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Canada is the second largest country in the world and the first to recognize that the diversity of its landscapes must be protected in order to preserve them for future generations.
Canada's National Parks (2020 )
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Their songs are melodies for the masses, filling subway platforms and street corners, yet the singers remain unknown. Some are homeless, others “home free.” Their personal histories vary as much as their voices, but their music unifies their point of view from the margins of society. Inspired by depression-era recordings of early American folk songs, filmmaker Shelley Saywell and singer and activist Lorraine Segato of The Parachute Club set out to document a new catalogue of songs and stories from five of Toronto’s modern troubadours. Their lyrics are honest, heartfelt and passionate, but their freedom to perform is threatened by the city’s bureaucratic busker system. Shining a light on the struggles they face—be it in shelters, with social programs, with their addictions and abuse—a soundtrack evolves from the island ferry docks and freeway underpasses, rooming houses and rooftops, showing us that music is the common language in this empowering celebration of survival.
Lowdown Tracks (2015 )
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Single mother Anna and her four children live in the front-line war zone of Donbas, Ukraine. While the outside world is made up of bombings and chaos, the family is managing to keep their home a safe haven, full of life and full of light. Every member of the family has a passion for cinema, motivating them to shoot a film inspired by their own life during a time of war. The creative process raises the question of what kind of power the magical world of cinema could have during times of disaster. How to picture war through fiction? For Anna and the children, transforming trauma into a work of art is the ultimate way to stay human.
The Earth Is Blue as an Orange (2020 )
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Ada Lovelace was a most unlikely computer pioneer. In this film, Dr Hannah Fry tells the story of Ada's remarkable life. Born in the early 19th century, Ada was a countess of the realm, a scandalous socialite and an 'enchantress of numbers'. The film is an enthralling tale of how a life infused with brilliance, but blighted by illness and gambling addiction, helped give rise to the modern era of computing.
Calculating Ada: The Countess of Computing (2015 )
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Fashion historian Amber Butchart fuses biography, art and the history of fashion as she explores the lives of historical figures by examining the clothes that they wore.
A Stitch in Time (2018 )
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An oil boom has drawn thousands to America’s Northern Plains in search of work. Against the backdrop of a cruel North Dakota winter, the stories of three children and an immigrant mother intertwine among themes of innocence, home, and the American Dream.
White Earth (2015 )
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The story of a young boy forced to spend all five years of his short life in hospital while the federal and provincial governments argued over which was responsible for his care, as well as the long struggle of Indigenous activists to force the Canadian government to enforce “Jordan’s Principle” — the promise that no First Nations children would experience inequitable access to government-funded services again.
Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger (2019 )
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A son seeking to fulfill his late father’s dream takes his band from the storied city of New Orleans to the shores of Cuba, where — through the universal language of music — dark and ancient connections between their peoples reveal the roots of jazz.
A Tuba To Cuba (2019 )
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Award-winning documentary director, Jason DaSilva was found diagnosed with Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis years ago while filming his film in India. Since then, Jason have been going through series of unfortunate challenges like being trapped in New York City due to his disability caused by MS, got divorced with his beloved wife and trying to stay close with his son who is now in Texas with his ex-wife.
When We Walk (2019 )
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Follow the fascinating evolution of jazz dance from its origins in Africa, through to its modern-day interpretations which reveal the political and social influences affecting the dance form today.
Uprooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance (2020 )
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The historian explores the land that inspired her passion for the past by embarking upon a 900-mile journey along the river Nile and examining how it shaped ancient Egypt.
The Nile: Egypt's Great River with Bettany Hughes (2019 )
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17 and Life Doesn't Wait paints a lively, candid and emotionally charged view of life through the eyes of three teen girls in their final year of high school.
17 and Life Doesn't Wait (2019 )
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Historian Bettany Hughes retraces the lives of three great thinkers whose ideas shaped the modern world - Karl Marx, Frederick Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.
Genius of the Modern World (2016 )
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Jim Al-Khalili tackles the greatest question in science - how the universe began. By recreating key experiments Jim unravels the mystery of science's creation story.
The Beginning and End of the Universe (2016 )
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Heritage Minutes, also known officially as Historica Minutes: History by the Minute, are a series of sixty-second short films, each illustrating an important moment in Canadian history. They appear frequently on Canadian television and in cinemas before movies and are now also sold on DVD. The Minutes were first introduced on March 31, 1991 as part of a one-off heavily-promoted history quiz show hosted by Rex Murphy. The thirteen original short films were broken up and run between shows on CBC Television and CTV Network. The continued broadcast of the Minutes and the production of new ones was pioneered by Charles Bronfman's CRB Foundation, Canada Post Power Broadcasting, and the National Film Board. They were devised, developed and largely narrated by noted Canadian broadcaster Patrick Watson, while the producer of the series was Robert Guy Scully. In 2009 Historica merged with The Dominion Institute to become The Historica-Dominion Institute. While the foundations have not paid networks to air Minutes, they have made them freely available, and in the early years paid to have them run in cinemas across the country. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ruled that Heritage Minutes are an "on-going dramatic series" thus each minute counts as ninety-seconds of a station's Canadian content requirements.
