Searching for Halifax NP711 (2023)

Lorena: Light-Footed Woman

A young woman of the Tarahumara, well-known for their extraordinary long distance running abilities, wins ultramarathons seemingly out of nowhere despite running in sandals.

Putito

Putito is a production with no specific genre, where reality and fiction blend through a testimony written by José Carlos Henríquez - a feminist activist and male prostitute who plays himself in the project. Available in a censored and uncensored version.

Half a Life

After a traumatic encounter, a young gay Egyptian joins the LGBT rights movement. When his safety is jeopardized, he must choose whether to stay in the country he loves or seek asylum elsewhere as a refugee. "Half a Life" is a timely story of activism and hope, set in the increasingly dangerous, oppressive, and unstable social climate of Egypt today.

Erebus: Operation Overdue

On 28 November 1979, an Air New Zealand jet with 257 passengers went missing during a sightseeing tour over Antarctica. Within hours 11 ordinary police officers were called to duty to face the formidable Mount Erebus. As the police recovered the victims, an investigation team tried to uncover the mystery of how a jet could fly into a mountain in broad daylight. Did the airline have a secret it wanted to bury? This film tells the story of four New Zealand police officers who went to Antarctica as part of the police operation to recover the victims of the crash. Set in the beautiful yet hostile environment of Antarctica, this is the emotional and compelling true story of an extraordinary police operation.

Desynchronized

Recent studies show that insects are in decline across the globe and there may be a direct connection between the current climate crisis and these declining populations. DESYNCHRONIZED focuses on Pope Canyon Queens, a beekeeping and queen breeding company in Northern California. Pope Canyon Queens is currently trying to rebuild after the 2020 LNU Lightning Complex fires destroyed their farm, shop, and half of their hives. Their crucial work to breed honey bee queens with stronger genes fortifies beekeepers' hives across the country while they face the effects of climate change and unregulated industries. Dr. Nicholas Teets, PhD Entomology, explains how shifts in phenology are predicted to cause bigger issues. Howard Goldstein, Senior Forest Ecologist at the Prospect Park Alliance explores how community gardens and green spaces in large metropolitan areas may help insect populations recover from loss of habitat and food scarcity.

Vanilla

Look around. Everything you see and touch can taste like vanilla.

Kitchen Dialogue

A generational trauma through the lens of an Asian American teenager through food and poetry.

Casablanca revisitada

A lyrical and nostalgic analysis of how Casablanca, the mythical film directed by Michael Curtiz in 1942, has influenced both film history and pop culture.

Yellow Fever

What does beauty look like? In this award-winning short, Kenyan filmmaker Ng’endo Mukii combines animation, performance, and experimental techniques to create a visually arresting and psychologically penetrating exploration of the insidious impact of Western beauty standards and media-created ideals on African women’s perceptions of themselves. From hair-straightening to skin-lightening, YELLOW FEVER unpacks the cultural and historical forces that have long made Black women uncomfortable, literally, in their own skin.

A Staircase

Single frames vectorized and stitched before processing through an analog EAB.

Water Theater

White Rock Lake Water Theater in Dallas, Texas. Sculpture by Frances Bagley and Tom Orr. Video compiled from 35mm stills.

XYZ

Oil spills around Oak Cliff, Dallas.

The Sun

Compiled and animated from still images.

Lost Worlds: Life in the Balance

Lost Worlds looks at untouched aspects of nature in parts of the world where humans rarely tread. From plants, to animals, to geology, this artfully photographed documentary presents facets of the biological world that you are not likely to see anywhere else.

The First Emperor of China

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.

Puberty: Sexual Education For Boys and Girls

This sex education movie explore themes of body development, sexual hygiene, masturbation, menstruation, puberty, sex and giving birth.

Coded: The Hidden Love of J.C. Leyendecker

Coded tells the story of illustrator J.C. Leyendecker, whose legacy laid the foundation for today's out-and-proud LGBTQ advertisements.

Blue Planet

From the unique vantage point of 200 miles above Earth's surface, we see how natural forces - volcanoes, earthquakes and hurricanes - affect our world, and how a powerful new force - humankind - has begun to alter the face of the planet. From Amazon rain forests to Serengeti grasslands, Blue Planet inspires a new appreciation of life on Earth, our only home.

Bears

From polar bears in the arctic tundra to black bears in the Northern Rockies, you'll see some of the most spectacular footage ever shot of these enterprising omnivores. Catch salmon with a group of hungry grizzlies on the McNeil River in Alaska. Crawl inside a den with a mother black bear and her cubs. Learn about the challenges facing each of these species as their habitat diminishes.

Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag

Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag follows American F-15 Eagle pilot John Stratton as he trains with some of the world’s best pilots. The movie depicts Stratton’s progression through the challenging and dangerous exercises of Operation Red Flag, the international training program for air forces of allied countries.

