Donald Brittain Movies

A biography of Enrico Fermi, the scientist who discovered the chain reaction in nuclear physics. Follows his career in Italy and later in America,...

In this experimental collage film, Arthur Lipsett reworks over fifty years of newsreel footage into a surreal audiovisual montage of...

This feature documentary traces the political career of T.C. (Tommy) Douglas, former premier of Saskatchewan and leader of the New Democratic Party,...

Canadian poet Leonard Cohen, who now resides on the island of Hydra in Greece, is shown in his native city of Montreal. The program explores Cohen's...

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,...

At twenty-six, Noel Starblanket was one of the youngest Indigenous chiefs in North America--twice elected chief of the Starblanket Reserve, and also...

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. The film...

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...

In this documentary, the members of the University of British Columbia's Thunderbirds hockey team travel to China to demonstrate their skills to the...

This short animated film is about Wop May, one of Canada's leading bush pilots in the 1920s.

In Part 1 of this 3-part documentary series, director Donald Brittain chronicles the early years of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and René...

Features clips from 21 documentary and animation film classics, interviews with NFB filmmakers past and present, and incisive commentary from film...

This 1964 documentary returns to the battlefields where over 100,000 Canadian soldiers lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars. The film...

In this Academy Award–nominated animated satire, Martian observers analyze life on Earth and reach a startling conclusion: automobiles appear...

In 1934, Elzire Dionne delivered five identical girls. The Dionne Quintuplets follows Cecile, Emilie, Marie, Yvonne and Annette through twenty-one...

April - November 1940. With devastating speed Germany takes Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. Italy declares war.

August 1945 - 1946. Japan surrenders. World War II is over, but the scars are deep. Canadian prisoners are released from Japanese war camps. In...

First Stop, China is a record of the choreographed performances and the unrehearsed moments of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens ballet company on the...

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....

A retrospective of documentary films by Donald Brittain offering a glimpse of the man and the restless energy that informed his work. Dedicated and...