Kathleen Shannon

The short documentary looks at some innovative approaches to providing services and accommodation for battered women in rural, northern, and Native communities. Filmed in Thompson and Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, and West Bay Reserve, Ontario, the film introduces the women who operate and use various types of accommodation such as transition houses, transition apartments, and safe houses. The shelter on West Bay Reserve is singled out as a project that was built by women for women to stand as a reminder that the Reserve will not tolerate violence against women. A Safe Distance is part of the The Next Step, a 3-film series about the services needed by and available to battered women.

The women who seek help at Aurora House share a common illness: they are physically and psychologically dependent on alcohol, prescription drugs, street drugs, or a combination of these. This documentary focuses on the lives of five women at various stages of their rehabilitation. In the supportive and healing atmosphere of women helping other women, they are confronting the issues and feelings they had previously drunk or drugged out of consciousness.

A watercolour evocation of a prairie storm coming after a period of severe drought.

A montage of watercolour images of the work and occasional play of a farm family.

This short film from the Canada Vignettes series profiles a unique French-Canadian family, the Fourniers, 12 of whom work as stunt men and women for films.

Kathy worked as a nurse in Greece and then came to Canada. She and her family live in northern Alberta, where they are developing a farm. Kathy works outside the home as a nurse, sews for the children, maintains the house, and helps with the farm work.

This short film is told in the first person by Rose, a Métis woman from northern Alberta who has left a difficult life in the city to rediscover her roots by returning to her Woodland Cree community. Rose reveals the racism, isolation and health issues she faced when trying to make a life for herself outside her home community, and how she is able to help others now that she has reconnected to her culture. The film is part of a 1970s series of eleven films title Working Mothers by producer/director Kathleen Shannon, exposing inequality for women in accessing education, childcare, and equal pay. These films led to the creation of Studio D at the National Film Board, the world’s first feminist production studio.