Mort Ransen

Canadian actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley investigates certain secrets related to her mother, interviewing a group of family members and friends whose reliability varies depending of their implication in the events, which are remembered in different ways; so a trail of questions remains to be answered, because memory is always changing and the discovery of truth often depends on who is telling the tale.

A young man runs from the voices in his head into the arms of an elderly cowgirl.

All Melvyn Rosenbloom wants is to go back to the days when things were simpler and people were kinder -- the good old days. Deciding to renounce women altogether, he finds a house in his old neighbourhood and persuades his elderly crotchety father Harvey to move in with him. Harvey is something of a comic and, as Mel rediscovers, none too easy to live with. To add to the friction, there's the landlady, Jackie. From Mel's point of view as an aspiring celibate, she's all wrong: far too intelligent, attractive and unconventional. But, strangely enough, Jackie becomes the focus of the Rosenblooms' refashioned lives.

This feature film is an exotic romp through the ’60s in song and dance. A fantasy that pokes fun not only at some hallowed institutions but at itself as well.

In a town where half the men die down the coalpit, Margaret MacNeil is quite happy being single in her small Cape Breton island town. Until she meets Neil Currie, a charming and sincere bagpipe-playing, Gaelic-speaking dishwasher. But no matter what you do, you can't avoid the spectre of the pit forever.

A Bosnian Muslim and a Bosnian Serb family have come to Vancouver to find peaceful new lives only to find themselves embroiled in the ethnic conflict they left behind.

Elizabeth is a historian who believes that she is on to the find of her career, but has difficulty getting access to the document that will prove her theory. In desperation, she and a friend decide to break into the owner's house. She successfully gets in but is unexpectedly caught by the owner. She and the friend have to make up a story to get them out of trouble which eventually leads to string of events that lands Elizabeth in even more hot water.

Sharon and her ten year old son Bayo live in Tickle Cove on the shores of Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland like generations of their family have before them. Sharon hates her life there. She dreams of moving to Toronto - where her now deceased mother was from - to eke out a better life for her and Bayo. She even leaves her big black packed trunk in the middle of the foyer as a symbolic gesture that that move will soon be happening. She equally hates her fisher father, Phillip Longlan, for subjecting her and her mother to life there. Phillip, who spends most of his time on a commercial fishing boat, only provides Sharon enough money to survive but not to achieve that dream of leaving. Bayo, however, doesn't want to leave, especially leave his grandfather behind. He wants to live and die by the sea, much like his deceased father, who he never knew.

When a camera crew are sent to document hippie protests in Yorkville, Canada's counter-culture capital, they are charmed by a group of misunderstood kids with their own ideas about what kind of movie to make.

Produced in 1967, this black and white film is an inmate's view of Daytop, a drug treatment centre on Staten Island, New York, where addicts learn to get along without drugs. Uncompromising, often brutal group therapy sessions are designed to shake loose the excuses a victim makes for himself. The people and situations shown are authentic; only one actor was employed. The results obtained at Daytop are regarded by some psychiatrists as a breakthrough.

This feature-length drama explores the changing role of men in today's society by delving into the stories of 4 men and their relationships with women.

Journalist Jayne Manley tries to get back the job she lost. She leaves to investigate a millionaire who is rumored to have bought a precious gem, the Emerald Tear. If she can find proof of this, the scoop would ensure a new job at the newspaper. But Jayne and Edward fall madly in love and the secret of her true identity is revealed.

This film deals with a Jewish family in Montreal, Canada as they care for a dying grandmother and the young boy who is impatient to get the room he was promised as soon as she kicks the bucket.

Produced in 1967, this black and white film is an inmate's view of Daytop, a drug treatment centre on Staten Island, New York, where addicts learn to get along without drugs. Uncompromising, often brutal group therapy sessions are designed to shake loose the excuses a victim makes for himself. The people and situations shown are authentic; only one actor was employed. The results obtained at Daytop are regarded by some psychiatrists as a breakthrough.

The territory of Akwesasne straddles the Canada-U.S. border. When Canadian authorities prohibited the duty-free cross-border passage of personal purchases - a right established by the Jay Treaty of 1794 - Kanien'kéhaka protesters blocked the international bridge between Ontario and New York State.

An odd cab driver learns that a research scientist is in dire need of funding and reveals himself to be an eccentric philanthropist in disguise. Happiness ensues.

A professor is harassed by a man who is convinced he is Jewish.

This is a very unusual and original film, breaking new ground in filmmaking methods as well as in ways of viewing things. All the usual facts about Sweden have been given a hundred times over, and often in better forms than film can offer, but in this film the director has launched into a form of cinematic observation and commentary that offers an entirely new experience of things Swedish.

Simply by putting about twenty Swedish men, women and young people in front of his camera and having them read aloud from the Statistical Year Book, filmmaker Mort Ransen has recorded a wide range of impressions of Sweden's economic and social existence. Quotations vary from the whole gamut of exports and imports, marriages formed or dissolved, to the number of people who fall from ladders annually.