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In celebration of Black History Month 2020, this video series profiles 10 historical Black Canadians.

Click the names to view the films:

• Harry Jerome, athlete (9 min)
• Portia White, musician (7 min)
• Elijah McCoy, inventor (5 min)
• William Hall, sailor (16 min)
• John Ware, cowboy (13 min)
• Mary Ann Shadd, publisher (6 min)
• Nathaniel Dett, musician (6 min)
• Josiah Henson, abolitionist (13 min)
• Addie Aylestock, ordained minister (3 min)
• George Conga, voyageur (5 min)

This is a doc that Docs For Schools showed in 2017. It was a different time in Afghanistan. Still many struggles and challenges, but for many Afghans there was opportunity to hope and to dream. In August of 2021 when the USA pulled their final troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban quickly took hold of most of the country, including the largest city, Kabul. Today, for the majority of Afghans the hopes and dreams have quickly been snuffed out. To see and hear the words spoken by the film subjects in 2016, and then to know what is presently happening in Afghanistan, especially for girls and women, is heartbreaking.

New York Times Magazine: 2021 was the 20th year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The world changed that day, and the NY Times magazine began a project this past summer to document the 20 years of occupation through the eyes of young Afghans. Unfortunately, it was not fully completed due to the sudden US withdrawal and rise of the Taliban, but you do get to meet some of these young Afghans and their thoughts captured just prior to the withdrawal.

This whimsical series of six short films is all about the joy of having a hobby—and being bad at it! Each film subject talks about the community, confidence, and joy they've found in doing something just for fun.

Black Canadian immigrants share the joys and obstacles on their paths to Black excellence. From their first steps in Canada to the moments that shaped their lives. These are their journeys here.

Sally Schmitt sold her successful Napa Valley establishment, the French Laundry. Then it became "the best restaurant in the world."

Nominated in 2021 for an Oscar in the Short Documentary category, a story about virtuoso jazz pianist and film composer, Kris Bowers and his 91 year-old grandfather. On the eve of Bower’s violin concerto world premiere at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, his grandfather asks what is a concerto? The conversation flows to a history of his grandfather’s experiences of growing up black in America. A short, thoughtful doc of memories and history that can still resonate today.

Review

A short documentary about Marvin Bedward, a 65-year old business executive who refuses to cut his hair. Traumatized by the white barbers who ruined his Afro when he was a child, Marvin sees his long hair as an act of resistance to authority, mainstream culture, and his wife.

A warm and recognizable story for many youth today. Filmmaker Lina Li and her mother engage in an intimate conversation about immigration to Canada, misunderstandings, communication barriers, and the taste of home.

James Robinson, a filmmaker from Maine, shows what it feels like to live with several disabling eye conditions that have defied an array of treatments and caused him countless humiliations. Using playful graphics and enlisting his family as subjects in a series of optical tests, he invites others to view the world through his eyes. But his video is also an essay on seeing, in the deeper sense of the word — seeing and being seen, recognition and understanding, sensitivity and compassion, the stuff of meaningful human connection. In a society that does a lousy job of accommodating the disabled, Mr. Robinson appeals for more acceptance of people who are commonly perceived as different or not normal. “I don’t have a problem with the way that I see,” he says. “My only problem is with the way that I’m seen.”

John Hendrickson stutters. He has stuttered nearly his entire life. Mr. Hendrickson, working with the filmmaker James Robinson, explores the obstacles and emotional burden of his condition and explains the coping strategies and workarounds he has devised to make it through the day in a world that demands that we speak up and speak clearly. The film suggests that the problem may lie not with people who stutter but with a society that is largely unprepared or disinclined to accommodate them.

An animated short documentary about a difficult father-daughter relationship. Drawing on childhood memories, Anne Koizumi, the filmmaker, explores her upbringing with her Japanese immigrant dad, who was also the janitor at the elementary school she attended.

David, 75, Peggy, 73, Ted, 71, and 69-year-old Adele reflect on their memories of coming out, the remarkable change they’ve witnessed in their lifetimes. Living through social changes from Stonewall riots in 1969, to the first Pride marches of the 70s, we listen to their accounts of what it was like to live through it all.

Although Michaela Jaé felt out of place growing up, she never let it dim her light. Without much media representation of trans people, Michaela Jaé looked to classic stories like Cinderella and found parallels to how she wanted to live her own life. This led her to creating her own characters, like Pose's Blanca Evangelista, to represent identities she never knew when growing up. Her advice to the next generation is the same: if you don't see stories that represent your identity—write your own.

One Sunday a month, Nancy Falaise closes the doors of her Montreal hair salon to lead an intimate workshop for young girls of colour struggling with their curly hair. (CBC)

• Hair Love - Oscar winning animated short (7 mins)
• A Celebration of Black Beauty: The Politics of Black Hair
• An 8-hour drive for braids: Why Black haircare is hard in small-town Canada

The story of Justin Bishop, a lifelong skateboarder who went blind at the age of twenty-five but refused to abandon the sport he loved.

The story of Toronto’s bizarre 1985 "patty wars," when Jamaican-Canadian bakers went head-to-head with the federal government over the name of their beloved beef patty.

In 2003, Japan was plunged into economic darkness, and its people needed a ray of hope. They found one in Haru Urara, a racehorse with a pink Hello Kitty mask and a career-long losing streak.

Acclaimed journalist Desmond Cole explores what it is to be Black in 21st century Canada. Do Black Lives Matter here?

Filmmakers Kaitlyn Schwalje and Alex Wolf Lewis decided to make a film about Snowy, the pet turtle, after spending Thanksgiving with him one year. Their short documentary is both an investigation into animal happiness and an intervention to improve one turtle’s life.

Every year in early summer, thousands of fingernail-sized juvenile western toads must migrate from the wetlands where they’re born to the forest where they live, in the rural community of Ryder Lake in Chilliwack, BC. The only problem is that there’s a highway running between the two. Members of the community have taken it upon themselves to aid the toadlets make the journey safely, helping to preserve the species against all odds.

• Film website
• Western Toad information - South Coast Conservation Program
• Canadian species at risk

I made We Went Out, a short film featuring my close friends and members of the downtown hip hop community in the 90’s and 00’s, to pay homage to the people who became adults in those in-between spaces. It is a mapping project. We have wonderful and significant memories in places that are not often valued, that didn't value us, but are an important part of Toronto's cultural landscape. --Ian Kamau