
01 May 2004

Visions of Europe
Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Bureaucracy shapes our lives and guides us from the cradle to the grave. This documentary lays bare the idiosyncrasies of bureaucracy, whether in Canada, Austria, Hungary, the Vatican or the Virgin Islands. It also attempts to make the functioning of the public service more comprehensible. The absurdities of bureaucratic behaviour are exposed with humour and irreverence.

01 May 2004

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

18 May 2007

A documentary about the corrupt health care system in The United States who's main goal is to make profit even if it means losing people’s lives. "The more people you deny health insurance the more money we make" is the business model for health care providers in America.

01 Jun 2021

Severely battered from the Beirut Port Explosion on August 4th, Minerva passed away eight days later. Her son Joseph, while still grieving for his loss, sunk into a long and absurd bureaucratic path through the inept system that disowned his mother as a victim of the blast. Minerva is gone. The explosion has snatched her soul, and the city walls have not yet recognized her as a martyr. There is no poster of her smiling face among those of the victims. Their faces are memories that will haunt us for the rest of our lives. Perhaps her son, devastated by her passing, seeks to etch her image into the city's memory. Perhaps he is seeking some confession to the crime. This is a place that casts out its children, whether dead or alive.

25 Mar 2024

Successfully completed your studies - now what? Raffly already has a lucrative job offer from a large German company, but neither an apartment nor a work permit.
01 Jan 1979
Public information film regarding female safety and how to safeguard against rape

01 Jan 1969

[…] Though the highs and lows of human experience are all here, it's often the gimcrack set design and fashion chops in these vintage clunkers that really wow – the pot-holder sweater vests, ponytails decorated with yarn, hippies with crumb-catching moustaches, banana-seat bikes and a hard rain of Quaaludes and amphetamines to illustrate the dangers of drug addiction. It is hard to believe anyone would buy the goofball cause-and-effect of that pill-popper's weather pattern in "Drugs Are Like That". Co-produced by the Miami Junior League and narrated by Anita Bryant in this cheery little hand-slapper, a kid stealing cookies from a cookie jar is implied to be headed down a bad road to Bowery bum rolls and LSD parties. (from: http://clatl.com/atlanta/av-geeks-greatest-hits-lessons-learned/Content?oid=1268313)

11 Apr 2024

Leyla and her six-year-old daughter Nila live in the holy city of Mashhad in Iran. Nila is the result of a temporary marriage, which allows a man to marry a woman even if he is already married. Children born from such a relationship are legally non-existent. As long as the father does not recognize the child, no birth certificate can be issued and Nila cannot attend school. The documentary depicts Leyla's tireless efforts to clarify Nila's legal status in order to offer her a perspective for her future. In a never-ending bureaucratic battle, Leyla fights not only against the legal system, but also against a judgmental society.

01 Jan 1973

This short film looks at the importance of maintaining safe driving practices and heeding traffic rules. A traffic cop investigates a serious car crash and attempts to understand the cause.
29 Jul 1962
Made at the height of 'cold war' paranoia, this drama-documentary shows the work of the UK Warning and Monitoring Organisation, who's duties included the issuing of public warnings of any nuclear missile strike and the subsequent fallout.

27 Nov 2024

Filmmaker Gio Petti takes an in-depth look at the city's troublesome transit system in his documentary, Dude, Where's My Bus?. His nearly 2 year-long independent investigation delves into the frustrations of daily commuters in Ottawa and more deeply explores the systemic issues plaguing OC Transpo and their effects on the community. Beginning in the South End Suburbs of Ottawa, Dude, Where's My Bus? peels back layers leading to a broader investigation into issues plaguing the once model transit system. From late buses in neglected areas of the city, sprawl and the greenbelt, to the ever more controversial Confederation Line and the P3 system that built it, Petti aims to explore the impact of policy missteps and broken promises on Ottawa's transit users, with an optimistic look to the future.

11 Feb 1992

The Unofficial Dan Quayle Video is a humorous collection of Quayle’s speeches, press conferences and interviews given during his term as Vice President. See Dan Quayle on the golf course (how does he compare to other famous V.P.’s, such as Ford and Agnew?), watch him squirm as he is interviewed by grade school children, see him in action at a ceremony at NASA, examine his technique in “throwing out his garbage.” The Unofficial Dan Quayle Video will be hilarious to Democrats and Republicans alike.

01 Jan 1952

Film produced for a coalition of public service groups to combat racial and ethnic hatred. The narrative follows an emotionally insecure Chicago teenager whose bigoted thinking leads him to violence. Explores how prejudices are passed like "a contagious disease" from parent to child, teacher to pupils, and youth to youth, and suggests strategies for breaking the cycle.

23 Sep 1975

WELFARE shows the nature and complexity of the welfare system in sequences illustrating the staggering diversity of problems that constitute welfare: housing, unemployment, divorce, medical and psychiatric problems, abandoned and abused children, and the elderly. These issues are presented in a context where welfare workers as well as clients struggle to cope with and interpret the laws and regulations that govern their work and life.

01 Jul 2018

The Institute for Public Housing in Naples employs about 100 people. When the office is open to the public, employees receive residents who live in the 40,000 houses managed by the institute. Their task is to find solutions to citizens’ problems and trigger the bureaucratic procedures to solve them. But managing these chaotic lives within rigid legal structures is not an easy task and employees are often forced to resort to a singular art: “bureaucratic compromise”. (Tënk)

04 Jun 1973

JUVENILE COURT shows the complex variety of cases before the Memphis Juvenile Court: foster home placement, drug abuse, armed robbery, child abuse, and sexual offenses. The sequences illustrate such issues as community protection vs. the desire for rehabilitation, the range and the limits of the choices available to the court, the psychology of the offender, and the constitutional and procedural questions involved in administering a juvenile court.

23 Sep 2015

A Good American tells the story of the best code-breaker the USA ever had and how he and a small team within NSA created a surveillance tool that could pick up any electronic signal on earth, filter it for targets and render results in real-time while keeping the privacy as demanded by the US constitution.
01 Jan 1973
After receiving an anonymous phone call, the cops pick up a young woman who is wandering around alone in the desert. She tells them that she was given a lift by a stranger, who abandoned her there. Or are there more sides to one story? Part of a series of scare movies called Under the Law, distributed by Disney in the 1970s.

01 Jan 1967

The Inglewood Police Department's 1960s video, "LSD: Trip or Trap?" is a classic of the genre. Alex sez, "It's a story of two friends who enjoy flying model planes, except that one becomes an 'acidhead' so he can be 'groovy' with the other acidheads. The other does research into LSD and decides it's a 'bummer'."
31 Dec 1968
Experimental short film about car wreckage and automobile safety.

27 Apr 2012

Between 2007 and 2011, 725 Quebecers aged 16 to 24 were killed in car accidents. Excessive speed and alcohol were involved in half of these deaths. To try to understand what is going on in these young drivers' heads when they get behind the wheel, host and documentary filmmaker Paul Arcand met with some of them. On one hand, he gives a voice to these young people who love driving fast. On the other hand, he provides a forum for two accident victims who were injured both physically and psychologically. Finally, the director meets the mother of little Bianca Leduc, who was killed by a drunk driver while she was in the care of her babysitter, and the parents of Michael Borduas, 23, who is severely disabled from an accident.