New online this May from the National Film Board of Canada. Online premieres and a celebration of Asian Heritage Month at nfb.ca.

The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) is featuring powerful and thought-provoking free programming on nfb.ca throughout the month of May.

The NFB website will feature five online premieres in May, along with Asian Heritage Month special programming.

In total, nfb.ca now offers more than 6,500 online films and a collection of more than 100 interactive works.

• Starting May 1 | Asian Heritage Month | Online premiere, NFB channels and a new Curator’s Perspective
  
  1. Following a multi-award-winning festival run, Toronto creators Thao Lam and Kjell Boersma’s animated short doc Boat People uses a striking metaphor to trace one Vietnamese family’s flight across the turbulent waters of history.
  2. The NFB’s Asian Canadian Perspectives and Animation by Women of Asian Descent channels, featuring over 50 new and classic works.
  3. A Curator’s Perspective by Camilo Martin-Florez, discussing seven recent, impactful films that explore Asian-Canadian stories and history.
  
  

• Starting May 9 | Online premiere | Losing Blue
  
  1. Alberta filmmaker Leanne Allison’s short doc Losing Blue is a cinematic poem about what it means to lose the otherworldly blues of ancient mountain lakes, now fading due to climate change.
  2. Named Best Canadian Short Film at the Planet in Focus International Environmental Film Festival.
  
  

• Starting May 13 | Online premiere | Hothouse
  
  1. The NFB’s residency program for emerging animators, Hothouse, returns with a fresh crop of promising animators offering their spin on this year’s theme, “Small Things Considered.”
  2. This 14th edition of Hothouse features six one-minute animated shorts by creators from across Canada: Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes (Montreal), Akash Jones (Toronto), Cameron Kletke (Calgary/Vancouver), Michelle Ku (Calgary), Mochi Lin (Montreal) and Jenny Yujia Shi (Beijing/Halifax).
  
  

• Starting May 24 | Online premiere | Malartic
  
  1. The hard-hitting feature doc Malartic(franC doc films/NFB) by Quebec filmmaker Nicolas Paquet chronicles the broken promises behind the biggest open-pit gold mine in Canada. The film serves as a troubling case study of an opaque decision-making system, where history seems to be repeating itself.
  2. Malartic debuts online following a world premiere at Les Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma and a much-discussed theatrical run across Quebec.
  
  

• Starting May 27 | Online premiere | Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying
  
  1. A short meditation on love, grief and imagination, Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Cryingis a hand-drawn animated documentary created through a collaboration between mother, elder and narrator Edith Almadi and the Winnipeg visual art duo Natalie Baird and Toby Gillies.
  
  

French version here | Version en français ici.

Founded in 1939, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) is a one-of-a-kind producer, co-producer and distributor of distinctive, engaging, relevant and innovative documentary and animated films. As a talent incubator, it is one of the world’s leading creative centres. The NFB has enabled Canadians to tell and hear each other’s stories for over eight decades, and its films are a reliable and accessible educational resource. The NFB is also recognized around the world for its expertise in preservation and conservation, and for its rich and vibrant collection of works, which form a pillar of Canada’s cultural heritage. To date, the NFB has produced more than 14,000 works, 6,500 of which can be streamed free of charge at nfb.ca. The NFB and its productions and co-productions have earned over 7,000 awards, including 11 Oscars and an Honorary Academy Award for overall excellence in cinema.