Peter Jones

Japan Inc: Lessons for North America?

This short documentary is an absorbing study of Japanese business and industry. Discipline and productivity in Japan are much more regimented than in many other parts of the world. For the 110 million Japanese, survival means doing things together, rather than asserting a North American-style individualism. Japan's industry has automated and computerized at an unparalleled rate. Open-concept offices and collaborative work styles offer a model of the changing style of modern work that could inspire the West to modify their processes as well.

Canada Vignettes: Unity Pole

This vignette shows the ceremonial totem-pole raising by the Nisgha Nation at Ayanish.

Canada Vignettes: Woolly Mammoth

An animated film showing a woolly mammoth and its offspring. These animals lived on the Canadian tundra over ten thousand years ago.

Canada Vignettes: Captain Cook

Two hundred years ago Captain Cook stopped briefly at Nootka Sound. This animated vignette depicts how he began the sea otter trade which led to the development of the Pacific north west.

Canada Vignettes: Logger

The history of the development of modern logging techniques on the British Columbia coast.

Canada Vignettes: Bill Miner

Bill Miner was a train robber in British Columbia at the turn of the century. This animated film depicts a disastrous episode in his career.

Augusta

This short documentary is the portrait of an 88-year-old woman who lives alone in a log cabin without running water or electricity in the Williams Lake area of British Columbia. The daughter of a Shuswap chief, Augusta lost her Indian status as the result of a marriage to a white man. She recalls past times, but lives very much in the present. Self-sufficient, dedicated to her people, she spreads warmth wherever she moves, with her songs and her harmonica.

Salmon People

Contrasting ancient myth and modern reality, this short documentary examines the legendary relationship between West Coast Indigenous people and salmon, once their staple food. In the mythical realm, we learn how Raven finds riches in the harvest of the salmon, only to lose everything through a thoughtless act against the Spirit of the Salmon. So too does modern man jeopardize his living from the sea by heedless action. Images of ancient spear-fishing and smoke-houses contrast with images of today's Indigenous people operating a seiner and working in a cooperative cannery.

Man Who Chooses the Bush

This short documentary follows Frank Ladouceur, a man who lives alone for months at a time, trapping muskrat in the vast, desolate wilderness of northern Alberta. He receives no visitors, and rarely voyages to his family home in Fort Chipewyan. What some may consider an unthinkably lonely, isolated existence is the calling of this fiercely independent Métis man. Remarkably determined and self-sufficient, Frank makes his home in the wild bush.

The Bear's Christmas

This short cartoon tells the story of a bear who didn’t believe in Christmas. His main problem with this most magical of holidays? Too many Santas. How would he ever recognize the real one? Alone, out of a job, he goes to drown his sorrows, but back in his lonely room, for all his doubts, the Christmas spirit makes a surprise call.

Aaeon

AAEON is based on experiments with dream recollection, and features the first optical printer technology developed in Vancouver and used in many of Razutis’ later films.

The Baymen

Baymen, no matter where they go, remain above all else Newfoundlanders. They were born to the sea, to a place in the life of their cliffside village, but many of the younger generation are now looking to the city for their future. The film, produced in 1965, follows a bayman's family to St. John's, showing what such a change means to father, daughter and grandfather.

Helicopter Canada

A view from a helicopter of the ten Canadian provinces in 1966. The result is a big, beautiful and engrossing bird's-eye portrait of the country. Nothing here is quite the same as seen before, even Niagara Falls. Canadians will be thrilled by this panoramic view of familiar territory. Made for international distribution for the Canadian centennial.

Quo Vadis, Mrs. Lumb?

A portrait of a Chinese-Canadian woman. Mrs. Lumb talks candidly about the prejudice she felt during her childhood in Vancouver, her arranged marriage, her occupation, raising children, and intermarriage.

Fields of Sacrifice

This 1964 documentary returns to the battlefields where over 100,000 Canadian soldiers lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars. The film also visits cemeteries where servicemen are buried. Filmed from Hong Kong to Sicily, this documentary is designed to show Canadians places they have reason to know but may not be able to visit. Produced for the Canadian Department of Veteran Affairs by the renowned documentary filmmaker Donald Brittain. (NFB)

Cornet at Night

Based on a short story by Sinclair Ross, this short film recalls rural life on the Prairies in the 1930s. In the film a farmer's young son, sent to town to hire a man for the harvest, readily accepts when an itinerant trumpet player, down on his luck, begs a chance. He is hardly the kind of man the boy's father had in mind, but that night his trumpet speaks from the shadows and everyone pauses to listen.

Drylanders

The epic story of the opening of the Canadian West and the drought that brought the Depression in the thirties. This is the saga of a family who left eastern Canada to stake their future in the Prairies.

Bandwidth

This film combines colour, animation and sound to clarify principles of radio wave transmission. It illustrates how antennas propagate radio waves and how they may be adapted to increase the bandwidth of transmissions. (The film was released for general use as a public service by the Royal Canadian Air Force.)

Wildlife in the Rockies

After many years of careful conservation, Banff and Jasper National Parks have become vast zoological gardens. Deer, moose, bear, big-horn sheep, birds and small animals that live above the treeline are natural subjects for the close-up camera, with a backdrop of snowy peaks.