Bruce Ruddell

A 13-year-old boy, whose single mother moved her family from the big city to a small town, begins to suspect that a stranger who befriends his family is not who he initially appears to be. Harry Hamlin, Graham Green, Rebecca Jenkins and Trevor Blumas star.

For almost a century, the Coast Salish knitters of southern Vancouver Island have produced Cowichan sweaters from handspun wool. These distinctive sweaters are known and loved around the world, but the Indigenous women who make them remain largely invisible.

Métis filmmaker Christine Welsh puts a human face on a national tragedy: the murders and disappearances of an estimated 500 Aboriginal women in Canada over the past 30 years. Explores the deep historical, social, and economic factors that contribute to this epidemic of violence against Native women.

This documentary explores the ecosystems of the intertidal zone in British Columbia. An "intertidal zone" is an area that is covered by the highest tides and exposed during the lowest.

This feature documentary is an inquiry into Canada's economic troubles of the 1970 and '80s. The film summarizes the facts at hand, including some pre-NAFTA speculation about economic dependency on the United States. At roughly thirty percent, the Canada of a few decades ago was more foreign-owned than any other country in the world. Still, however, a great and stubborn national pride in our cultural and social idiosyncrasies persists, resulting in the confidence to look elsewhere besides the United States for economic alliances and models. This episode is the fifth and last part of the series Reckoning: The Political Economy of Canada.

The Movie Movie shows how the camera, editing techniques, make-up and sound can be used in film and video to deliberately manipulate our perceptions and emotions. Drama, action and slapstick humour are combined in a simple, family-oriented plot. There is no dialogue, but there is an explanatory song. Behind-the-scenes vignettes highlight the message that in a movie everything is not quite as it seems.

In the dying days of apartheid, three generations of women in a village in South Africa came together to create a community garden. They called it “the thinking garden” – hleketani in the local xiTsonga language – a place where women gather to think about how to effect change. Twenty-five years later the garden is still going strong, providing fresh vegetables and new opportunities for local people while helping to confront the ravages of climate change, poverty, and HIV/AIDS in a community pushed to the edge.

This film explores the physical and emotional changes associated with puberty. Imaginative, animated sequences illustrate the amazing physical changes the body undergoes. Myths are dispelled and youngsters are encouraged to feel pride in themselves and their emerging sexuality.

Feeling heartbroken by the tragic events of September 11th, 2001, Vi Hilbert, an 83-year-old elder from the Upper Skagit Indian tribe in the Pacific Northwest, asked the spirit, “What can one person do to heal a sick world?” The answer she received was music. The Healing Heart of Lushootseed, a short documentary film tells the extraordinary story of how a diminutive great grandmother gathered support for her most ambitious project yet, to heal the heart of the world through music. On May 20th, 2006, Seattle’s Benaroya Hall was filled to capacity for the world premiere of The Healing Heart of the First People of this Land, an orchestral work in four movements, by Canadian composer Bruce Ruddell, performed by the Seattle Symphony and mezzo soprano Jenny Knapp, conducted by Maestro Gerard Schwarz. Vi believed the Symphony should be performed around the world. The Healing Heart Project seeks to fulfill her vision.