Writer/Director: Nova Ami Producer(s): Trish Dolman Co-Producer(s): Lauren Grant, Marie Bartlett
For too long society has been silent on the issue of domestic violence. This is an attempt to shatter that silence.
Recently there have been an increasing number of high profile domestic violence cases in the South Asian community, many ending in the tragic murders or serious maiming of women. The resulting misconception is that domestic violence is confined to this one, specific cultural community. It’s not. Domestic violence is prevalent in all kinds of families and relationships. It crosses cultural, socioeconomic, and inter-generational lines. It has devastating, often fatal consequences for its victims. The sad fact is that domestic violence is everywhere, it’s just good at hiding.
Silent Scars is an attempt to draw back the curtain and expose the endemic problem that lies beneath. Through its’ characters it will explore the root causes, beliefs, and behaviours that lead to domestic violence, the cycle of violence that occurs in an abusive relationship, and the grueling process women take to break free.
Format: High Definition Running Time: 6 x 1 hour episodes Writer/Director: Mark Cousins Producer(s): John Archer
This 6 x 1 hour landmark documentary series will be the first ever to tell the whole history of cinema.
Filmed on every continent, it will describe the thrill of silent cinema, the emergence of Hollywood and the star system, and the artistic evolution of film in Russia, Japan, Germany, Italy, Britain, Scandinavia and the USA. It will profile great movie actors, describe the upheaval of sound cinema, show how World War 2 stimulated entertainment movies but also brought new realism to the silver screen. It will sweep around the globe in the 1950s to reveal how the very language of the movies was bursting at the seams. It will show how modern cinema grew out of such tensions, first in France and then in a series of new waves that were as exciting as they were innovative.
Then it will show how commercial cinema recovered from such experimentation, building multiplexes, entrancing young audiences with new special effects. It will chart the remarkable influence of video on film and demonstrate how the best directors on the planet coped with such challenges. It will end in the digital age with new stars, new genres and new forms of filmmaking and watching.
Based on the best-selling book by Mark Cousins, The Story of Film will be an engrossing, worldwide guided tour to the greatest movies ever made; an epic tale that starts in nickelodeons and ends as a multi-billion dollar globalised digital industry.
Format: High Definition Running Time: 13 x 60 minute episodes Writer/Director: Peter Waal, Jason Margolis Producer(s): Lauren Grant Financing: CanWest Media, BC Film
Truth Be Known is a thirteen part documentary series examines the controversial ideas and people behind today’s most intriguing conspiracy theories and popular internet mysteries.
Truth Be Known introduces ordinary people struggling with unexplainable mysteries, and shares the adventures of researchers uncovering buried secrets and hidden agendas in their pursuit of knowledge. Each episode pursues an intriguing mystery related to the show’s five central themes: conspiracy theories, scary science, hidden history, puzzling places and mystic mythology. Do children remember their past lives? Was Shakespeare a woman? Will long lost technologies provide free energy for the contemporary world? Can science explain near death experiences? Are there shadow government facilities operating underneath the Denver International Airport?
Truth Be Known brings each mystery to life through active investigations, insightful interviews, inventive animations, and well-crafted dramatic experiments, empowering the audience to seek out further conclusions on their own.
Format: High Definition Writer/Director: Simon Schneider Producer(s): Trish Dolman Co-Producer(s): Lauren Grant Financing: BC Film, CIFVF
What will the world do without fish as food?
Imagine an ocean with no fish and no seafood. Imagine this empty ocean in your lifetime. This is what Canadian scientists predict – the collapse of all wild fish and seafood by 2048.
Nature filmmaker, underwater cameraman and marine biologist Simon Schneider is going on a journey around the world and under water to find out if this is possibly true. And, if it is, what we can do to stop it.
Simon travels to his early fishing grounds on the West Coast of Canada in River’s Inlet. Once teeming with wild salmon, now only a net full of sockeye salmon return to spawn. In the Gulf of Mexico, he searches for life in underwater “dead zones,” areas with so little oxygen that nothing can survive, except for hordes of slimy jellyfish. In the Sea of Japan, he dives with jellyfish that have reached 1950’s horror movie proportions. Most are bigger than Simon, some are bigger than a car.
Just when the future of seafood looks doomed, Simon’s scientist friends take him to five ocean “hot spots” that maintain ideal conditions for thriving populations of fish. These hot spots may hold the answers to saving the world’s oceans from impending collapse.
The question is, will the global community protect them in time and help secure humanity’s primary single source of high quality protein – fish food?
Producer(s): Trish Dolman Financing: CTV, Telefilm, BC Film
A one hour documentary about the global sperm trade.
The Jizz Biz is a documentary about the global sperm trade, revealing its reasons for existing whilst taking a critical look at its societal implications. Who knew that sperm’s ability to swim would be looked upon in the same light as an Olympic sport? And that nationality would count for some kind of motile superiority in the little guys’ ability to reach that elusive egg? A two-way trip starting with a sperm donor (most of them are university students), the film will trace sperm’s steps (or rather wriggles) from the donor to the sperm bank, to storage, to shipping until it reaches a recipient. Similarly we’ll retrace the journey beginning with one or two couples (most are either infertile heterosexual couples or gay couples who are seeking donors), revealing what it takes to buy the makings of a baby. Along the way we’ll reveal the people involved in the business of selling bodily fluids and the serious nature of their sales.
