It's a Crime

This documentary short offers a nostalgic look at the steam locomotive as it passes from reality to history. In its heyday, the big smoke-belching steam engine seemed immortal. Now, powerful and efficient diesels are pushing the old coal-burning locomotives to the sidelines, and the lonely echo of their whistles may soon be a thing of the past.

This short documentary profiles cartoonist, painter, humorist, publisher, iconographer, and teacher Jacob Maydanyk. Part of the first wave of Ukrainian immigrants who arrived in Canada between 1896-1914, Maydanyk was an imaginative artist who created the beloved comic strip character Shteef Tabachniuk, a hapless and endearing galoot who became a folk hero to Ukrainian immigrants. Laughter in My Soul is a tribute to the dignity and heroism of those early pioneers and to those whose spirit lives on, to those who had laughter in their souls.

Canadians in search of the national identity will not find it fully fleshed in this film. An animated cartoon, it sees Canadians as pragmatists, adaptable to whatever climate or history place in their way. It is a boisterous, bubbling analysis of the Canadian character and, although it may not answer the question of the title, it does leave the feeling that being Canadian is not so exhausting as one might expect.

The Greek myth retold with film animation, accompanied by music for flute. Music, drawing, colour and movement here follow a moving, classic restraint. Daedalus, inventor of many things, provides the wings to escape from Crete, but Icarus, his son, impetuously flies too close to the sun. In this film, artist and composer share equal pleasure in the telling, with a feeling the audience will share. A film without words.

Nose and Tina are a couple in love. The film captures the domestic details of their life together and documents their hassles with work, money and the law. The unusual bit: He is employed as a brakeman, and she as a sex worker.

An unusual documentary investigating rape from the assailant's point of view. Ten men convicted of rape tell their stories, describing their backgrounds, and their violent attacks on women. The film is a guaranteed catalyst for discussion.

This short film offers an intimate portrait of two women in their mid-sixties--one lesbian, the other heterosexual--whose love for one another and the music they create together, transcends differences.

A performing arts film by Alanis Obomsawin, it documents efforts to raise funds for the James Bay Cree and was made at a time when Cree territory was threatened by hydro-electric projects. Amisk represents early work by Obomsawin, a trailblazer in Canadian Aboriginal film.

This short film brings together animated interpretations of four poems by great Canadian wordsmiths: "Riverdale Lion" by John Robert Colombo, "A Kite Is a Victim" by Leonard Cohen, "Klaxon" by James Reaney and George Johnston’s "The Bulge."

Ukrainian-Canadian Ted Baryluk's grocery store has been a fixture in Winnipeg's North End for over 20 years. In this photo study, Ted talks about his store, the customers who have come and gone and the social changes his multicultural neighbourhood has seen. But most of all he wonders what will become of his store after he retires. He hopes his daughter will take over, but she wants to move away. The film is a wistful rendering of a shopkeeper's relationship with his daughter and a fascinating portrait of a neighbourhood and its inhabitants.

Men struggle with day-to-day tasks in a world where all of the women have disappeared.

A lonely woodcarver longs for a son, so he builds a wooden puppet and names it Spinnolio

In this Oscar-winning short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower.

In July 1990, a dispute over a proposed golf course to be built on Kanien’kéhaka (Mohawk) lands in Oka, Quebec, sets the stage for a historic confrontation that would grab international headlines and sear itself into the Canadian consciousness.

Corral is a 1954 National Film Board of Canada documentary by Colin Low, partly shot in the Cochrane Ranch in what is now Cochrane, Alberta. In the film, a cowboy rounds up wild horses, lassoing one of the high-spirited animals in the corral, then going on a ride across the Rocky Mountain Foothills of Alberta.

A half-hour drama based on a short story by Alice Munro in which a young woman has to deal with her snobbish husband when her aunt comes to dinner. The aunt is unsophisticated and perhaps boring, but the young wife comes to realize how this fat woman's warmth and humanity have so much more value than her husband's cold sophistication.