Here is a selection of new and updated titles inlcuding more from the National Film Board of Canada
A day in June / National Film Board of Canada. Parade and fanfare in memory of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, the patron saint of Québec. The candid camera captures the flavor of Montrealers participating in a public festivity dear to their hearts.
A drop in the oceanv / directed by Lise Éthier ; produced by Yves Bisaillon ; production agency: National Film Board of Canada (Montreal). When Doctors without Borders, the humanitarian medical aid agency, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, Dr. Claudette Picard was in Liberia. Her first mission with the agency had begun in this small country of West Africa six years before. This is where we follow Dr. Picard on her rounds. With her halting English, her comforting presence and a few scarce drugs, she sometimes manages to do the impossible. But not always.
Age of innocence / David C. Bellusci. TWU AUTHOR The collection of poems, Age of Innocence, starts off with childhood where the child is shielded from the world. The encounter with nature opens the path to metaphysical reflection while relations undergo re-analysis, reassurance, and rejection. Cultures may surprise and delight, but also confuse and disturb. Innocence is progressively shattered as one discovers poverty, loneliness, and discrimination. The adult becomes the innocent ‘patient.’ Fragmented, the person blurs reality and illusion and seeks healing.
Beyond succession planning: new ways to develop talent / Lori J. Spina, James D. Spina. James and Lori Spina illustrate how a strategic system aligns workplace transitions with the organizational vision, mission, and top level strategies to meet the needs of all stakeholders. Providing a road map for how to carry this out, they propose a cutting edge leadership style to complement this strategic approach.
Blood red road / Moira Young. In a distant future, eighteen-year-old Lugh is kidnapped, and while his twin sisters Saba and nine-year-old Emmi are trailing him across bleak Sandsea, they are captured too, and taken to brutal Hopetown, where Saba is forced to be a cage fighter until new friends help plan an escape.
Dead man’s switch / Sigmund Brouwer. On a remote island in Washington’s Puget Sound that houses a federal prison where his father works, high school senior King sets out alone to unravel a dark conspiracy after receiving a “fail safe” email from his best friend who drowned in a boating accident two weeks earlier.
Death by moonlight: Bomber Command / directed by Brian McKenna ; produced by Arnie Gelbart, André Lamy, Adam Symansky, Darce Fardy, D’Arcy O’Connor From the outset of the Second World War, it had been clear to Britain that air superiority would be the decisive factor in the battle against Hitler’s Germany. At airbases all over England and in the skies over Europe, more than 50,000 Canadian airmen served in the campaign to bomb Germany. Ordered to drop their payloads on a remote and faceless enemy below, the airmen of Bomber Command had a thankless job. For those who survived, the sheer terror and sense of helplessness left an indelible scar.
Democracy on trial: the Morgentaler affair / National Film Board of Canada. Paul Cowan’s film captures the spirit of the legal battle over abortion waged by Dr. Henry Morgentaler in Quebec and in federal courts between 1970 and 1976. Using a combination of newsreel footage, interviews and re-enactments, this docudrama unravels the complexities of the case that began as a challenge to Canada’s abortion laws and turned into a precedent-setting civil rights case.
Dialogue(s) / National Film Board of Canada. Air force pilots, a heavy metal band and two fans of modified cars are the unlikely focus of a deadpan film essay on language. Through a clever, unpredictable edit, Philippe David Gagné takes great delight in revealing the strange ways that men communicate.
Discussions in bioethics: a chronic problem / directed by Cynthia Scott ; produced by Wolf Koenig, Andy Thomson ; production agency: National Film Board of Canada (Montreal). One of a series of short, open-ended dramas designed to stimulate discussion of values and ethics in relation to modern medical technology. This film considers the chronic patient’s right to quality care, and the acutely ill patient’s right to a hospital bed.
Dreams of a land / National Film Board of Canada. Based on the journals of Samuel de Champlain, film animator Robert Doucet used colored-pencil drawings to create this tribute to the explorer’s vision.
E. Noël Spinelli: sharing the magic of music / directed by Bobbi Jo Hart ; produced by René Chénier, René Chénier ; production agency: National Film Board of Canada (Montreal). The son of a humble Italian immigrant, Spinelli has dedicated most of his life to making music accessible to his blue-collar community of Lachine, Quebec. This short film offers a poignant emotional journey into his deep love of opera and Puccini, quietly revealing what music has given to Mr. Spinelli, and why he is so passionately committed to sharing its magical gifts.
Jesus and the feminists: who do they say that he is? / Margaret E. Köstenberger. This resource provides a detailed survey and critique of various feminist interpretations of Jesus and offers a biblical view of men and women in the church and home.
