Donald Brittain Trailers
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Donald Brittain, a revered Canadian figure, remains cherished for his genuine nature and unparalleled storytelling. He created over 100 acclaimed films, like "Volcano" (1976) portraying Malcolm Lowry and "Paperland" (1979) exposing Canadian bureaucrats. His breakthrough came with "Fields of Sacrifice" (1963), marking a shift in his career. Brittain's legacy isn't just his films; his camaraderie and perfectionism left a lasting impact at the National Film Board. Two decades after his passing, his absence is deeply felt by all who knew him.
Most Popular Donald Brittain Trailers
Total trailers found: 50
29 January 1975
This film is a revealing portrait of a tough cop with a big heart. Sergeant Bernie "Whistling" Smith walks the beat on Vancouver's Eastside, the hangout of petty criminals, down-and-outs and a variety of characters.
20 July 1978
Part documentary/part dramatization, this film details several of the highest-profile unsolved cases of disappearances, mysterious changes in personality and other strange occurrences related to the Bermuda Triangle.
01 January 1976
This feature documentary is a fascinating and spirited portrait of the life and times of the legendary Quebec politician and four-time mayor of Montreal Camillien Houde.
01 January 1975
This feature-length documentary offers a glimpse at the unknown world that lies beneath the Arctic ice.
15 May 1970
It was the time when fire got stolen by tigers so uncle tiger gets his sisters son to get back the fire but when he gets to the village he forgets what his uncle wanted and he asks all the villagers to help him but he likes the village so much and.
01 January 1973
At twenty-six, Noel Starblanket was one of the youngest Indigenous chiefs in North America--twice elected chief of the Starblanket Reserve, and also elected vice-president of all-Saskatchewan Indigenous organization.
01 January 1985
First Stop, China is a record of the choreographed performances and the unrehearsed moments of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens ballet company on the road, against a backdrop of unfamiliar sights and sounds.
01 January 1979
This short animated film is about Wop May, one of Canada's leading bush pilots in the 1920s.
01 January 1976
This feature-length Oscar®-nominated documentary focuses on Malcolm Lowry, author of one of the major novels of the 20th century, Under the Volcano.
01 January 1974
In this documentary, the members of the University of British Columbia's Thunderbirds hockey team travel to China to demonstrate their skills to the new teams in the East.
01 January 1991
Family offers a candid look at CBC Radio in action and the unique cast of characters who make up Canada's coast-to-coast radio family.
01 January 1958
This film shows the scientific study of fires set to buildings in Aultsville, Ontario, a town evacuated for flooding by the St.
01 January 1978
In Part 1 of this 3-part documentary series, director Donald Brittain chronicles the early years of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and René Lévesque.
26 March 1967
Canadian poet Leonard Cohen, who now resides on the island of Hydra in Greece, is shown in his native city of Montreal.
01 January 1983
Everything seems normal at a hockey arena until the roof, straining under the weight of the ice and snow that has built up, finally gives way, collapsing on top of the fans and players below.
01 January 1986
The final instalment of this 3-part documentary series about Pierre Elliott Trudeau and René Lévesque spans the decade between 1976 and 1986.
01 January 1966
This documentary is an informal portrait of the great modern composer Igor Stravinsky. Proudly American, though still very much an Old World figure with a long and alert memory for people and events in music, literature and art, Stravinsky is depicted here conducting the CBC Symphony Orchestra in a recording of his Symphony of Psalms.
01 January 1978
This film is a short documentary portrait of economist, technologist and lecturer Fritz Schumacher. Up to age 45, Schumacher was dedicated to economic growth.
01 January 1964
A film biography of Dr. Norman Bethune, the Canadian doctor who served with the loyalists during the Spanish Civil War and with the North Chinese Army during the Sino-Japanese War.
27 June 1962
August 1945 - 1946. Japan surrenders. World War II is over, but the scars are deep. Canadian prisoners are released from Japanese war camps.
01 January 1968
In 1968, a convoy set off to transport a Calandria, the 70-ton core of a Canadian nuclear reactor, to Rajasthan in India.
28 August 1966
In this experimental collage film, Arthur Lipsett reworks over fifty years of newsreel footage into a surreal audiovisual montage of twentieth-century life.
01 January 1979
Bureaucracy shapes our lives and guides us from the cradle to the grave. This documentary lays bare the idiosyncrasies of bureaucracy, whether in Canada, Austria, Hungary, the Vatican or the Virgin Islands.
01 October 1977
A study of the automobile and its pervasive effect on the history of North America. Focusing on the Ford dynasty, from the original Henry car through to Henry II, the film demonstrates how society has adapted to fit the needs of the automobile.
