Hitting the Ceiling

Delphine Seyrig reads passages from a Valerie Solanas’s SCUM manifesto.

In March 2023, despite a flush of police raids and arrests in the struggle against Cop City in Atlanta, the Weelaunee Food Autonomy Festival gathered people for four days of learning and working in the forest. The observational film follows along as participants in the festival plant hundreds of fig, pawpaw, and persimmon saplings, give away fruit trees to neighbors of the forest, graft edible pears onto invasive trees, learn to mix herbal medicines, and restore an area of forest that had been recently disturbed by illegal demolition work.

As a result of the Holocaust and later, AIDS, the male homosexual community has sustained bitter losses and, according to Praunheim, lesbian women have now placed themselves at the head of the so-called queer movement. The female protagonists in the film represent two different generations; they also incorporate the past and present status of homosexuals in society.

An intimate study of one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the 20th century tracking feminist icon Susan Sontag’s seminal, life-changing moments through archival materials, accounts from friends, family, colleagues, and lovers, as well as her own words, as read by Patricia Clarkson.

This documentary focuses on three communities which were damaged by highway construction and federal Urban Renewal programs following World War II. In the 1980s, residents were promised the Olympics would support economic and residential redevelopment. The program uses footage from various news reports and contemporary interviews to portray the often conflicting interests of the people wanting to see positive community development that could occur as a result of the Olympic Games being held in Atlanta. The program covers the history of Atlanta leading up to hosting the Olympics, development and construction plans, support for and opposition to the Olympic Games in Atlanta, issues surrounding Centennial Olympic Park, and neighborhood development.

How do feminist and queer identities operate in contemporary Belfast? Let Us Be Seen is a documentary film that presents the work and ideas of individuals on the ground in Belfast, who have campaigned tirelessly for change and continue to do so. On 21st October 2019, abortion was decriminalised and same-sex marriage legalised in Northern Ireland. This important law change however has shed light on more nuanced barriers facing people locally.

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.

Loosely based on Charles Dicken’s book “A Tale of Two Cities”, Working Class tells the tale of underground street artists Mike Giant and Mike Maxwell and their decade long friendship that started with a tattoo. The story is told through the cities they call home by, cutting back and forth between the neighborhoods of San Francisco and San Diego, as the artists talk about their life philosophies and the work they create.

The compelling story of an extraordinary woman's journey from her birth in a paper thin shack in the cotton fields of Georgia to her recognition as a key writer of the twentieth Century.Walker made history as the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her groundbreaking novel, The Color Purple.

Journeying across Varanasi, Lucknow, and Muzzafarpur in India, this documentary film traces the lost traditions and the culture of tawaifs (courtesans of North India), particularly through a song sung by Rasoolan Bai, "Lagat karejwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar" and its lesser known, earlier version "Lagat jobanwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar" (recorded in a 1935 Gramophone recording). Weaving the past with the present, the film spans between personal stories as it interacts with historical events, ultimately leading to the decline of a great art form.