Heritage Minutes (1991 )
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Mike Disfarmer, small town portrait photographer turned posthumous art star. This is the story of an eccentric curmudgeon and artistic icon whose powerful pictures of depression-era USA have left an unlikely mark on the modern Manhattan art world.
Disfarmer: A Portrait of America (2010 )
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Borealis is a unique cinematic documentary that goes deep into Canada's iconic snow forest to understand how black spruce and birch experience life, talk to each other and decide when the time is right to burn themselves down.
Borealis (2020 )
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In the 1980s, Corey Pegues found himself embroiled in a life of crime as a member of New York’s City’s infamous Supreme Team gang. After an incident forces Pegues away from the streets, he unexpectedly emerges as a rising star in the NYPD, his past unknown to his fellow officers. A decorated 21-year police career is threatened when his political stances and revelations about his former life cause strife within the police community.
A Cops and Robbers Story (2020 )
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Can a work of art remain relevant 200 years after its creation? Ludwig van Beethoven’s last completed symphony proves it’s possible.
Beethoven's Nine: Ode to Humanity (2024 )
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At America's elite MIT, a Ghanaian alum follows four African students as they strive to graduate and become agents of change for their home countries Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Over an intimate, nearly decade-long journey, all must decide how much of America to absorb, how much of Africa to hold on to, and how to reconcile teenage ideals with the truths they discover about the world and themselves.
Brief Tender Light (2024 )
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Historian Dan Snow relives the story of a crack team of 133 young airmen whose mission is to destroy the great dams of Germany in World War Two using a revolutionary new bouncing bomb.
The Dambusters (2020 )
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After the Stonewall riots and at the height of the gay liberation movement in America, an entire generation were busy celebrating their newfound emancipation, unaware of an impending epidemic. A disease that seemed determined to wipe out an entire generation of gay men, was largely ignored by politicians and the mainstream media. Gaetan Dugas was a French-Canadian flight attendant, who offered to help early scientific research into the origins of AIDS. An unfortunate series of events followed and he would be vilified as Patient Zero, the man who gave us AIDS.
Killing Patient Zero (2019 )
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Cookbook author and environmental activist Diana Kennedy reflects on an unconventional life spent mastering Mexican cuisine.
Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy (2019 )
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A film which explores a radical new idea - is there an imbalance between our brain hemispheres that is affecting how we live in our modern society?
The Divided Brain (2019 )
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Dr Alice Roberts follows a year of British archaeology, joining up the results of digs and investigations the length of the country.
Digging for Britain (2010 )
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A six-part French documentary about the Second World War composed exclusively of actual footage of the war as filmed by war correspondents, soldiers, resistance fighters and private citizens. The series is shown in color, with the black and white footage being fully colorized, save for some original color footage. The only exception to the treatment are most Holocaust scenes, which are presented in the original black and white.
Apocalypse: The Second World War (2009 )
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When troubled teen Ray Klonsky began writing letters to prison inmate David McCallum, both of their lives changed forever. Hundreds of letters later, Ray graduated from university determined to set his wrongly convicted friend free.
David & Me (2014 )
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Renowned artist Krzysztof Wodiczko creates powerful responses to the inequities and horrors of war. This in-depth investigation into the artist focuses on the recurring themes of war, trauma, and displacement in his work. An instigator for social change, Wodiczko’s powerful art interventions disrupt the valorization of state-sanctioned aggression.
The Art of Un-War (2022 )
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The evolution of the depiction of the various Native American peoples in cinema, from the silent era to the present day: how their image on the screen has changed the way to understand their history and culture.
Reel Injun (2010 )
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A look into Frida Kahlo's world, revealing an artist driven by politics, power, sex and identity, with her epic love affair with Diego Rivera at the heart of it all.
Becoming Frida Kahlo (2023 )
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In a small town plunged into darkness, two children, Kyona and Adriel, are separated from their parents and, facing the path of exile alone, embark on a heroic journey that will take them from childhood to adolescence, in search of refuge, peace and the hope of finding their family.
The Crossing (2021 )
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Revealing the extraordinary animals, astonishing landscapes and remarkable people who live alongside the Amazon, Mississippi and Nile.
Earth's Great Rivers (2019 )