Susan Trow

With quiet intelligence and wry humour, retired documentary filmmaker Kathleen Shannon takes us through the arc of her life and career. Beginning with childhood, moving through her formative years, to her overwhelming desire to give women a chance to tell their stories, this film paints a vibrant portrait of one woman who blazed the way. It's a story of struggle, persistence, and success… and of course, of the NFB's Studio D.

Black and white drawings blended with photographic images depict an old man, with various tiny gadgets, trying to find the anatomy of the wings of an angel.

This documentary profiles economist and writer Marilyn Waring. In extensive interviews, Waring details her feminist approach to finances and challenges commonly accepted truths about the global economy. The filmmakers detail Waring's early rise to political prominence and her successful protests against nuclear arms. Waring also speaks candidly about wartime economies, suggesting that government policies tend to marginalize the fiscal contributions of women.

Authors, teachers, social activists and feminists explore manifestations of contemporary women's spirituality in the Western world.

This documentary features Black women active in politics as well as community, labour and feminist organizing. They share their insights and personal testimonies on the double legacy of racism and sexism, linking their personal struggles with the ongoing battle to end systemic discrimination and violence against women and people of colour.

Walker is a young Aboriginal foster child whose only playmate is his dog. Jamie is a lonely young white boy who is afraid of dogs, and has some strange ideas about Aboriginal people. Walker ignores the racist jeering and taunting of the bigger boys and reaches out to Jamie. Together, they find friendship and understanding. Walker challenges racist attitudes toward Aboriginal people, and shows how children from different backgrounds can form friendships. This film is part of the Playing Fair series.

Goddess Remembered is a salute to 35,000 years of "pre-history," to the values of ancestors only recently remembered and to the goddess-worshipping religions of the ancient past. This documentary features Merlin Stone, Carol Christ, Luisah Teish, Starhawk, Charlene Spretnak and Jean Bolen, who link the loss of goddess-centered societies with today's environmental crisis.

This historical drama tells the story of Qin Shihuang, who unified China’s vast territory and declared himself emperor in 221 B.C. During his reign, he introduced sweeping reforms, built a vast network of roads and connected the Great Wall of China. From the grandiose inner sanctum of Emperor Qin's royal palace, to fierce battles with feudal kings, this film re-creates the glory and the terror of the Qin Dynasty, including footage of Qin's life-sized terra cotta army, constructed 2,200 years ago for his tomb.

Brooks is an eccentric rich kid, with a fondness for big band music, bow ties taking strange photographs who one day whilst stealing a mannequin from a clothes store, meets Anne, a free-spirited, young deaf girl who works in the shop. It's a meeting that will transform his life. As their friendship blossoms he starts to learn sign-language and she helps him to conquer his fear of water but with a bullying brother, insensitive overbearing father and his father's peculiar new girlfriend all pressurising him to be 'normal' will Brooks be able to break free from their boundaries and his own fears and limitations to find the meaning of true and selfless love.

Seen through the eyes of the filmmaker, a child of concentration camp survivors, this program explores the impact of the Holocaust on a generation of Jews and Germans born after World War II. Includes interviews in Canada, Israel, and Germany with the children of survivors, with young neo-Nazis, and with the children of former Nazis.

One of a series of short, open-ended dramas designed to stimulate discussion of values and ethics in relation to modern medical technology. This film considers the chronic patient's right to quality care, and the acutely ill patient's right to a hospital bed. Jean is suffering from multiple sclerosis and is almost completely paralyzed. It seems that the only ones who care about her are the nurses. With the arrival of a patient in need of an operation, it becomes apparent that chronic patients have little priority.

Women have always sought ways to terminate unwanted pregnancies, despite powerful patriarchal structures and systems working against them. This film provides a historical overview of how church, state and the medical establishment have determined policies concerning abortion. From this cross-cultural survey--filmed in Ireland, Japan, Thailand, Peru, Colombia, and Canada--emerges one reality: only a small percentage of the world's women has access to safe, legal operations.

The history of nuns mirrors the history of all women -- in what we are taught about the past, women are almost invisible. Although today's one million nuns outnumber priests two to one, they must struggle to be heard by the all-male Roman Catholic hierarchy from which they are excluded. Behind the Veil: Nuns is the first film ever to record from a global perspective the turbulent history and remarkable achievements of women in religion, from pre-Christian Celtic communities to the radical sisters of the 1980s. Contemporary nuns of strength, dignity and commitment speak of their lives and of their predecessors.