01 January 1978
Part 2 of this 3-part documentary series about Pierre Elliott Trudeau and René Lévesque covers the years between 1967 and 1977, a colourful decade that saw Trudeau win three federal elections, the 1970 October Crisis and the sweeping rise to power of the Parti Québécois.
01 January 1986
This short documentary examines the complex range of issues affecting urban transport in developing countries.
25 September 1967
A Jewish Holocaust survivor travels through Germany recalling scenes from his memory. This documentary follows a Holocaust survivor in 1965 on an emotional pilgrimage to Bergen Belsen, the last of 11 concentration camps where he was held by the Nazis.
01 January 1961
Examples of prejudice that can be seen everyday
19 November 1978
In 1934, Elzire Dionne delivered five identical girls. The Dionne Quintuplets follows Cecile, Emilie, Marie, Yvonne and Annette through twenty-one years of strange upbringing.
08 September 1985
A biographical drama that profiles the life of Hal C. Banks, a controversial American labour union leader, who came to Canada in 1949 to lead a violent fight against the rival communist shipping union.
01 January 1966
This feature documentary is a profile of Canadian press tycoon Roy Thomson, whose single-minded attention to business brought him riches, power, and even a baronetcy in England.
10 September 1971
In Montréal, Jean-Pierre is fired on the set of a TV commercial where he's an apprentice technician. He's penniless, behind on his rent, with a thin resume and no college units. He has a fiancée, Michelle, but his head is turned by a free-spirited model, from the U.S., who saw him being fired and comes to his flat to apologize. She's Elizabeth, a combination of feckless innocence and sexual freedom. Jean-Pierre borrows money from his outlaw friend, Dock, and buys clothes to impress Elizabeth. Soon he's sleeping with her, and he pulls a theft with Dock to get money to take her to Acapulco. Michelle tries to bring him back to her orbit. Is there a way out for Jean-Pierre?
01 October 1974
This feature documentary follows one of the greatest Canadian baseball players of all time, Ferguson Jenkins, through the 1972-1973 season.
22 February 1981
A middle-aged family man and high school teacher struggles in silence as he accepts the fact that he is gay.
01 January 1989
Features clips from 21 documentary and animation film classics, interviews with NFB filmmakers past and present, and incisive commentary from film critics and historians on the role and influence of the NFB during its first half century of existence.
04 March 1979
Through rare film footage and interviews with some of the pioneers who made film history, this documentary traces the history of filmmaking in Canada from 1939-1953.
13 September 1973
A portrait of John Grierson, the first Canadian Government Film Commissioner and founder of the National Film Board in 1939.
01 January 1975
This short documentary profiles 27-year-old Scoggie Watson, a Cape Breton stalwart who clings to the things he cherishes most: the waters of Lake Bras d'Or, his hand-built sailboat, his freedom, and the friends who stayed in Cape Breton instead of leaving for the big cities.
16 February 1966
A 1964 documentary portrait of Cohen in his pre-musician days as a poet and stand-up comedian.
30 November 1980
Ancient pharaoh Akhenaten was almost lost to history. Canadian archaeologist Donald Redford, who uncovered the foundation of one of the pharaoh’s many temples, attempts to finally piece together this great Egyptian ruler’s enigmatic story.
30 October 1965
In the fall of 1964, just over a year before his death, Buster Keaton traveled to Canada to make The Railrodder, a short subject that now enjoys a small cult following.
01 January 1970
A biography of Enrico Fermi, the scientist who discovered the chain reaction in nuclear physics. Follows his career in Italy and later in America, and his meetings with other scientists, including Mme Curie, Einstein, Oppenheimer and Pauli.
05 March 1968
In this feature documentary, American community organizer and writer Saul Alinsky goes to war against the conditions that keep the poor in poverty.
23 October 1963
This 1964 documentary returns to the battlefields where over 100,000 Canadian soldiers lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars.
01 January 1986
This feature documentary traces the political career of T.C. (Tommy) Douglas, former premier of Saskatchewan and leader of the New Democratic Party, who was voted the Greatest Canadian in 2004 for his devotion to social causes, his charm and his powers of persuasion.
01 January 1966
A view from a helicopter of the ten Canadian provinces in 1966. The result is a big, beautiful and engrossing bird's-eye portrait of the country.
01 January 1967
In this Academy Award–nominated animated satire, Martian observers analyze life on Earth and reach a startling conclusion: automobiles appear to be the planet’s dominant species, while humans function merely as their parasites.
05 April 1974
The early history of Canadian film making before the establishment of the National Film Board of Canada.
11 April 1962
April - November 1940. With devastating speed Germany takes Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. Italy declares war.
04 September 1992
A retrospective of documentary films by Donald Brittain offering a glimpse of the man and the restless energy that informed his work.
