Other films on this theme
Histoire à suivre…
Diane Beaudry
This feature-length documentary reflects on the journey of women in politics. Since women were granted the right to vote and stand for election in 1940, only around forty of them at most have managed to take their seats in the National Assembly in Quebec City. Filmed during the campaign for the presidency of the Parti québécois in the fall of 1985, Histoire à suivre… (History to be followed…) features interviews with several of these women politicians, including Pauline Marois, Louise Harel and Lise Payette.
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.
Fuir
Hélène Girard
Two approaches, one fictional, the other documentary, allow us to feel the moments of intense distress that precede suicide. The film tries to make us understand suicide as a cry for help.
La p’tite violence
Hélène Girard
Through encounters with workers from a wide range of trades and professions, this film goes beyond statistics and analyses of all kinds to take stock of the role and place of work in human fulfillment. Whether it’s an acquired right, a social necessity or a cause of alienation, how much choice do we really have when it comes to work.
Les filles c’est pas pareil
Hélène Girard
In this documentary, six teenage girls aged 14 to 16 agree to open up, to have their intimate world invaded by the camera. They are confronted with problems they intend to take on “all the way”: early experience of sexuality, belonging to a gang, relations with parents, social tolerance, friendship… They live tenderly and purely in their own way.
Nina
Halima Elkhatabi
At 16 years old, Nina is helpless with regards to her 4-month-old baby Jessie’s incessant crying. Without any escape from the cries and from this new presence is her life, she ventures out from her tiny apartment in a working-class neighbourhood of Montréal for a brief escapade.
La tête contre le mur
Halima Elkhatabi
Their names are Lucia, Sergio, Michaela, Yael or Tamar. They are Israelis. But they also share a common dream: to see an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories by Israeli forces. In front of Halima Elkhatabi’s camera, in the shadow of the West Bank separation wall, these dissident Israelis recount the real and symbolic violence they suffer every day. But they also reveal the collaboration between Israelis and Palestinians, and the determination that drives their unarmed struggle. Filled with hope, Head Against the Wall offers a unique perspective on the situation, far removed from the sensationalist images we are fed. Simply to believe that change is still possible.
Demain peut-être
Halima Elkhatabi
Musings in time and space as the life of a loved one slowly ebbs away. Mourning song for a deceased father. The filmmaker invents the softly inspired words and images of a mourning poem in search of serenity.
Cohabiter
Halima Elkhatabi
In a series of captivating encounters, several young people try to find the ideal roommate, that rare gem with whom they can share their space, and their values. A complex and engaging picture of a generation accustomed to playing all their identity cards, Living Together maps a mosaic of cultures and ideas, with explorations of community, individualism and the right to housing in constant interplay.
Beyond Ceilings – Women In Tech
Maïlis
Through a young girl’s journey, the film portrays the societal constraints that limit women’s ambitions and achievements, unlike men who are often told from an early age that the sky is the limit. “Beyond Ceilings” calls for confronting and challenging the glass ceiling, reminding us of the vast possibilities that await when these barriers are overcome.
Dounia: Le grand pays blanc
Marya Zarif
After Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo, the adventures of Dounia, a little starry-haired girl, continue in her adopted country: Canada. Surrounded by her grandparents and her friend Rosalie, she faces new challenges: the bitter cold of winter and a new, hitherto unknown culture. More than ever, Dounia is convinced that her heartbeat will guide her father’s return…
Born in the Maelstrom
Meryam Joobeur
Born in the Maelstrom is an impressionistic journey of a young biracial woman named Rebecca as she struggles to find her identity in a world shaped by her black mother’s painful past.
Gods, Weeds and Revolutions
Meryam Joobeur
A young woman returns to Tunisia and must come to terms with her grandfather’s illness and the country’s dark past under dictatorship.