We're In This Together

Docs For Schools has received a number of teacher requests for the documentary The Biggest Little Farm. With our present structure for the DFS At Home page, we are unable to include new films still in distribution, but we have found these shorts by the director of The Biggest Little Farm, who is also the owner of Apricot Lane Farms. These shorts made for Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Short program became the catalyst for the feature. You will recognize some of the animal stories and similar to the feature.

Under ‘Learn More’ we have included the Docs For Schools education package for The Biggest Little Farm, as can assist with assignment ideas.

Meet the Keepers of Apricot Lane Farms (2013, 4:35 min)
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Apricot Lane Farms' Journey from Arid Wasteland to Biodiverse Paradise (2016, 4:56 min)
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Orphan Lamb (2017, 5:58 min)
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Saving Emma (2016, 5:56 min)
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The Curious Friendship Between a Pig and a Rooster (2015, 4:36 min)
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What Maggie the Cow Taught a New Farmer About Letting Go (2016, 5:36 min)
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Learn More

• Q&A with filmmakers
• Apricot Lane Farms website

The Maritime Bhangra Group are Sikh Bhangra dancers who have settled in Halifax. They have become a viral sensation across this country as their video dances, for charity, have been seen over 25 million times. This film digs deeper, beyond the viral video/internet sensation, to understand why new immigrants, who barely know our country or our culture, have chosen to dedicate so much time to helping it. (CBC)

• Maritime Bhangra Group YouTube channel
• Film website
• Bhangra Wikipedia page

Despite the Americans With Disablilites Act passing over 30 years ago, much of New York City's public transit remains inaccessible for individuals with mobility limitations. These first person accounts show why this is everybody's problem, not just the people it directly effects.

• Accessible Canada Act Wikipedia page
• Council of Canadians with Disabilities
• Disability Rights - Canadian Human Rights Commission

In 1946, 23-year-old Holocaust survivor Joseph Feingold exchanged a carton of cigarettes for a violin at a flea market in Germany. Seventy years later, Joe makes a simple decision about his violin that changes not only his life, but also the life of another young musician. Together, the two of them discover the illuminating power of a single musical instrument.

• PBS extras

Motivated by the closing of the town’s port, the loss of jobs, and effects of climate change, artist Kal Barteski invites 18 artists from around the world to paint murals around the subarctic town of Churchill, Manitoba as a way of helping the community.

• Kal Barteski's website
• Sea Walls Churchill website
• Incredible public art installations to take in all across Canada - CB

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

When the refugee crisis hit, American taxi driver Mary Ann started transporting asylum seekers to the Canadian border at Roxham Road. The people she’s helped have changed her world. (CBC)

• Roxham Road Wikipedia page
• Canada: A History of Refuge
• Refugees in Canada - United Nations Refugee Agency

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