Secret Nation

A young girl in central Newfoundland becomes convinced she is connected to one of the last Beothuk people. As she and her father search for her mother’s grave near Red Indian Lake, an accompanying archaeologist with similar beliefs joins them, and their journey explores questions of heritage, memory, and identity.

A short drama that takes a humourous look at the consumer society.

Mike Jones and his siblings Andy and Cathy travel by helicopter from rural Newfoundland to a gala to make speeches congratulating TIFF on its anniversary.

Something Dancing About Her is an affectionate portrait of Pegi Nicol MacLeod, a charismatic yet relatively unknown painter. Shedding fresh light on her place in Canadian art history, director Michael Ostroff chronicles the life of this remarkable creative spirit who threw herself into painting, left-wing politics and love affairs with equal enthusiasm.

Faustus is a clerk in St. John's at the Newfoundland Department of Education. He dreams of becoming ruler of Newfoundland and seceding from Canada. In the real world, Faustus' boss Eddie Peddle plans to indoctrinate the citizenry of Newfoundland with a cult-like geometric theory known as Total Education, but Peddle may be foiled by the revelation of a secret from his past career.

A riveting account of the tragic adventure of filmmaker Varick Frissell and his filming of "The Viking" (1931) and the tragic events that befell that adventure into early film-making.

In this feature documentary, filmmaker Paul Cowan offers an innovative, moving account of the Westray coal mine disaster that killed 26 men in Nova Scotia on May 9, 1992. The film focuses on the lives of three widows and three miners lucky enough not to be underground that day when the methane and coal dust ignited. But their lives were torn apart by the events. Meet some of the working men, who felt they had no option but to stay on at Westray. And wives, who heard the rumours, saw their men sometimes bloodied from accidents and stood by them, hoping it would all turn out all right. This is a film about working people everywhere whose lives are often entrusted to companies that violate the most fundamental rules of safety and decency in the name of profit.

Elizabeth Sutton, a lecturer from Toronto and Peter Breen, a professor of cultural studies from St. John's, Newfoundland, come together in his town for a secret liaison. All is bliss. But within twenty-four hours, the affair has collapsed. A clash of languages, cultures, and values force them to come to terms with each other's sense of morality.

Mary recounts to her daughter Eva the childhood story of when Mary and her father fell through the ice on a frozen pond.

A beautiful and vital film that tells the story of a young woman's fight with death.

A group of elite soldiers, including one woman, sign up for the ultimate training mission. The group parachutes onto a remote island, where their objective is to reach the safety zone before the "opposing force" captures them. Everything does not go as expected, and the training mission turns into the real thing.

A graduate of an elite training school is determined to discover the identity of her lost father. She begins a dangerous journey, meeting an array of characters as she discovers her past. Stars Henry Czerny, Michael Luke.

A Codco documentary turned improvised drama about a woman named Dolly who, fed up with taking care of a group of ungrateful layabouts, runs away. The story is intercut with footage from another Codco project called "Borkin the Spineless Servant."

Commissioned by the Toronto International Film Festival to mark the event's 25th anniversary in September 2000, the "Preludes" program consisted of ten short films by Canadian directors which were inspired in some way by the festival. Each film screened as a prelude to a feature film in the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival program. The full "Preludes" anthology was screened on the web in November 2000, and was given theatrical retrospectives at the TIFF Lightbox in the subsequent years.

A nature documentary about the wild Nuns of Newfoundland-- Originated as a "filmeo" to be performed live by Codco, but eventually overdubbed with audio and released as a short film.

This documentary chronicles ocean disposal of surplus World War II chemical weapons by Canada, Germany, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States. Through a well edited combination of interview footage and still photographs this film outlines the serious problem that awaits us now that hundreds of thousands of tons of chemical weapons have been disposed of off our coastlines. The exact location of dumps was not always recorded on navigation charts. Sixty years later, containers that were designed to last for fifty years have started to disintegrate, posing substantial danger to both marine life and coastal communities.