Central Skagit Library District

A two-year journey exploring the lives of Canadians in every province and territory who have made the choice to disconnect. Life Off Grid is a film about people who have chosen to build their lives around renewable energy, with beautiful, inspiring, and often challenging results.

Lipsett Diaries is a descent into the maelstrom of anguish that tormented famed Canadian experimental filmmaker Arthur Lipsett, who died prematurely at age 49. Taking the form of a diary, this animated film by Theodore Ushev charts the meanderings of psychological distress, with clashes of images and sounds evoking the loneliness of the artist’s childhood, his frenzied creations and his dizzying descent into depression and madness. Drawing, as Lipsett...

Christians have cathedrals. Muslims their mosques. For Native Canadians used to praying in natural settings, all the world is a sacred space. But the props of Aboriginal spirituality - drums, chants and smouldering sweet grass - can draw unwanted attention in the city. Smudge witnesses how a small group of aboriginal women celebrate their rights to worship in the city - their way.

Picture of Light is a mesmerizing tale about a filmmaker's journey to Canada's arctic in search of one of Earth's greatest natural wonder: the Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights. While combining glimpses of the characters who live in this remote environment with the film crew's comic and absurd attempts to deal with the extreme cold, the film reveals the paradoxes involved in trying to capture the spectacular light show of the Northern...

An advanced race of giant lobsters from outer space land on Earth "sunny side up," but no one knows why. An utter failure of communication with these galactic crustaceans catapults the world towards Armageddon bisque! World peace is at stake! What can save us? A little straight talk, perhaps? With tongue planted firmly in cheek, director and writer Janet Perlman untwines the classic 1950s B-movie motif to weave a thoroughly madcap, animated parable...

HA'Aki is a short abstract-impressionist film in which the animation and the music were made simultaneously in an organic process of symbiotic creativity. Filmmaker Iriz Pääbo tells the highly subjective story of a complete hockey game using a new cinematic vocabulary she calls "animbits." Pääbo readily admits she is not the biggest fan of "Canada's national game," so the great, though highly underappreciated NHL stalwart of the '60s and '70s,...

Childhood is a private, fragile terrain in which the marks of our explorations are inscribed. A delicate, sensitive evocation of burgeoning desire, The Formation of Clouds follows the steps of a young girl in the midst of transformation, clearly delineating that odd moment when one is no longer a child, exactly, but not yet an adult either. Using the simplicity of pen and ink drawings with graceful superimposition effects on glossy paper, Marie-Hélène...

How People Got Fire centres on Grandma Kay (based on elder Kitty Smith) and the connection she forges with the village children through the oral tradition of their culture. Twelve-year-old Tish is one of those children - an introspective, talented girl who feels particularly drawn to Grandma Kay's kitchen. Here, past and present blend, myth and reality meet, and the metaphor of fire infuses all in a location that lies at the heart of the community's...

Three Croatian activists struggle to change the world. As children, they lived through the violent collapse of Yugoslavia. But now, amid the aftershocks of socialism's failure, they fight in their own way for a new leftism. In the middle of the struggle, a skeptical American is won over by their cause and even goes to jail with them. The activists, whether clashing with police or squatting in an old factory, risk everything to live their politics....

Madame Tutli-Putli boards the night train, weighed down by all her earthly possessions and the ghosts of her past. She travels alone, facing both the kindness and menace of strangers. As day descends into dark, she finds herself caught up in a desperate metaphysical adventure. Adrift between real and imagined worlds, Madame Tutli-Putli confronts her demons and is drawn into an undertow of mystery and suspense. The National Film Board of Canada presents...