Recent videos of interest

Cinema Politica Selections

Selected films from those shown at Concordia's Cinema Politica screenings. All Canadian-directed films from 2011 onwards should eventually be included.

• 5 broken cameras
  A deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil'in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements. Shot almost entirely by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son, the footage was later turned into a galvanizing cinematic experience by co-directors Burnat and Davidi.
• A tent on Mars | Une tente sur Mars
  Thirty years after the closing of the Schefferville's mining colony, and after taking over the town abandoned by non natives, the Innus are facing a new challenge: the reopening of the iron mines.
• Attention féministes!
  [French version with option English subtitles]. Portrait de jeunes feministes contemporaines. A une epoque ou on a declare la mort des ideologies, ces jeunes croient encore en un monde meilleur! A travers leur engagement personnel et social, nous decouvrons le nouveau visage du feminisme, celui des filles et des gars des generations X et Y. Un mouvement dynamique, un mode d’action a la fois drole, pertinent, sexy et combatif, demontrant qu'il y a encore plein de manieres de revendiquer l'egalite.
• BAS! : Beyond the red light
  13 young girls sold into Mumbai's infamous network of gated brothels confront the inner and outer perils of life after rescue. The film explores the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing these young traumatised girls through a very intimate and honest lens where they are the storytellers.
• Big boys gone bananas
  First there was a film about banana workers saying the Dole Food Company had made them infertile. Then Dole attacked the filmmakers. Now it's time for a new film! The true story about a Swedish filmmaker and a banana corporation. Dirty tricks, lawsuits, manipulation, and the price of free speech.
• Blue gold: world water wars
  Wars of the future will be fought over water, as they are today over oil, as the source of all life enters the global marketplace and political arena. Corporate giants, private investors, and corrupt governments vie for control of our dwindling fresh water supply, prompting protests, lawsuits, and revolutions from citizens fighting for the right to survive.
• Budrus
  Tells the story of a Palestinian father and daughter who united Arab and Israeli factions to create a non-violent movement and save their village from destruction by Israel's Separation Barrier
• Call Me Salma | Appelez-moi Salma
  A documentary film about love and loss. In the crowded back alleys of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Salma enters the mysterious and rich world of transexuality.
• Carbon Rush
  Incinerators burning garbage in India. Hundreds of hydroelectric dams in Panama. Biogas extracted from palm oil in Honduras. Eucalyptus forests harvested for charcoal in Brazil. What do these projects have in common? They are all receiving carbon credits for offsetting pollution created somewhere else. But what impact are these offsets having? Are they actually reducing emissions? And what about the people and the communities where these projects have been set up?
• Carts of Darkness
  In the community of North Vancouver, local bottle collectors have turned the act of binning into a thriving subculture of shopping cart racing. Murray Siple, a former snowboarder and sport film director injured in a serious car accident ten years ago, returns to filmmaking to capture their story.
• Crude Sacrifice: you can't reclaim humanity
  Looks at how the community of Fort Chipewyan in northern Alberta is affected by the exploitation of Canada's Tar Sands and how the federal and provicial governments are dealing with local concerns.
• Cultures of resistance
  In 2003, on the eve of the Iraq war, director Iara Lee embarked on a journey to better understand a world increasingly embroiled in conflict. After several years, travelling over five continents, Iara encountered growing numbers of people who committed their lives to promoting change. From Burma, where non-violent monks take on a dictatorship, to Brazil, where musicians transform guns into guitars, and myriad places in between, Cultures of Resistance celebrates the people standing up to exploitation and violence ...
• Dangerous living: coming out in the developing world
  “Explores the lives of gay and lesbian people in non-Western cultures, where most occurrences of oppression receive no media coverage at all”
• Debt Trap
  The average Canadian is shouldering a personal debt load greater than their total yearly net income. This program examines why the average Canadian is sinking deeper in debt, by looking at the stories of several individuals and families who are struggling with: credit card debt, mortgage debt, and repayment of lines of credit, student loans, and payday loans. Looks beyond blaming individual consumers, to examine the roles of lending institutions, the corporate sector, and governments in understanding the current ...
• Diamond Road
  A documentary following the path of diamonds, both geographically and historically. Details the widespread and complex interrelationship of trade and effort involving the diamond industry, from impovershed day-laborers in Sierra Leone, to craftsmen in India, to dealers, jewelers and gemologists in New York City, all attended by the marketing and sales strategies that have made the diamond trade what it is today.
