Redesigned Ocean School launches on World Oceans Day, with a video-mapping projection experience in Montreal’s Old Port celebrating Ocean Week Canada
This June, nfb.ca will be streaming more films than ever free of charge, as the National Film Board of Canada’s online screening room features celebrated new titles to help mark Pride Month, World Oceans Day and National Indigenous History Month.
Available indefinitely at nfb.ca, these new works join more than 5,500 already online, including 100 interactive projects.
Starting June 6 – new for Pride Month
Someone Like Me, directed by Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams (80 min)
Winner of three awards including the Rogers Audience Award for Canadian Feature Documentary at Hot Docs, Someone Like Me follows the parallel journeys of Drake, a gay asylum seeker from Uganda, and a group of strangers from Vancouver’s queer community who are tasked with supporting his resettlement in Canada. Together, they embark on a year-long quest for personal freedom, revealing how in a world where one must constantly fight for the right to exist, survival itself becomes a victory.
Horlor and Adams are a filmmaking team based in Vancouver.
There’s also more great content on the NFB’s LGBTQ2+ channel.
Someone Like Me, Sean Horlor & Steve J. Adams, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
Starting June 8 – new for World Oceans Day
Ocean School
The NFB is launching a new, redesigned Ocean School, with lots of additional features. Ocean School is a free, innovative ocean education resource for use in the classroom and at home—part of the NFB’s commitment to developing new learning resources that raise awareness about climate change and the future of our planet.
As part of Ocean Week Canada, Ocean School is also collaborating with MAPPMTL to present "The Ocean Station" at the Old Port of Montreal on June 4, 7 and 8. People of all ages are invited to create their own marine creature that will be projected into a giant virtual ocean after sunset, in an amazing collective video-mapping projection experience.
Ocean School’s mission is to help everyone understand our influence on the ocean and the ocean’s influence on us, and to empower people with knowledge, tools and inspiration so that we can take action.
Starting June 13 – new for National Indigenous History Month
Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy, directed by Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (125 min)
Co-produced by Seen Through Woman Productions and the NFB
A member of the Kainai First Nation and the Sámi in Norway, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers creates an intimate portrait of her community and the impacts of a substance-use and overdose epidemic. Contextualized in the historical and lived trauma of settler colonialism, Kímmapiiyipitssini draws a connecting line between the impacts of colonialism on Blackfoot land and people and the ongoing substance-use crisis.
Winner of nine awards including the Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award and Rogers Audience Award for Canadian Feature Documentary at Hot Docs, Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy premieres free online at nfb.ca after an acclaimed national tour.
Kímmapiiyipitssini (GEE-maa-bee-bit-sin) is a Blackfoot word meaning "giving kindness to each other."
Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
Starting June 21 – new for National Indigenous Peoples Day
Mary Two-Axe Earley: I Am Indian Again, directed by Courtney Montour (34 min)
Mary Two-Axe Earley: I Am Indian Again shares the powerful story of Mary Two-Axe Earley, who fought for more than two decades to challenge sex discrimination against First Nations women embedded in Canada’s Indian Act, and became a key figure in Canada’s women’s rights movement.
Winner of three awards including Best Documentary Short at imagineNATIVE, the film uses never-before-seen archival footage and audio recordings, as Mohawk filmmaker Courtney Montour engages in a deeply personal conversation with the late Kahnawà:ke woman who galvanized a movement to restore Indian status to thousands of First Nations women and children.
Mary Two-Axe Earley: I Am Indian Again, Courtney Montour, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
There are also more than 500 titles on the Indigenous Cinema channel, including a growing number of works in Indigenous languages.
