Recent videos of interest

Crime & Justice

• A history of punishment
  This program looks at the history of punishment, beginning with early compensatory forms of justice, Hammurabi's Code, and the Law of Moses. Contemporary forms of punishment, including the death penalty, are discussed, along with the ways in which these sentences reflect what society values.
• A Question of Madness: The Furiosus
  A documentary on the life of assassin Dimitri Tsafendas, the man who changed the course of South African history.
• Bhopal: the search for justice
  “This documentary explores the continuing cover-up, analyzes the prospect for environmental and human justice in Bhopal, and exposes the responsibility of the multinational corporations”
• Courting justice
  Illustrates how the constitution in post-apartheid South Africa partially lived up to its goals of promoting justice and human rights. Essential to keeping these promises, indeed mandated by the constitution, is a judiciary that includes women. By 2008, 18 percent of the superior court judges were women. This film is their story.
• Cruel and unusual: transgender women in prison
  A documentary about transgender women convicted and incarcerated in men's prisons in the United States. Interviews with lawyers and prison custodians reveal the level of violence these women have to face from the inmates, as well as from the authorities which do not recognize their condition as a medical disorder.Special features: 'Sexual violence in prison for transgender women' (5 min.); 'Protective custody' (3 min.); 'Hormone therapy' (5 min.); 'Family issues' (4 min.); 'Legal cases: Ophelia' (5 min); 'Legal ...
• Flipping the world: drugs through a blue lens
  An honest look at the world of youth and drug addiction as told by those who have been there. Seven culturally diverse high school students meet with members of the Odd Squad – Vancouver police officers who, since 1998, have been filming people addicted to drugs.
• 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.
• 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.
• In the name of the family: honour killings in North America
  DVD only. Award-winning director Shelley Saywell brings her consummate documentary skills and passion for human rights to challenge the traditions that lie behind the heartbreaking tragedies committed against young girls caught between two cultures in North America.
• Invoking justice
  In Southern India, family disputes are settled by Jamaats, all male bodies which apply Islamic Sharia law to cases without allowing women to be present, even to defend themselves. Recognizing this fundamental inequity, a group of women in 2004 established a women's Jamaat, which soon became a network of 12,000 members spread over 12 districts. Despite enormous resistance, they have been able to settle more than 8,000 cases to date, ranging from divorce to wife beating to brutal murders and more.
• 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.
• Le jeu de la mort | Game of death
  Back in the 60s, Stanley Milgram's scientific experiment demonstrated that a large majority of people were ready to administer unbearable electric shocks to another man when encouraged to do so by an authority. The experiment is re-enacted in the form of a TV game show, where 80 participants are asked to follow its despicable rules, despite the candidate's strong yelling complaints. Will they obey the TV host's orders and inflict massive electric shocks? Or will they stop before it's too late? (see also: Obedience ...
• Rape for who I am
  'Interweaves the experiences of four [South African lesbian] women, victims of rape, as they prepare for an annual Gay Pride celebration. With courage and a remarkable resilience, they describe the immense prejudices they have had to endure in their townships.'
• Rize
  A documentary portrayal of inner city youth in Los Angeles, Calif. who though surrounded by drug addiction, gangs and impoverishment, have developed a unique style of dance that evolves on a daily basis.
• Sin by silence
  From behind prison walls, the film reveals the lives of extraordinary women who advocated for a future free from domestic violence. Inside California's oldest women's prison, the first inmate-initiated and led group in the U.S. prison system was created by inmate Brenda Clubine to help abused women speak out and realize they are not alone.
• 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.
• Staying alive: [Canada's controversial safe injection site]
  'Insite', located in Vancouver's notorious downtown eastside, has been controversial since it first opened its doors in 2003. An exemption from federal drug laws was granted to allow addicts to bring their drugs onto the premises and inject them; Insite provides clean needles and medical supervision.
• The grey area: feminism behind bars
  Through a series of class discussions, headed by students from Grinnell College, a small group of female inmates at a maximum security women's prison in Mitchellville, Iowa, share their diverse experiences with motherhood, drug, addiction, sexual abuse, murder, and life in prison.
• The reckoning: the battle for the International Criminal Court
  Rome Conference of 1998 was the culmination of 50 years of effort by the part of those seeking a humane world. Representatives from 140 governments and numerous NGOs were at the conference to establish the International Criminal Court (the ICC).
• Toilet training: law and order (in the bathroom)
  Addresses the persistent discrimination, harassment, and violence that people who transgress gender norms face in gender segregated bathrooms. Using the stories of people who have been harassed, arrested or beaten for trying to use bathrooms, this groundbreaking film focuses on bathroom access in public space, in schools, and at work.
• Turning away
  Turning Away is not another 'day in the life of a street kid'. Instead, it is a thorough examination of why young people end up on the street, what keeps them there and what it takes to escape. We follow the subjects over time and we will see how they deal with what most people would consider the simplest challenges.
• Two spirits
  Fred Martinez was a [young] nádleehí, or a male-bodied person with a feminine essence, who was murdered in a hate crime at the age of sixteen. Discusses the traditional Native American perspective on gender and sexuality and the need for a balanced interrelationship between the feminine and masculine.
• Where we were not. Part one : feeling reserved, Alexus' story
  Alexus' Story is the first part of a four part animated documentary about criminalization in Canada. Where We Were Not is being made in collaboration with a group of women Jessica has worked with, and formed friendships with while creating art projects in prisons and centres for marginalized people. Narrated by an abolitionist activist, a First Nations transgendered woman, and two women serving life sentences, this project gives a first hand account of the Canadian injustice system.