Kabuki costume / Ruth M. Shaver ; illustrations by Sōma Akira and Ōta Gakō.
Son of a trickster / Eden Robinson. Set in Kitimat, British Columbia, this story follows a teenage boy as he wades through the complications of a broken family, social pressure, drugs, alcohol and poverty, and discovers the Haisla trickster Wee’jit.
The alchemy of us: how humans and matter transformed one another / Ainissa Ramirez. In The Alchemy of Us, scientist and science writer Ramirez examines eight inventions-clocks, steel rails, copper communication cables, photographic film, light bulbs, hard disks, scientific labware, and silicon chips-and reveals how they shaped the human experience. Ramirez tells the stories of the woman who sold time, the inventor who inspired Edison, and the hotheaded undertaker whose invention pointed the way to the computer. She describes, among other things, how our pursuit of precision in timepieces changed how we sleep; how the railroad helped commercialize Christmas; how the necessary brevity of the telegram influenced Hemingway’s writing style; and how a young chemist exposed the use of Polaroid’s cameras to create passbooks to track black citizens in apartheid South Africa. Filling in the gaps left by other books about technology, Ramirez showcases little-known inventors-particularly people of color and women-who had a significant impact but whose accomplishments have been hidden by mythmaking, bias, and convention.
The days of Whiskey Gap / National Film Board of Canada. In 1873, the North-West Mounted Police were established to maintain law and order in the newly acquired North-West Territories. The following summer a courageous expedition trekked 800 miles from Fort Dufferin, south of Winnipeg, to Fort Whoopup, near present-day Lethbridge. The force raised the flag and proclaimed the Queen’s law, ensuring that the Canadian West would not become a lawless American-style frontier. This film brings to life some of the legends of the men in the scarlet tunics.
The devil’s toy / National Film Board of Canada. It was frowned upon by the constabulary and disapproving adults, but the skateboard gave the youngsters who mastered its technique a thrilling sensation of speed unexcelled by any other pavement sport. Filmed in 1966 on Montréal streets before the elongated roller skate was banned, this film captures the exuberance of boys and girls having the time of their lives in free-wheeling downhill locomotion.
The devil’s toy redux Lyon / directed by Fred Mortagne ; produced by Hugues Sweeney ; production agency: National Film Board of Canada (Montreal). Exhaustive list of Flo Mirtain’s tricks on the ledge: backside tailslides, backside smithgrinds, backside lipslide and even a backside backside.
The dig / directed by David Curnick ; produced by George Johnson, Barbara Janes ; production agency: National Film Board of Canada (Montreal). A short documentary that profiles an exceptional teacher, Richard Edwardson of Surrey, British Columbia. Each year “Mr. Ed” takes his grade 7 Harold Bishop School class on a three-day archeological dig. Artifacts and sites are prepared beforehand by Mr. Ed and ex-students who return year after year to participate. Along with the preparatory and post-dig classes and workshops, this teaching program is extremely successful from a number of points of view.
The dispossessed / directed by Mathieu Roy ; produced by Lucie Tremblay, Colette Loumède, Gabriela Bussmann, Vadim Jendreyko ; production agencies: Lowik Media inc. (Montreal), The Dispossessed is an impressionist journey that sheds light on the daily strife of the world’s hungry farming class. Part cinema-vérité, part essay, our film examines the mechanisms by which farmers are falling into a somber cycle of despair, debt and dispossession. Shot in India, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Switzerland, Brazil and Canada, The Dispossessed is carried by stunning cinematography and fascinating interviews and follows the peasantry’s migration from their farmlands to the dystopian megapolis’ construction lands.
Vocabulary: applied linguistic perspectives / Ronald Carter. Carter updates progress in key areas of language description and applied linguistics. It includes updated chapters on: vocabulary and language teaching; dictionaries and lexicography; and the literary study of vocabulary. Also included is additional material on the relationship between vocabulary, grammar and discourse and the implications of new insights into vocabulary for the study of speech and writing in English.
Saturday June 26 marks the 200th anniversary of the invention of the Ellacombe apparatus for playing chimes. The TWU chime joins over 135 chimes in churches, schools and other locations in 
This film, like its predecessor, deals with the constitutional negotiations with Canada’s Native peoples. It documents the fourth and final meeting between Canada’s Native leaders and the first ministers. Intercut between the speeches and debates of the conference are images and portraits of various Native people, highlighting the crucial importance this meeting has for their struggle for self-government.
You must be logged in to post a comment.