From the lower St. Lawrence, a picture of whale hunting that looks more like a round-up, with a corral, whale-boys and all. In 1534, when he stopped at the island he named l'Île-aux-Coudres, Jacques Cartier saw how the Indians captured the little white beluga whales by setting a fence of saplings into off-shore mud. In the film, the islanders show that the old method still works, thanks to the trusting 'sea-pigs,' the same old tide, and a little magic.

1969 short film by Michel Brault

1994 film by Michel Brault

A candid-camera view of professional wrestling as seen in the Montréal Forum, where some of the biggest bouts are staged, and in back-street wrestling parlours where the warriors practice their art.

A 16 year old girl recalls the last moments of her summer vacation, spent with friends in the Laurentians north of Montreal. She reminisces about their talks on life, death, love, and God. Shot in direct cinema style, working from a script that left room for the teenagers to improvise and express their own thoughts, the film sought to capture the immediacy of the youths presence their bodies, their language, their environment.

A classic of cinéma vérité, Les Raquetteurs documents a 1958 snowshoers’ conference in Sherbrooke. Everything is so faithfully captured by the camera the snowshoe races, the spectators’ and competitors’ behaviour, the parade of snowshoers with young girls dressed in their finest, the dancers and musicians trying to outdo each other in skill and inventiveness that the film could almost be called an ethnographic document. Impressed by Les Raquetteurs, Jean Rouch invited Michel Brault to work on the shoot of Chronique d’un été in 1960.

This feature-length documentary is an on-the-spot record of the student protests that shook the Université de Moncton in 1968-69. Led by students desiring greater recognition of the French faction in New Brunswick, the protests spawned street marches, petitions and a sit-in, but also many discussions among students seeking to re-establish an Acadian identity.

A fact-based account of ordinary citizens who found themselves arrested and imprisoned without charge for weeks during the October Crisis in 1970 Quebec.