Waterlife

In an increasingly urban nation, Canada’s national parks are a treasured escape into extraordinary beauty and rugged wilderness. If the Group of Seven were an introduction to the landscape’s majesty, National Parks Project is the next logical chapter. Fifty-two contemporary artists from across the country, whose talents are as diverse as the parks they set out to explore, used their surroundings as a source of inspiration to blend musical and cinematic skills into collaboratively crafted vignettes. Epic in its ambition to celebrate these locales during Parks Canada’s centennial year, this omnibus film resonates with the knowledge that our unprotected land is more vulnerable than ever. Including films by Zacharius Kunuk, Peter Lynch, Sturla Gunnarsson and John Walker, and music by Sarah Harmer, Sam Roberts, Cadence Weapon and The Besnard Lakes, among many others, National Parks Project is a one-of-a-kind documentary experience.

Filmmaker Kevin McMahon examines the Cold War's impact on the Inuit, a primitive culture of the Arctic. Meryn Cadell narrates.

The Music Garden is an exploration of music as interpreted through gardening on a grand scale. The film follows the efforts of Yo-Yo Ma and landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy to create a formal garden, based on J. S. Bach's 'Suite No. 1 for Unaccompanied Cello', in the center of Boston. Woven throughout this unusual enterprise is a performance of the suite by Yo-Yo Ma, accompanied by special effects that bring the dream of the garden to life.

Borealis is a unique cinematic documentary that goes deep into Canada's iconic snow forest to understand how black spruce and birch experience life, talk to each other and decide when the time is right to burn themselves down.