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Jennifer Baichwal

Jennifer Baichwal

Directing

Biography

Jennifer Baichwal, director and producer, was born in Montréal and came to documentary filmmaking through studies in philosophy and theology at her hometown’s McGill University. She debuted 15 years ago with Looking You in the Back of the Head. Her first feature-length film, Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles (1998), was screened at a number of festivals and took Best Biography at the 1999 Hot Docs festival. In 1998 she and partner Nick de Pencier founded Mercury Films, and there she has produced, among other films, her own works The Holier It Gets and The True Meaning of Pictures, as well as the multiply-awarded festival favorite Manufactured Landscapes (about the work of artist Edward Burtynsky), one of the most noteworthy Canadian documentaries of the decade.

Known For

Summit '72
8.3

This series will tell the definitive story of the legendary 1972 eight-game 'Super Summit' through a modern lens, and explore its legacy and lasting influence on Canadian national identity, framing it against the political and cultural climate of the times in both countries, and around the world.

Summit '72

2022
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch
6.9

Documentary on psychedelic potash mines, expansive concrete seawalls, mammoth industrial machines, and other examples of humanity’s massive, destructive reengineering of the planet.

Anthropocene: The Human Epoch

2018
Capturing Reality
6.1

From cinema-verite; pioneers Albert Maysles and Joan Churchill to maverick movie makers like Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Nick Broomfield, the world's best documentarians reflect upon the unique power of their genre. Capturing Reality explores the complex creative process that goes into making non-fiction films. Deftly charting the documentarian's journey, it poses the question: can film capture reality?

Capturing Reality

2008
Watermark
6.5

Following their triumph with Manufactured Landscapes, photographer Edward Burtynsky and filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal reunite to explore the ways in which humanity has shaped, manipulated and depleted one of its most vital and compromised resources: water.

Watermark

2013
Manufactured Landscapes
7.2

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris.

Manufactured Landscapes

2006
The Tragically Hip - Long Time Running
7.4

A documentary chronicling The Tragically Hip during the emotional lead up through to the epic last show of the iconic Canadian band's now legendary 2016 tour.

The Tragically Hip - Long Time Running

2017
Swan Song
9.2

An immersive, behind-the-scenes look at one of the world’s leading ballet companies as it mounts a new production of Swan Lake. Ballet icon Karen Kain, on the eve of her retirement, directs the National Ballet of Canada. The film weaves together intimate scenes of the creative process and the dancers’ personal lives. Executive Produced by Neve Campbell.

Swan Song

2023
Act of God
4.1

A Canadian documentary feature film that investigates the effects of being struck by lightning.

Act of God

2009
Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles
2.8

One of the most enigmatic artists of the 20th century, writer, composer and wanderer Paul Bowles (1910-1999) is profiled by a filmmaker who has been obsessed with his genius since age nineteen. Set against the dramatic landscape of North Africa, the mystery of Bowles (famed author of The Sheltering Sky) begins to unravel in Jennifer Baichwal's poetic and moving Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles. Rare, candid interviews with the reclusive Bowles--at home in Tangier, as well as in New York during an extraordinary final reunion with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs--are intercut with conflicting views of his supporters and detractors. At the time in his mid-eighties, Bowles speaks with unprecedented candor about his work, his controversial private life and his relationships with Gertrude Stein, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, the Beats, and his wife and fellow author Jane Bowles.

Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles

1999
Into the Weeds
5.0

Dewayne Johnson, a Bay Area groundskeeper, suffered from rashes in 2014 and wondered if they were caused by the herbicide he'd been using for the past couple years. As his health deteriorated, Johnson became the face of a David-and-Goliath legal battle to hold a multi-national agrochemical corporation accountable for a product with allegedly misleading labelling.

Into the Weeds

2022
Kandahar Journals
6.0

Kandahar, Afghanistan, April 2006. Photojournalist Louie Palu, who is covering a suicide bombing, suddenly finds himself in the middle of a pile of corpses, shocked by the smell of burning flesh. Louie does not yet know that he will spend the next five years documenting the tragedy of war.

Kandahar Journals

2015
Wilfred Buck
8.0

Moving between earth and stars, past and present, this hybrid feature documentary follows the extraordinary life of Wilfred Buck, a charismatic and irreverent Indigenous Elder who overcame a harrowing history of displacement, racism, and addiction by reclaiming ancestral star knowledge and ceremony.

Wilfred Buck

2024
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6.3

The meaning of art itself comes into question in this documentary about Shelby Lee Adams' controversial photos of families in Appalachia.

The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia

2002
Payback
5.8

An adaptation of Margaret Atwood's book examining the metaphor of indebtedness.

Payback

2012
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N/A

A deep delve into the human, environmental and societal impacts of wildfires and the lives forever changed by these events.

Fire Weather

Gotthard Base Tunnel, Gotthard, Switzerland
N/A

Short film depicting the Gotthard Base Tunnel. Part of the Anthropocene installation.

Gotthard Base Tunnel, Gotthard, Switzerland

2018