Online cinema
Too Dirty for a Woman
Diane Beaudry
In Labrador City, Newfoundland, women have been hired by the Iron Ore Company as truck drivers, engineers, labourers, geologists, warehouse workers, machinists, and mechanics. Living in a company town, they are pioneers in their own community. The women talk about their non-traditional jobs, their new feelings of independence, and how their families’ lives have been affected. One of the consequences is that husbands now share household chores. There are, however, obstacles to be overcome before women can apply for a job, such as the scarcity of day care facilities and a lack of public transportation. Strong visuals show women at work driving a 130-tonne truck, surveying a blast pattern for a drill, or acting as the first female foreman, alias foreperson.
L’ordinateur en tête
Diane Beaudry
Half-fiction, half-documentary, this film seeks to raise awareness among women workers and students of the challenge posed by the development of new technologies. With the advent of computers in the workplace, many jobs are likely to disappear, particularly in the office sector, where women make up nearly 80% of workers. With the aim of encouraging women and girls to redefine their career plans in the light of new technologies, the film opens the way to multiple avenues of reflection on both computers and the economic status of women.
Laila
Diane Beaudry
Laila Paattinen is a working woman. Tired of low-paying jobs, she completed a five-month course in dry-wall installation. Because she had chosen a non-traditional job for women, she ran into resistance in the marketplace. She finally solved her problems by opening her own dry-wall application business. A useful film for women seeking non-traditional jobs.
The Unbroken Line
Diane Beaudry
This is a historical survey of the office of the Canadian governor general, from its inception through the inauguration of Edward Schreyer to office. Drawing from archival photos and using live-action film footage, The Unbroken Line gives us a look at some of the governors general (and their families) who have contributed to the Canadian political system.
An Unremarkable Birth
Diane Beaudry
A growing number of parents are concerned about the impersonal approach to childbirth seen in many hospitals. They find hospital procedures inflexible and more often geared to the needs of the institution than to those of child and parent. Members of the medical profession and parents discuss today’s obstetric methods and alternatives to them. The film candidly records the birth of a baby and the interaction of mother and father.
Maud Lewis: A World Without Shadows
Diane Beaudry
Set against a background of her paintings and the Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, landscapes they depict, this short documentary is a portrait of the life and work of one of Canada’s foremost primitive painters, Maud Lewis. Emerging from her youth crippled with arthritis, Lewis escaped into her painting at the age of 30. She had never seen a work of art and had never attended an art class but her paintings captured the simple strength, beauty and happiness of the world she saw – a world without shadows.
Ballad to Cornwallis
Diane Beaudry
This short documentary offers a satirical history of Halifax, written and sung in honour of the city’s founder by balladeer James Bennet. Clad in period costumes, Bennet travels through time against a background of old photographs and paintings, archival and contemporary film footage, until he ultimately finds himself in the midst of the city’s present-day building boom.
Demain, la cinquantaine
Hélène Roy
Michèle is experiencing the emotions and upheavals inherent in the changes taking place within her during menopause. With a fresh, inward-looking perspective, she tries to come to terms with this little-known period in a woman’s life. Through her experiences as a working mother-wife “in the process of retraining”, she aspires to take charge of her own well-being. Her appropriation of the present is a guarantee for the next 30 years…
Une chambre à soi, une maison bien à nous
Hélène Roy
Documentary on women’s self-managed community centers.
Une nef… Et ses sorcières
Hélène Roy
Une nef et ses sorcières: monologue de l’ouvrière et monologue de luce, comédienne. For a year, thirteen authors and actresses worked together to stage La nef des sorcières (The Witches’ Nave), performed at the Théâtre du Nouveau-Monde in 1976. In addition to excerpts from these six monologues on the situations and contradictions experienced by the women, the video features comments from the participants in this adventure.
Souris, tu m’inquiètes
Aimée Danis
Family happiness often hinges on an unsuspected tragedy: the loss of identity of a woman who now lives only in relation to her husband and children. Faced with this “nameless malaise”, Francine, a seemingly fulfilled young woman, is forced to leave her family for a while, in an attempt to find out who she is. The film, which consists of a dramatized part to which witness sequences add the density of lived experience, sheds light on everyday existence as seen by Quebec women.
Bandes-hommages 100 ans de cinéma
Hélène Girard
For the 100th anniversary of cinema, a tribute to its creators, artists and craftsmen with this evocation of over 300 extracts from Quebec films.