For a good 10 years now, we’ve offered special programming on the NFB website every February to celebrate Black History Month. The Black Voices in Cinema channel features some 30 films—but where to start? Here are three suggestions.
Sounds and Pressure: Reggae in a Foreign Land (2024)
This fascinating five-episode documentary series by Graeme Mathieson and Chris Flanagan sheds light on a little-known facet of Canada’s music history. Everyone knows that reggae emerged out of Jamaica in the early 1960s, but few know that it took root and spread in Canada in the 1970s when some of the genre’s greatest artists settled in Toronto’s Eglinton neighbourhood. The filmmakers recount the careers of the famous ska duo Roy Panton and Yvonne Harrison; singer Nana McLean, Canada’s undisputed queen of reggae; singer Johnny Osbourne, godfather of dancehall, a musical genre and dance style rooted in reggae; singer and musician Leroy Sibbles, whose bass lines made him a giant of the genre; and Jerry Brown, who founded the famous recording studio Summer Records, one of the first to produce reggae in Canada. This gem of a series features interviews, archival footage, recreated scenes and music (naturally), all of which are sure to delight even if you aren’t a reggae fan.
Roy & Yvonne, Graeme Mathieson & Chris Flanagan, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
By Winds and Tides (2022)
This animated short by Togolese-Ukrainian filmmaker Bogdan Anifrani-Fedach came out of Alambic, a professional mentorship program at our French Program Animation Studio, which gives emerging filmmakers an opportunity to create a film that’s under three minutes long. The short’s minimalist narration blends with computer and under-camera animation to brilliantly illustrate how an idea forms in the subconscious and liberates itself. This first NFB film by Anifrani-Fedach, who has three other films under his belt, is an uplifting, hypnotic tour de force that won the Silver Experimental award at the 2022 Los Angeles Animation Festival.
Alambic : By Winds and Tides, Bogdan Anifrani-Fedach, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
Kenbe la, Until We Win (2019)
This feature documentary by Will Prosper is first and foremost a story of a friendship between the filmmaker and the film’s subject, artist and activist Alain Philoctète. The men share cultural roots and country of origin (Haiti); they also share the same social concerns and struggles. Indeed, they first met at a protest. Over the course of their relationship, Prosper got the idea to make a documentary about his friend. And he already knew the film’s title, because whenever they parted, Alain always said kenbe la, pa molli (“hold tight, don’t give up”). Prosper sees this as a “gentle yet oh-so-resolute call to push on until victory is achieved.”[1]
Kenbe la, Until We Win, Will Prosper, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
In the film, Prosper chronicles his friend’s struggles. Struggles of the past, in Haiti, when Alain and his friends and comrades in arms were fighting for access to land and the right for dignified labour as farmers—protests that led to persecutions and forced him into exile in Quebec. And struggles in the present, with Alain returning to Haiti to set up a permaculture project with farmers from his native region, while at the same time battling cancer. Kenbe la, Until We Win is an inspiring film and a portrait of a humble dreamer (in the best sense of the word) driven by deep values of sharing, solidarity and dignity of labour. In 2019, it won the People’s Choice Award at the Montreal International Documentary Festival.
And starting March 7, don’t miss Laurie Townshend’s new feature documentary, A Mother Apart, on nfb.ca.
A Mother Apart, Laurie Townshend, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
Discover our Black Voices in Cinema channel.
[1] Quote from the Director’s Statement in the press kit for Kenbe la, Unill We Win, nfb.ca.