• Dream Listener | Porteur de rêves | Portador de sueños
  'I wrote my dream on cardboard, went out into the street and held the cardboard dream in front of me. At the end of the day I abandoned the cardboard dream. Over the year one hundred and ninety-four dreams were written on cardboard and shared this way...' A Montreal artist explores issues of homelessness through dreams on the street.
• Earth Keepers
  Mikael Rioux, a young activist committed to the environment and worried about the legacy he will leave to his son, travels the world on a quest for concrete solutions to the problems faced by our planet. He meets the exceptional men and women behind innovative projects for the future of society.
• END:CIV - Resist or Die
  Examines our culture's addiction to systematic violence and environmental exploitation, and probes the resulting epidemic of poisoned landscapes and shell-shocked nations. Based in part on Endgame, the best-selling book by Derrick Jensen, END:CIV asks: 'If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?'
• Ghosts
  Three Arab-Canadian men are detained and tortured for months and years in Syria and Egypt. Upon their release they return to Canada struggling to find some answers as to why they were detained and tortured. An internal inquiry into their cases, the Iacobucci Inquiry, reveals that the Canadian government was complicit in their detention and torture. The camera team follows the lives and cases of the men for a year and a half as the men fight to leave the horror of torture behind them.
• Girls Rock!
  At RocknRoll Camp, girls ranging in age from eight to 18 are taught that it's OK to sweat like a pig, scream like a banshee, wail on their instruments with complete and utter abandon, and that 'it is 100% okay to be exactly who you are'.
• Herman's house
  Herman Wallace has spent 40 years imprisoned in solitary confinement in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell for a crime many believe he never committed. The injustice of solitary confinement and the transformative power of art are explored.
• How does it feel?
  Like many people, Kazumi was daunted by the idea of singing in public. But at 58, he has decided to use his awe-inspiring singing voice to channel his cerebral palsy (CP). As Kazumi draws from his exuberant, poignant and painful experiences, performer and teacher Fides Krucker guides him to embrace his inner artist. Kazumi's one-man show features songs like Smokey Robinson's 'Tracks of My Tears,' which take on new and unexpected meaning in this moving account of self-discovery and transformation through the ...
• Iron Ladies of Liberia
  Chronicles the historic first year in office of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first elected female head of state in Africa.
• Kiviaq versus Canada
  Zacharias Kunuk travels to Edmonton to meet Kiviaq, Canada's first Inuit lawyer, former Golden Gloves boxing champion, city alderman, and the only Inuk to play with the Edmonton Eskimos football team. Kiviaq is currently suing the federal government of Canada with a claim demanding equal rights for Inuit, whom, he argues, are neither defined in law nor granted the same privileges as other aboriginal people.
• L'affaire Coca-Cola = The Coca-Cola case
  Colombia is the trade union murder capital of the world. Since 2002, more than 470 workers' leaders have been brutally killed, usually by paramilitaries hired by private companies intent on crushing the unions. Among these unscrupulous corporate brands is the poster boy for American business: Coca-Cola. A searing indictment of a major corporate brand, The Coca-Cola Case takes us on a riveting legal game of cat and mouse via the U.S. federal court and the Stop Killer Coke! campaign.
• L'art en action | Art in action
  French version with English subtitles. A documentary about the Socially Acceptable Acts of Terrorism from a Montreal artist collective.
• Living downstream
  Follows Sandra Steingrabe during one pivotal year as she travels across North America, working to break the silence about cancer and its environmental links. But Sandra is not the only one who is on a journey - the chemicals against which she is fighting are also on the move. At once Sandra's personal journey and her scientific exploration, Living Downstream is a powerful reminder of the intimate connection between the health of our bodies and the health of our air, land , and water.
• Malls r us
  Combining nostalgia, dazzling architecture, pop culture, economics and politics, 'Malls r us' examines North America's most popular and profitable suburban destination-- the enclosed shopping center-- and how for consumers they function as a communal, even ceremonial experience and, for retailers, sites where their idealism, passion, and greed merge.