Cosmic Voyage

The Academy Award® nominee Cosmic Voyage combines live action with state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery to pinpoint where humans fit in our ever-expanding universe. Highlighting this journey is a "cosmic zoom" based on the powers of 10, extending from the Earth to the largest observable structures in the universe, and then back to the subnuclear realm.

Volcanoes of the Deep Sea

12,000 feet down, life is erupting. Alvin, a deep-sea mechanized probe, makes a voyage some 12,000 feet underwater to explore the Azores, a constantly-erupting volcanic rift between Europe and North America.

The Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo

16-year-old Yuguo, who has a passion for Eastern European romantic poetry, makes a pilgrimage from his home in China to the foothills of Romania’s Carpathian Mountains.

Birders

Bird watchers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border share their enthusiasm for protecting and preserving some of the world's most beautiful species.

Isabella

This film aims to capture the stories of the aging Isabella, but also captures her condition and loss of cohesiveness as she loses herself into dementia and Parkinson's. It is also a very personal film since the subject is the grandmother of one of the co- directors. The idea is interesting as it links one strong clear memory, told several times, to other fragments and truths of her condition. Animation is sparingly but cleverly used to complement the delivery and avoid it just being a talking head.

The ABCs of Book Banning

In recent years, more than 2,500 books have been removed from school districts around the US, labeled as banned, restricted, or challenged, and made unavailable to millions of students. By no accident, the themes targeted are the usual scapegoats of the American Right—LGBTQ+ issues, Black History, and women’s empowerment—impeding the power of future generations to develop their own thoughts and opinions on critical social issues. By weaving together a lyrical montage of young readers and authors, THE ABCs OF BOOK BANNING reveals the voices of the impacted parties, and inspires hope for the future through the profound insights of inquisitive youthful minds.

Fire in Paradise

In this documentary, survivors recall the catastrophic 2018 Camp Fire, which razed the town of Paradise and became California’s deadliest wildfire.

Super Speedway

We follow the Newman-Haas (Andretti) racing team through the process of building, testing, and racing for a season. This includes extensive race speed on-track footage, including some pre-race footage with a full squad of cars. From time to time, we check in with a small shop building/restoring one of the first roadsters Mario Andretti raced; the finale includes him taking it for a spin.

Paleo Impulse

Paleo is a video clip shoot at the famous homonymous music festival in the French canton of Vaud in Switzerland, where many hippie-techno-pagans gather every summer since 1977. The editing style is a tribute to the reworking of psychedelic theories and the New Age proliferation within rave culture in the early 90s from the perspective of the late second decade of the new millennium. In the footage, the ritual ingestion of psychedelics is symbolically replaced by a liberating dance through a powerful fast montage that epitomizes the frenzy of intoxication achieved through psychedelic plants. A revival of a revival of a revival.

Steal This Film

Steal This Film focuses on Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde, prominent members of the Swedish filesharing community. The makers claimed that 'Old Media' documentary crews couldn't understand the internet culture that filesharers took part in, and that they saw peer-to-peer organization as a threat to their livelihoods. Because of that, they were determined to accurately represent the filesharing community from within. Notably, Steal This Film was released and distributed, free of charge, through the same filesharing networks that the film documents.

Roundhay Garden Scene

The earliest surviving celluloid film, and believed to be the second moving picture ever created, was shot by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince using the LPCCP Type-1 MkII single-lens camera. It was taken in the garden of Oakwood Grange, the Whitley family house in Roundhay, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire (UK), possibly on 14 October 1888. The film shows Adolphe Le Prince (Le Prince's son), Mrs. Sarah Whitley (Le Prince's mother-in-law), Joseph Whitley, and Miss Harriet Hartley walking around in circles, laughing to themselves, and staying within the area framed by the camera. The Roundhay Garden Scene was recorded at 12 frames per second and runs for 2.11 seconds.

Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge

A film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.

Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory

Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.

Expedition Amelia

Explorer Robert Ballard sets out to solve the mystery of Amelia Earhart's disappearance as he and a team of experts travel to the remote Pacific atoll named Nikumaroro in search of her final resting place.

Pacho's visual archive

After the death of my only brother I found rolls of undeveloped film. This documentary is a reenactment of those stills and an exploration of the aspects of my brother's life that I didn't know.

Haida Carver

On Canada's Pacific coast this film finds a young Haida artist, Robert Davidson, shaping miniature totems from argillite, a jet-like stone. The film follows the artist to the island where he finds the stone, and then shows how he carves it in the manner of his grandfather, who taught him the craft.

Regard Silence

“I love poetry because it makes me feel like my mind expands.” In Regard Silence, that's the very first sentence expressed—in sign language of course. Watching the poems signed by deaf people in this film has a similarly mind-expanding effect. That’s because sign language—the Mexican version in this case—is a very different means of communication than written or spoken language.