Dino Giancola

“Bhairava” evokes facets of Shiva, the Lord of Dance, as both the destroyer of evil and the guardian of time. He is fierce and drives terrible deeds, but he is also the Divine Protector and Supreme Guardian; his intention springs from pure compassion. In this work, carried by a strong and deeply evocative musical score and by the singular energy of the ancient site of Hampi, dancer and choreographer Shantala Shivalingappa embodies the presence and distinctive qualities of Bhairava. With her technical mastery and refined expressivity, she alternates between moments of precise symbolic gestures and more abstract body language surging from the powerful and omnipresent persona of Bhairava, creating a vivid incarnation of the deity.

Set on a tropical island in Thailand, the strange plight of a beleaguered chef who, while romancing a mysterious woman, discovers the diabolical Zen of cooking. Following a near death escape, he returns to Montreal and falls hard for the woman of his life who unfortunately craves only his cooking but not his loving. Worse still, strange things surfacing around him indicate that his journey to the Far East has deep, divine implications. The stage is set for him to take the 1st bite of true love and end the cycle of suffering for all involved.

Books are everywhere in Meena's house - in cupboards, drawers, and even piled up the stairs! Her parents love to read, but Meena never even opens a book! When her cat Max accidentally knocks down a huge stack of books, heroes, heroines, and animals with attitude come to life and pandemonium reigns. Meena finds a unique solution to get the characters back in the books, and nothing, as they say, is the same after that. Based on the story by Manjusha Pawagi. The Girl Who Hated Books is part of the NFB's Talespinners 2 collection.

Everyone is familiar with certain types of Aboriginal architecture. Traditional igloos and tepees are two of the most enduring symbols of North America itself. But how much do we really know about the types of structures Native Peoples designed, engineered and built? For more than three hundred years, Native communities in North America have had virtually no indigenous architecture. Communities have made do with low-cost government housing and community projects designed by strangers in far away places.

Filmmaker Karen Cho travels from Montreal to Vancouver to uncover stories from the last survivors of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act, a set of laws imposed to single out the Chinese as unwanted immigrants to Canada from 1885 to 1947. Through a combination of history, poetry and raw emotion, this documentary sheds light on an era that shaped the identity of generations.

This documentary focuses on the goose hunt, a ritual of central importance to the Cree people of the James Bay coastal areas. Not only a source of food, the hunt is also used to transfer Cree culture, skills, and ethics to future generations. Filmmaker Paul M. Rickard invites us along with his own family on a fall goose hunt, so that we can share in the experience.

In this feature-length documentary, three generations of the Caribou Inuit family come together to tell the story of their journey as Canada's last nomads. From the independent life of hunting on the Keewatin tundra to taking the reins of the new territory of Nunavut on April 1, 1999, we see it all. The film is the result of a close collaboration between Ole Gjerstad, a southern Canadian, and Martin Kreelak, an Inuk. It's Martin's family that we follow, as the story is told through his own voice, through those of the Elders, and through those of the teens and young adults who were born in the settlements and form the first generation of those growing up with satellite TV and a permanent home.