• Petropolis
  The Athabasca tar sands in Alberta are an oil reserve the size of England. Extracting crude oil that lies beneath the unspoiled wilderness requires a massive industrialized effort, effecting catastrophic damages on land, air, water, and climate. Peter Mettler shows us this extraordinary view from above, filming primarily from a helicopter to capture this breathtaking, unparalleled view of the world's largest industrial, capital and energy project.
• Pink Ribbons
  Breast cancer has become the poster child of cause-related marketing campaigns. Countless people walk, run and shop for the cure. Each year, millions of dollars are raised in the name of breast cancer, but where does this money go and what does it actually achieve? Pink Ribbons, Inc. is a feature documentary that shows how the devastating reality of breast cancer, which marketing experts have labelled a 'dream cause,' has become obscured by a shiny, pink story of success.
• Portrait of resistance: the art and activism of Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge
  Recognized internationally as pioneering artist-activists, Condé and Beveridge's creative collaboration spans four decades: from their rejection of market-driven New York art scene in the 1970’s, through their return to Canada, and the evolution of their innovative community-based art practice. [This film] illuminates the alternative path they took, and intimately captures the artists as they create provocative staged photographs — about the environment, the rights of workers and the current global financial ...
• Scarlet road
  "Impassioned about freedom of sexual expression, Australian sex worker Rachel Wotton specializes in a long overlooked clientele— people with disabilities. ..Rachel’s philosophy is that human touch and sexual intimacy can be the most therapeutic aspects to our existence." Also available as a DVD: https://concordiauniversity.on.worldcat.org/oclc/783787692 [for a film with a different lens on a similar topic, see also Want: https://concordiauniversity.on.worldcat.org/oclc/706443158]
• Seeking the Current | Chercher le courant
  A “road movie” on a river. Nicolas Boisclair and Alexis de Gheldere canoe the entire 500 km course of the pristine Romaine River before Hydro-Québec begins construction of four hydroelectric plants. In parallel, accompanied by actor Roy Dupuis, they explore various renewable green energies and their profitability by interviewing experts across Québec. French with English subtitles
• Sex Slaves
  Explores the multi-billion dollar world of sex trafficking. Goes to the villages of Ukraine and Moldova, where girls are lured and then sold and forced into prostitution in brothels and discotheques all over Europe. Follows Viorel, a Ukrainian man, on a mission to find his pregnant, trafficked wife in Turkey. The film explores the global trafficking problem through personal stories and unfettered access to traffickers and the people used as human chattel.
• Sisters in law
  Kim Longinotto production. A documentary record of a courtroom in Kumba, Cameroon, where a female prosecutor and judge work to put an end to their community's tacit acceptance of child abuse, wife beating and rape.
• Status Quo? The Unfinished Business of Feminism in Canada
  [Streaming film via NFB Campus. To access from outside the Concordia network, first register at nfb.ca/campus/go. Ignore the billing/price information; find and select Concordia University, Montreal, QC as your institution.] Feminism has shaped the society we live in. But just how far has it brought us, and how relevant is it today? This feature documentary zeroes in on key concerns such as violence against women, access to abortion, and universal childcare, asking how much progress we have truly made on these ...
• Tales from the G20
  In June 2010, leaders from the twenty largest economies met in Toronto with representatives of corporate interests to discuss the policies that would shape the world for everyone else.This documentary traces the overt breakdown in civil liberties that occurred during the G20 Summit, from unmarked vans with snatch squads of plainclothes police to the pre-emptive arrest of activists now facing years in prison for organizing demonstrations. Directed by Open Media Initiative and uploaded to Vimeo for free viewing ...
• The Big Wait: A Film About The Doctor Shortage in Canada
  The doctor shortage is getting critical and one town is desperately trying to recruit physicians. At the same time, three internationally trained doctors are trying to get licensed to practice medicine in their new country.
• The end of immigration? / La fin de l'immigration
  DVD only. Montreal filmmakers look at the regressive immigration policies of the Canadian state and the people most affected.
• The experimental Eskimos
  Documents an extraordinary attempt at social engineering. The film follows Peter Ittinuar, Zebedee Nungak and Eric Tagoona, who, as 12-year-old boys, were shipped South in the early 1960s from their homes in the Canadian Arctic to attend public schools in Ottawa. All three went on to become activists and leaders, paving the way for aboriginal rights in Canada and around the world.
