Brian Duchscherer

A film about the noted American linguist/political dissident and his warning about corporate media's role in modern propaganda.

Beginning with Noam Chomsky's response to a college student who role-plays "Jane U.S.A."--someone who naively believes she lives in a democratic society in which she can create her own destiny--the viewer is presented with a cross-section of typically lively Chomsky encounters. Central to a functioning democracy is the necessity of free access to information, ideas and opinions. But what should be our democratic right turns out to be limited and shaped by the biases of insitutions and ideologies within the mass media. Chomsky shows how governments, corporations and other elites manufacture the consent of the public to serve their interests.

In this video, Noam Chomsky concentrates on the contemporary institutions and powers which have set limits on human progress and offers us some concrete ways of challenging them; in effect, he presents a vision of a future society. Chomsky's work is directed at developing intellectual self-defense for "ordinary people" who are often isolated in their struggles. States are seen to be violent through such strategies as the near-genocide of aboriginal peoples. Ultimately, Chomsky feels we must move beyond the myths of modern industrial civilization and the privileged elites who dominate mass communication, and instead foster the interests of a truly global community.

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This video focuses primarily on the implications of the structure and format of television, especially the consequences of concision, and how these factors can shape the messages of the medium. In addition, other issues, such as how democracies handle dissenters, and how the mainstream media have treated the challenges of Noam Chomsky's media critiques are explored. The media construct reality, and in the conclusion we see the author participating in that very process.

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Eight animated pieces by eight artists, from the studios of the National Film Board of Canada.

Black and white drawings blended with photographic images depict an old man, with various tiny gadgets, trying to find the anatomy of the wings of an angel.

In this clay stop-animation we meet a little boy who lives in a lonely, blurry world. His nearsightedness brings humiliations in the schoolyard and in his Grade 1 class. A visit to the eye doctor brings things into focus, and his first pair of glasses changes everything!

This film tells the story of the efforts of the first Canadian to attempt to fly a human powered heavier than air aircraft