada and Europe. The film also looks at the major world events that influenced Canada: the abdication of the king of England; civil war in Spain; Hitler's rise to power and Canada's declaration of war on Germany. Part of the Between Two Wars series.