• The Frog Princes
  A Concodia theatre troupe is working tirelessly to put on a play. The challenges they face are a part of the usual drama behind any live show. There’s the backstage politics, the forgotten lines, the missed cues, the romances and the rivalries. But for this troupe, the stakes are a bit higher – each cast member faces intellectual, developmental and mental health disabilities.
• The hole story: June 1, 2011
  The history of mining in Canada is the story of astronomical profits made with disregard for the environment and human health. Using striking images, rare archival footage, interviews and their trademark humorous social commentary, the directors make a clear case against the way mining has been done in Canada. French version: https://concordiauniversity.on.worldcat.org/oclc/805656615
• The light bulb conspiracy: the untold story of planned obsolescence
  Traces the untold story of Planned Obsolescence, the deliberate shortening of product life spans to guarantee consumer demand, from its beginnings in the 1920s.
• The price of sex
  This inquiry into a dark side of immigration reveals the experiences of Eastern European women forced into prostitution abroad. Mimi Chakarova traveled from post-communist Eastern Europe to Turkey, Greece, and Dubai to uncover the harrowing personal accounts of women trafficked into modern-day sexual slavery.
• The Pruitt-Igoe myth
  Destroyed in a dramatic and highly publicized implosion, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex has become a widespread symbol of failure among architects, politicians and policy makers. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth explores the social, economic and legislative issues that led to the decline of conventional public housing in America, and the city centers in which the projects resided, while tracing personal and poignant narratives of those who lived in them.
• The Regretters
  Regretters gives heartfelt voice to two transgendered people who underwent sex change surgery to become women. Now, years later, they would like to return to their original, masculine selves. Through their experiences we learn how very complicated gender identity is; morphing from one gender to another is not accomplished solely by sexual reassignment surgery.
• Under Rich Earth
  In the remote mountain valley in Ecuador, farmers face eviction from their land to make way for a massive mining project. As the company's men move deeper into the valley, the tension between the mineros and the opposition reaches a breaking point. Abandoned by the police and ignored by their government, the farmers prepare to stand down the invaders on their own. Their resistance leads to a remarkable and historic confrontation with a band of mysterious armed men hiding in the cloud forest. In Spanish with ...
• United States of Africa
  African hip hop pioneer Didier Awadi is on a quest to craft an album that pays tribute to the great black revolutionary leaders and their struggle to realize a dream: a united, independent Africa. In this epic musical and political journey, Awadi visits some 40 countries to collaborate with hip hop activist artists, including Smockey (Burkina Faso), M-1 of Dead Prez (United States) and ZuluBoy (South Africa).
• Water on the table
  Water on the Table features Maude Barlow, considered 'an international water warrior' for her crusade to have water declared a human right... [The film] presents several dramatic opposing arguments. Barlow's critics are policy and economic experts who argue that water is no different than any other resource, and that the best way to protect freshwater is to privatize it.
• Where the water meets the sky
  A group of women in a remote region of northern Zambia learn how to make a film, as a way to speak out about their lives and to challenge the local traditions which have, until now, kept them silent.
• Where the water meets the sky
  A group of women in a remote region of northern Zambia learn how to make a film, as a way to speak out about their lives and to challenge the local traditions which have, until now, kept them silent... [Their film] involves an issue that is traumatic for them all, and rarely spoken about: the plight of young women orphaned by AIDS.
• Wiebo's War
  Wiebo's War tells the story of a man's epic battle with the oil and gas industry and asks provocative questions about an individual's civil liberties.
• Women Art Revolution [W.A.R]
  History of the feminist art movement in the late 20th century, including interviews with many of the participants
• You are on Indian land
  Originally produced in 1969. Documents the demonstration of Mohawk Indians, living in Canada, as they protest payment of import duties on personal purchases made in the United States, claiming exemption under the provisions of the Jay Treaty of 1794.
• ¡¿Revolución!?
  A political documentary examining the concept of revolution as created by Hugo Chavez. Using Don Quixote as his inspiration, Chavez is redefining Venezualan society with his 'Bolivian Revolution'. The documentary asks if there are a series of guidelines for a democratic and peaceful revolution. To answer the question, filmmaker, Gervais, interviews pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez militants, politicians and citizens within and without the barrios of Venezuala's cities. Note that this film CAN be used for classroom ...