Heritage Minutes: Pauline Vanier

This feature documentary by Jean-Claude Labrecque recounts the bold and astounding enterprise of French filmmaker Julien Duvivier, who shot a film adaptation of Louis Hémon’s classic novel Maria Chapdelaine in Péribonka, a village in Quebec’s Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, in 1934. What was the impact of the original film’s production on the life of the community? What memories remain? What town secrets lie hidden in those memories?

A meditation on society's attitudes and beliefs, as explored through a New France fur trapper's relationship with a Native woman that spans centuries.

On your marks. Follow cyclists from 13 countries as they cover 2.400 km of Gaspé countryside in 12 days-a course longer than those of Italy, Belgium or Spain. The long shots of curving landscape and open road are set to a mesmerizing soundtrack in this documentary, and the results are spellbinding.

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.

Although he is something of a layabout, and is still living with his mother, her death comes as something of a shock to Louis Pelletier (Gilbert Sicotte). Still, he has hopes of some sort of legacy and believes that his relatives will help him find a job. All his hopes are dashed when, before the funeral, his three aunts come to Quebec City to settle their sister's estate. As grasping and efficient a crew as ever strode a parlor, by the time they leave, the estate has been cleaned to the bones, as if by vultures.

A pimp and his seven working girls move to a small conservative mining town in northern Quebec to establish a brothel.

Filmed for the most part from a low-flying aircraft, this documentary short presents a breathtaking view of Canada from coast to coast. Showing the varied terrain, from craggy coast to towering glacier, the film illustrates Canada’s pristine wilderness as well as today's industrial and urban realities. Canada the Land was specially commissioned for the Canada Pavilion at the Osaka World Fair in 1970.

On the eve of her final moments, a woman recalls her alcoholic past. She revisits her entire youth, including a binge that, at 46, cost her everything she had: "Loneliness and aging are themes that impose themselves on me, in one form or another. As for alcoholism, it fascinates me because of the revolt it underpins, and revolts me because of the unhappiness it creates around itself.

In this French Canadian film, when the provincial government tries to move two young farmers from their land to make way for development, the two fight back, accidentally killing a policeman and becoming outlaws in the process.

Rejeanne and Gilles are a married couple whose devastating setbacks--she is laid off from her job and he suffers a debilitating stroke--only begin to fester in the face of corporate greed and personal struggles when they attempt to start over in a new neighborhood.

A behind-the-scenes documentary about director Michelangelo Antonioni as he's shooting his segment of The Three Faces, a vehicle for Soraya, the former empress of Persia. Featuring interviews with Monica Vitti, Tonino Guerra and more.

A young singer-songwriter abandons his life in his hometown and moves to the city to make it big. He achieves fame, but it comes at a price.

Each married on their side, a teacher and a sociologist meet by chance in Quebec. Political and intellectual discussions followed a brief mad love.

This fictional feature follows a twenty-something man who is struggling to define his position in the world in early adulthood. He has left their parents' home but still has not made an home of his own. Our protagonist’s alienation is palpable; for him life is a game, not because he chooses to make it so, but because he is unable to make anything more of it. But for those who befriend him and eventually turn him loose again, his game is not enough.

Yvonne is a young woman living in Quebec in the latter half of the 19th century, under the controlling influence of both her elder sister, Hélène, and the repressive Victorian society that pervades the area. Yvonne has a sensual passion that her sister hopes to extinguish by placing her in a convent. As summer arrives, a strange dream suggests a different future, and Yvonne confronts the unexpected return of both her mother and her first love.