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Social Action (14)
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Buying SexTeresa MacInnes & Kent Nason 2013 1 h 15 minThis feature documentary explores the state of prostitution laws in Canada. It captures the complexity of the issue by listening to the frequently conflicting voices of sex workers, policy-makers, lawyers, and even the male buyers who make their argument for why prostitution is good for society. Warning: This film deals with mature subject matter. Viewer discretion is advised.
Following the release of Buying Sex, Professor Alan Young, counsel for the applicants in Bedford v. Canada and a participant in the film, contacted the NFB to complain that the film provides an incomplete and inaccurate account of the case. The NFB acknowledges that the constitutional challenge is not the focus of the film. Rather, the aim of the film is to examine the current controversy in Canada around the decriminalization of prostitution, of which the Bedford case is one aspect. The goal is to create a film which encourages Canadians to engage in an informed debate about sex work from a national and international perspective. The NFB believes the film achieves this purpose. In the spirit of furthering an informed debate on these issues, including the constitutional challenge, and in response to Prof. Young's concerns, the NFB provides below links to the legal briefs filed by the parties before the Supreme Court of Canada as well as links to the judgments of all three Canadian Courts. The third judgment, from the Supreme Court of Canada, was released in December 2013, following the completion of the film. The Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the three prostitution related laws challenged by Prof. Young, but suspended its judgment for one year to allow Parliament to consider whether to enact new laws, thus ensuring that the debate surrounding the decriminalization of prostitution will continue in Canada for some time. -
The Challenge in Old CrowGeorges Payrastre 2006 54 minThis documentary focuses on the Yukon's Far North, where 280 Aboriginal people live in the village of Old Crow. Deep in this wilderness, the health of the children is a source of concern—the rise in obesity, diabetes and delinquency rates underscores the extent to which health and social problems are linked. With compassion and insight, this film shows how a handful of parents took control of a situation to ensure a future for their children.
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Women / IkwewagAngelina McLeod 2019 12 minShoal Lake 40 women talk about their struggles, and those of their parents and grandparents, in trying to raise their families in a hazardous state of enforced isolation. Everyone in the community has a harrowing story of a loved one falling through the ice while trying to get across the lake, with pregnant women and new mothers fearing for their babies and having no choice but to make the trek in dangerous conditions. The film shows the key role of the community’s women in demanding funding for the road from three levels of government, and how their reconnection to culture and ceremony give them the strength to keep going.
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Great Grand MotherAnne Wheeler & Lorna Rasmussen 1975 28 minThis short film is an ode to the women who settled the Prairies, from the days of early immigration to 1916 - when Manitobans became the first women in Canada to receive the provincial vote - and beyond. Recollections of women are complemented by a series of quotations drawn from letters, diaries, and newspapers of the day, which are spoken over re-enacted scenes and archival photographs.
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Holding Our GroundAnne Henderson 1988 50 minFilmed in a squatter community of Labangon in Cebu, Philippines, Holding Our Ground is the inspiring story of a group of women who have organized collectively to pressure their government for land reform, to establish their own money-lending system and to create shelters for street kids. A story of grassroots organizing that can be a model in both hemispheres.
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Prairie WomenBarbara Evans 1986 45 minThis film illustrates the struggles of Canadian prairies women to achieve a more just and humane society within the farm movement and at large. During the early 1900s, women on the prairies looked for ways to overcome their isolation. Out of the resulting farm women's organizations grew a group of women possessing remarkable intellectual abilities, social and cultural awareness, and advanced worldviews.
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Persistent and FinaglingMichael Rubbo 1971 56 minThe growing resolve of a group of Montréal women, members of STOP (Society To Overcome Pollution), to do something about air pollution by factories in their city led to a campaign to focus public attention on the problem. Despite rebuffs of every kind, they persisted until they were able to bring newspapers, radio and television to bear on their fight. What they accomplished, and how they went about it, will interest urban audiences.
