Riches of the Earth

From Gerald Potterton (director of the cult classic Heavy Metal), this short film depicts the daydream of a chauffeur awaiting his employer. On a hot summer day, he begins to imagine that it's winter—the residential street where he's parked transforms into snowy mountains, and a series of comic misadventures begin. As the car is replaced by a toboggan, it carries the tycoon away on a dizzying ride. The chase includes some unforgettable antics in the snow, including a piggyback ride on an incredulous skier.

Lumsden, Saskatchewan is a town of 850 citizens on a river called the Qu'Appelle. In the spring of 1974, the river doubled its volume and threatened to flood the town. The townspeople organized themselves and the whole province stood behind them. Lumsden is the story of an incredible battle against impossible odds.

This feature documentary profiles the brave Canadians who fought in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. To save Spain's constitutionally elected government from the threat of a fascist dictatorship (which eventually prevailed), over 40,000 volunteers from around the world fought in Spain, and 1200 of those were the Canadians of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. More than half of them never returned. This respectful, emotional and historically rich film is committed to the memory of those who truly believed in the cause of the Spanish Republic.

A look at the various modes of transportation made for the Expo '86 World Fair in Vancouver, Canada.

An NFB crew filmed a group of three families, Cree hunters from Mistassini. Since times predating agriculture, this First Nations people have gone to the bush of the James Bay and Ungava Bay area to hunt. We see the building of the winter camp, the hunting and the rhythms of Cree family life.

Pete Standing Alone is a Blood Indian who, as a young man, was more at home in the White man's culture than his own. Confronted with the realization that his children knew very little about their origins, he became determined to pass down to them the customs and traditions of his ancestors. This film is the powerful biographical study of a 25-year span in Pete's life, from his early days as an oil-rig roughneck, rodeo rider and cowboy, to the present as an Indian concerned with preserving his tribe's spiritual heritage in the face of an energy-oriented industrial age.

This short, impressionistic film takes us to Nigeria, Japan, Mexico and India, where craftsmen work clay to produce ritual vessels and everyday objects.

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.

This short film from Arthur Lipsett is an abstract collage of snippets from discarded footage found by Lipsett in the editing room of the National Film Board (where he worked as an animator), combined with his own black and white 16mm footage shot on the streets of Montreal and New York City, among other locations. A commentary on a machine-dominated society, it is often cited as an influence on George Lucas's Star Wars and his conceptualization of "The Force."

"Fogo is a windswept island off the coast of Newfoundland where the inhabitants for generations have lived by, on and from the sea. In this film William Wells, fisherman, and his two sons take a day off from the nets for a journey to the gannet colony on the Funk Islands, fifty miles farther out to sea. There are exceptional close-up views of enormous flocks of seabirds swarming on the cliffs and in the sky."

The Living Stone is a 1958 Canadian short documentary film directed by John Feeney about Inuit art. It shows the inspiration behind Inuit sculpture. The Inuit approach to the work is to release the image the artist sees imprisoned in the rough stone. The film centres on an old legend about the carving of the image of a sea spirit to bring food to a hungry camp. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Arthur Lipsett's first film is an avant-garde blend of photography and sound. It looks behind the business-as-usual face we put on life and shows anxieties we want to forget. It is made of dozens of pictures that seem familiar, with fragments of speech heard in passing and, between times, a voice saying, "Very nice, very nice." The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.

Go head-to-head with an icebreaker. Plunge down a twisting mountain gorge. Soar through the clouds in the nosecone of a jet, then speed along with a dog team as it races across a frozen Arctic lake. A sweeping, moving tribute to Canada's stunning geography and rich cultural heritage, Momentum leaps off your screen--and touches your heart. Momentum wowed audiences from around the world when it premiered at Seville, the greatest world's fair of the last quarter century.

This short documentary features Newfoundland fisherman Billy Crane, who speaks frankly on the state of the inshore fishery and how the lack of government support has contributed to the industry’s downfall. He is being forced to leave home to seek employment in Toronto. This film was made with the Challenge for Change program.

On the Kainai (Blood) First Nations Reserve, near Cardston, Alberta, a hopeful new development in Indigenous enterprise. Once rulers of the western plains, the Bloods live on a 1 300-square-kilometer reserve. Many have lacked gainful employment and now pin their hopes on a pre-fab factory they have built. Will the production line and work and wages fit into their cultural pattern of life? The film shows how it is working and what the owners themselves say about their venture.

This film introduces the Fogo Island/Newfoundland Project series which is an experiment in how film can be a catalyst for social change by serving as a direct means of communication. It gives some basic facts about Fogo Island, Newfoundland, and explains why it was chosen for the film project.