Donald Brittain Movies

This feature documentary is a fascinating and spirited portrait of the life and times of the legendary Quebec politician and four-time mayor of...

This feature documentary traces the political career of T.C. (Tommy) Douglas, former premier of Saskatchewan and leader of the New Democratic Party,...

In this experimental collage film, Arthur Lipsett reworks over fifty years of newsreel footage into a surreal audiovisual montage of...

A film biography of Dr. Norman Bethune, the Canadian doctor who served with the loyalists during the Spanish Civil War and with the North Chinese...

In this feature documentary, American community organizer and writer Saul Alinsky goes to war against the conditions that keep the poor in poverty....

A biography of Enrico Fermi, the scientist who discovered the chain reaction in nuclear physics. Follows his career in Italy and later in America,...

This film shows the scientific study of fires set to buildings in Aultsville, Ontario, a town evacuated for flooding by the St. Lawrence Seaway....

Family offers a candid look at CBC Radio in action and the unique cast of characters who make up Canada's coast-to-coast radio family. The film...

This film is a revealing portrait of a tough cop with a big heart. Sergeant Bernie "Whistling" Smith walks the beat on Vancouver's Eastside, the...

In Part 1 of this 3-part documentary series, director Donald Brittain chronicles the early years of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and René...

In 1934, Elzire Dionne delivered five identical girls. The Dionne Quintuplets follows Cecile, Emilie, Marie, Yvonne and Annette through twenty-one...

The early history of Canadian film making before the establishment of the National Film Board of Canada.

At twenty-six, Noel Starblanket was one of the youngest Indigenous chiefs in North America--twice elected chief of the Starblanket Reserve, and also...

This short animated film is about Wop May, one of Canada's leading bush pilots in the 1920s.

In this Academy Award–nominated animated satire, Martian observers analyze life on Earth and reach a startling conclusion: automobiles appear...

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....

A retrospective of documentary films by Donald Brittain offering a glimpse of the man and the restless energy that informed his work. Dedicated and...

April - November 1940. With devastating speed Germany takes Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. Italy declares war.

First Stop, China is a record of the choreographed performances and the unrehearsed moments of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens ballet company on the...

It was the time when fire got stolen by tigers so uncle tiger gets his sisters son to get back the fire but when he gets to the village he forgets...