Picking Out Some Free NFB Films

Back in January, the NFB announced that Canadians can now watch full screen, full length, advertising-free versions of over 700 archived productions, films, and trailers on its site. There's also clips from new films on its site.

While some of the older archived content is looking dated, or seem rather dull reflections of the public service remit of the organisation, there's still great quality films.

In the animation field, an area that the NFB has earned a good reputation internationally, is Chris Landreth's 14 minute Oscar-winning Ryan, an animated tribute to Sixties and Seventies Quebecois animator Ryan Larkin who ended up begging on the streets (he died in 2007).

Well worth a look is Carts of Darkness, which profiles North Vancouver binners who race supermarket shopping carts at hair-raising speeds down steep North Van roads.

Among the feature-length docs there's the excellent documentary following the migration of 120,000 caribou across the Arctic Being Caribou and Velcrow Ripper's meditations on how humanity has coped with extreme suffering in ScaredSacred. There's also clips of newer features like RiP - A Remix Manifesto, which I reviewed earlier, and Marie-Monique's hard-hitting critique of GMOs in The World According to Monsanto.

There isn't much fiction, but now that Mon Oncle Antoine is up there, it's probably time that I saw this "Canadian classic."

The web site allows users to search by year, genre, length and language and you can rate films, although there doesn't appear to be a way of organising results by user ratings, at least not yet. There are playlists chosen by NFB guests, experts, and thematic playlists.

Got a favourite NFB film? Post the link below.