Heritage Minutes: Pauline Vanier

Continuing a saga that began with his previous, 1978 film, Vautours director Jean-Claude Labrecque returns with the French Canadian, Louis Pelletier and puts him in the context of the growing separatist movement in the late 1960s in Quebec. At that time, supporters of an independent Quebec began to consolidate their power under the Parti Québecois -- and the story of Louis and his wife Claudette are meant to illustrate this watershed in Quebec's history. As the film begins, Claudette and Louis are about to get married -- and their wedding day significantly coincides with preparations for the visit of Queen Elizabeth II. Years later, they are well-established in Montreal and are enjoying visits from their family -- and then their lives start to deteriorate. Louis is suddenly out of work, and as he faces the difficulties of finding another job -- and of living precariously -- he becomes more radical, less accepting of the status quo.

A film between reality and fiction about a popular singer, played by Joël Denis, idol of that time. He is surrounded by a host of great actors and real and famous characters from the 60s.

In a lonely setting, a teenage girl dreams. She is bored, manifests childish rebellions: her nascent personality rears up and asserts itself. "Be our star," suggests a director of women's pages. What will this flight to the world of work bring to Solange?

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?

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.

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.

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.

The story of two young women who go to the city to work in a dress factory, and who share a room to ease their expenses and their loneliness. The film shows the currents that brought them together and the facets of their natures that first made them seem compatible but eventually drove them apart. Their story reflects, to a degree, the situation of anyone who has ever shared the life of another.

A worker, called in a hurry to remove the snow in the city street, try to buy his remaining gifts in the tumult of Christmas eve without quitting his work.

Two men bond as one recovers from an attack and the other deals with the impending death of his grandmother.