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Sisters in the StruggleDionne Brand & Ginny Stikeman 1991 49 minThis documentary features Black women active in politics as well as community, labour and feminist organizing. They share their insights and personal testimonies on the double legacy of racism and sexism, linking their personal struggles with the ongoing battle to end systemic discrimination and violence against women and people of colour.
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Some American FeministsLuce Guilbeault , Nicole Brossard , … 1977 55 minThis documentary is composed of a series of interviews, combined with newsreel footage, that place the American feminist moment in historical perspective. Six of the movement's founding women, including Betty Friedan and Kate Millett, discuss the issues that most concern them. A film that remains relevant, even today.
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A Score for Women's VoicesSophie Bissonnette 2002 1 h 26 minBetween March and October 2000, millions of people around the world took to the streets to denounce poverty and violence against women. The historic World March of Women was a bold initiative of the Québec Federation of Women and represented a turning point in global solidarity.
Director Sophie Bissonnette invited five filmmakers from around the world to cover the march. She also asked each one to film an innovative project. In Senegal a community battles female genital mutilation through education. In Australia a women's circus teaches survivors of sexual assault to become skilled performers. In India a group of low-caste women mediate domestic disputes in informal women's courts. Native women in Ecuador offer leadership training programs to create women leaders. In the United States, Linda Carney describes why she founded Survival Inc. for poor women in Boston: this wealthy city refused her and her son welfare benefits unless she quit her minimum-wage job.
Set against the backdrop of a song, A Score for Women's Voices ends at the UN, where women deliver 5 million cards signed during the marches. Their goal? To change the world!
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Speaking Our PeaceTerre Nash & Bonnie Sherr Klein 1985 55 minFilmed in Canada, Britain and the U.S.S.R., this hour-long documentary focuses on local and international peace initiatives by women. Featured in the film are Rosalie Bertell, Marion Dewar, Muriel Duckworth, Ursula M. Franklin, Darlene Keju, Margaret Laurence, Solanges Vincent and Kathleen Wallace-Deering. In interviews and in encounters with Soviet women, they outline their views on war and peace. The film includes scenes of women in mass demonstrations at Litton Systems Canada and at Greenham Common in England, as well as footage of ordinary citizens who must live with the health and environmental problems caused by uranium mining and nuclear weapons testing.
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Second Stories - It Had to Be DoneTessa Desnomie 2008 22 minThis short documentary explores the legacy of residential schools through the eyes of two extraordinary women who not only lived it, but who, as adults, made the surprising decision to return to the school that had affected their lives so profoundly. This intimate and moving film affirms their strength and dignity in standing up and making a difference on their own terms. Second Stories follows on the heels of the enormously successful First Stories project, which produced 3 separate collections of short films from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Second Stories builds on that success by continuing the training with 3 of the 12 Indigenous filmmakers who delivered such compelling short documentaries. Produced in association with CBC, APTN, SCN, SaskFilm and MANITOBA FILM & SOUND.
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This Borrowed LandBonnie Kreps 1984 28 minThe Peace River Valley in British Columbia is an area of rich farmland threatened by the construction of a hydro-electric dam. This Borrowed Land gives the women who farm the Peace the chance to voice their growing concern over the conversion of farmland to uses not related to the production of food. They ask: "Will we leave our children enough land to grow food on?" They are firmly committed to their lifestyle despite the difficulties, both concrete and imponderable. A film about agriculture, ecology, land misuse, and stout-willed farmers who happen to be women.
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Women on the MarchDouglas Tunstell 1958 58 minThis feature film in two parts is an exploration of the women’s suffrage movement. Spearheaded by women like Emmeline Pankhurst, founder of the Women's Social and Political Union, the Suffragettes realized they would have to become radical and militant if the movement was going to be effective. There followed many demonstrations, and imprisonments until the women’s vote was finally granted, in 1918 (Britain) and 1919 (Canada, except Quebec.)
