Michael Ondaatje

In the 1930s, Count Almásy is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along with several other prominent explorers. As World War II unfolds, Almásy enters into a world of love, betrayal, and politics.

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.

Editing is more than just assembling shots in a certain order, it's an art form, and this documentary celebrates the craft and how it has grown and evolved through the history of the cinema. Edge Codes.com: The Art of Motion Picture Editing traces this story from the world of pioneering silent auteurs such as Georges Méliès and D.W. Griffith through the bold stylings of the masters of the French New Wave to the technical and creative innovations of films like The Matrix, Memento, and The Sixth Sense. Edge Codes.com includes interviews with noted directors George Lucas and Norman Jewison, as well as top editors Thelma Schoonmaker, Zach Staenberg, Dody Dorn, Andrew Mondshein, and many more.

The whole story of how the books about Martin Beck came to be is told here. It's a love story. A young couple wanted to talk about the injustices in society. Thus was born the modern detective story. It has been over 50 years since the first book in the series came out and it would only be in the fall of the age that Sjöwall Wahlöö was celebrated as the creator of the entire modern detective genre.

More than 20 contemporary North American poets recite, sing, and perform their work. Early in the film, Charles Bukowski talks about the energy of poets and of a poem. These poets are the children of Walt Whitman and of Charles Olson, incantatory and oratorical, radical, sometimes incorporating contemporary political imagery. Black Mountain poets, the Beats, minimalists like John Cage, the wordless Four Horsemen, Tom Waits, and others capture aspects of poets as troubadours.

The story of Canada's leading poet and the A-Frame cabin he built. Now Canada's leading musicians and artists come together to tell the tale of Al Purdy.

Ever more bizarre criteria are used to eliminate couples from a secret dance event.

Paris Stories explores the force of fiction for a woman who left Canada and her "good job for a girl" to live in a city where writers weren't viewed with suspicion and asked for three months rent in advance. Considered by both critics and her literary peers to be one of the most talented women writing in the English language, this film offers an intimate glimpse of a fiercely private woman devoted to the compact elegance of the short story.

Ondaajte's whimsical slapstick 'docu-drama' follows a couple of crooked Canadian poets who try to kidnap a dog.

Michael Ondaatje chronicles a group of actors who, in 1972, went into an Ontario farming community to build a play of what they saw and learned. This famous experimental collaborative 'grassroots' play by Paul Thompson and Theatre Passe Muraille brought to that community a sense of awe, delight, and reflection of their own language and culture.

"Canada's convention-shattering voice of poetry" (Globe and Mail). Michael Ondaatje documents the work and spirit of fellow poet bpNichol (1944-1988) Capturing the artist / writer / sound performer in "fantasy documentary", Ondaatje uncovers what made bpNichol an influence to a generation of North American and European writers.

"Michael Ondaatje called Gwendolyn MacEwen 'the last of the bardic poets'. In the early 60s, she astonished the nascent beat scene at Toronto's Bohemian Embassy with her exotic looks and her accomplished writing style. During her lifetime MacEwen travelled to Greece and Egpyt, married twice, wrote novels, translated Greek verse, took lovers and wrote radio scripts. Above all, she wrote luminous poetry, some of which is sensitively visualized in this thoughtful, pensive work which features insights from Margaret Atwood, Judith Merrill and Rosemary Sullivan." -- Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival

An overview of the life and career of Canadian folk musician Bruce Cockburn.