Rendezvous Canada, 1606
The dramatic story of two youths--one French and one Indigenous--who share a pivotal time in Canada's history: the first contact between European and First Nations peoples.
In 1755, ten thousand French Canadian settlers were thrown off their land, loaded on ships, and exiled. Island Memories explores the past in a small Acadian community in Nova Scotia where the last survivor of this great deportation is reputedly buried. A lively film full of adventure, people, and history.
The dramatic story of two youths--one French and one Indigenous--who share a pivotal time in Canada's history: the first contact between European and First Nations peoples.
June 14, 1941, 3 a.m. Over 40000 people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are deported by Soviets to Siberia. Among them is a philosophy student Erna, a happily married mother of a little girl. Separated from her husband, Erna and her daughter are dispatched together with other women and children to remote Siberian territories. Despite hunger, fear and brutal humiliation Erna never in next fifteen years loses her sense of freedom and hope of returning to homeland.
The 14th of June 1941, Soviet-occupied Latvia: Without warning, the authorities break into the house of Melanie and her husband Aleksandr and force them to leave everything behind. Together with more than 15 000 Latvians, Melanie and her son get deported to Siberia. In her fight against cold, famine and cruelty, she only gains new strength through the letters she writes to Aleksandr, full of hope for a free Latvia and a better tomorrow.
What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
In 1930s Italy, a wealthy Jewish family tries to maintain their privileged lifestyle, hosting friends for tennis and parties at their villa. As anti-Semitism intensifies under Fascism, they must ultimately face the horrors of the Holocaust.
Zachary Richard takes a voyage to l'Acadie and Louisiana to learn about his ancestors and the history of the Acadian people.
Documentary about Finnish Jews during WWII and their unique position as German allies.
Switzerland still carries out special flights, where passengers, dressed in diapers and helmets, are chained to their seats for 40 hours at worst. They are accompanied by police officers and immigration officials. The passengers are flown to their native countries, where they haven't set foot in in up to twenty years, and where their lives might be in danger. Children, wives and work are left behind in Switzerland. Near Geneva, in Frambois prison, live 25 illegal immigrants waiting for deportation. They are offered an opportunity to say goodbye to their families and return to their native countries on a regular flight, escorted by plain-clothes police officers. If they refuse this offer, the special flight is arranged fast and unexpectedly. The stories behind the locked cells are truly heartbreaking.
In the late 1960s, with the triumph of bilingualism and biculturalism, New Brunswick's Université de Moncton became the setting for the awakening of Acadian nationalism after centuries of defeatism and resignation. Although 40% of the province's population spoke French, they had been unable to make their voices heard. The movement started with students-sit-ins, demonstrations against Parliament, run-ins with the police - and soon spread to a majority of Acadians. The film captures the behind-the-scenes action and the students' determination to bring about change. An invaluable document of the rebirth of a people.
British stockbroker Nicholas Winton visits Czechoslovakia in the 1930s and forms plans to assist in the rescue of Jewish children before the onset of World War II, in an operation that came to be known as the Kindertransport.
Feisty, fiercely independent and firmly rooted in place, 90 year-old Mabel Robinson broke barriers back in the 40s when she became the first woman in Hubbards, Nova Scotia, to launch her own business—a hairdressing salon where she still provides shampoo-n-sets over 70 years later. Weaving animation and archival imagery with intimate and laugh out loud moments in the salon, the film celebrates the power of friendship, doing what you love and staying active. With no desire to retire anytime soon, Mabel gives voice to a generation who are not front and center of cinema or the pop hairstyles of the day, and subtly shifts the lens on our perception of beauty and the elderly.
In the Warsaw ghetto in 1943, Jews rise against the Nazis.
Filmed 2 years before his death, this documentary portrays New Brunswick folk artist Joseph Sleep (1913-1978) in his later life. He was born at sea and worked with and around boats, fish, carnivals, and animals most of his life. While convalescing during an extended period in the Halifax infirmary in 1973, he was encouraged to paint. What began is therapy and a pastime developed into a way of representing a lifetime of images and experience
David Olusoga opens secret government files to show how the Windrush scandal and the ‘hostile environment’ for black British immigrants has been 70 years in the making.
Samuel LeBlanc, a young transgender musician, embarks on a journey with his friends through the work of Acadian musician Angèle Arsenault (1943-2014). Coming from a small village, Samuel has long questioned his queer identity and his cultural identity. Does a queer Acadie exist? This musical documentary project will explore his double minority and the journey of young people, who like him, realize that despite the difficulties there is a star for each of us.
The story of "The Tolpuddle Martyrs". A group of 19th century English farm labourers who formed one of the first trade unions and started a campaign to receive fair wages.
This docucumentary by John Brett conveys the impressions of cultural loss felt by an elderly Acadian man living on the south shore of Nova Scotia after his homestead has been deserted.
In 1944 Crimean Tatars has suffered a long road in exile. It was accompanied by famine, illness and loss. In the first years of exile, almost half of deported Crimean Tatars died. But those, who survived, dreamed of only one thing - to return to Crimea. The documentary 1944 tells about the tragedy of all Crimean Tatars through several separate life stories. They are cherished by each Crimean Tatar family and must be remembered by all generations to come.
Documentary about a "transportation commando" in Germany with the goal to deport 200 people to Albania...
The Deported follows four long term residents of the United States, each with an Order of Deportation over their head, and their families as they have to make critical decisions that will either keep their family together and separate them. Their choices are: 1. to self-deport. 2. To take sanctuary in a church. 3. To fight back legally. 4. To fall into denial and do nothing.