I see a new world. Do you see it? If you listened to the city back in 1984, here's what it told you: there are dark days coming, and the only way to survive them is by being rich. Made during the re-election year of Ronald Reagan, the election year of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the very beginnings of the shattering saving and loan scandal that would come to look like candy store shoplifting a generation on, Ron Mann's rare early non-documentary...

Chemerical explores the life cycle of everyday household cleaners and hygiene products to prove that, thanks to our clean obsession, we are drowning in sea of toxicity. The film is at once humorous, as we watch the Goode family try to turn a new leaf by creating and living in a toxic free home, and informative, as director Andrew Nisker works with many experts to give audiences the tools and inspiration to live toxic free. Chemerical was one of the...

Lipsett Diaries is a descent into the maelstrom of anguish that tormented famed Canadian experimental filmmaker Arthur Lipsett, who died prematurely at age 49. Taking the form of a diary, this animated film by Theodore Ushev charts the meanderings of psychological distress, with clashes of images and sounds evoking the loneliness of the artist’s childhood, his frenzied creations and his dizzying descent into depression and madness. Drawing, as Lipsett...

Picture of Light is a mesmerizing tale about a filmmaker's journey to Canada's arctic in search of one of Earth's greatest natural wonder: the Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights. While combining glimpses of the characters who live in this remote environment with the film crew's comic and absurd attempts to deal with the extreme cold, the film reveals the paradoxes involved in trying to capture the spectacular light show of the Northern...

Uncle Bob is getting up in years, but manages quite well, thank you. Then an unexpected illness changes everything. Suddenly he's scooped out of his safe and familiar surroundings and deposited inside the foreign and chaotic world of the hospital. Here the once self-reliant Uncle Bob becomes vulnerable and dependent. Uncle Bob's hospital stay is fraught with difficulties. Day in day out he is inundated by a constant barrage of intruders, from the...

An advanced race of giant lobsters from outer space land on Earth "sunny side up," but no one knows why. An utter failure of communication with these galactic crustaceans catapults the world towards Armageddon bisque! World peace is at stake! What can save us? A little straight talk, perhaps? With tongue planted firmly in cheek, director and writer Janet Perlman untwines the classic 1950s B-movie motif to weave a thoroughly madcap, animated parable...

Once Jennie had everything. She had two bowls to eat from, two pillows, and for cold weather, a red wool sweater. She even had a master who loved her. But Jennie didn't care. In the middle of the night she packed everything she had in a black leather bag with gold buckles and looked out of her favorite window for the last time... Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life follows Jennie's surreal, suspenseful and unexpectedly moving journey...

In the summer of 2004, Canadian health researchers made a startling discovery in the Chippewa birth records for the city of Sarnia, an hour north of Detroit: for the past decade, female babies had been outnumbering male babies at a rate of 2:1. Further investigation revealed large numbers of miscarriages, a cluster of reproductive cancers in young women, and widespread neurological problems among the band's children. The Beloved Community looks at...

Can we trace the chain of events that lead to our own birth? Is our existence just coincidence? Do little things matter? The narrator of The Danish Poet considers these questions as we follow Kasper, a poet whose creative well has run dry, on a holiday to Norway to meet the famous writer, Sigrid Undset. As Kasper's quest for inspiration unfolds, it appears that a spell of bad weather, an angry dog, slippery barn planks, a careless postman, hungry...

Who hasn't felt apprehensive at the thought of starting high school? This is the central theme of this short animated film. Playing on imagination and humour, the director offers viewers a thought-provoking piece dealing with the transition that young people between the ages of 10 and 13 experience. Inspired by the work of Escher and Magritte, Catherine Arcand has created a graphically rich film through optical illusions and trompe-l'oeil effects....