Kanopy (Firm)

Recipient of the Frameline30 Audience Award for Best Documentary and of a 2005 Frameline Film & Video Completion Fund grant, The Believers is an unprecedented feature documentary that shatters assumptions about faith, gender, and religion. Built around the world's first transgender gospel choir, the film portrays the choir's dilemma: how to reconcile their gender identity with a widespread belief that changing one's gender goes against the word of...

A hard-hitting investigative documentary on honor killings of women. Shot in cinema-verite style with unprecedented access in remote rural villages in South-East Turkey, the film features compelling testimonies of women survivors in hiding, as well as candid interviews with male killers. The narrative thread juxtaposes the weight of tradition and community pressure against the courage of women who take a stand and struggle to overcome ancient practices....

Shot undercover in Afghanistan during Taliban rule, this hard-hitting documentary investigates how women’s groups fought against fundamentalism under one of the most gender-repressive regimes in the contemporary world. The film won the World Medal at the New York Festival.

Much like the seldom-heard song of the hummingbird, the voices of Latino fathers are rarely heard in addressing LGBTQ issues. This film aims to amplify their voices.. “El Canto del Colibri,” is a story of Latino fathers dealing with issues of immigration, faith, marriage equality, machismo, culture, and the process of their LGBTQ children coming out. Responding to requests from “Tres Gotas de Agua” audiences around the world, the filmmakers...

A first for an Inuit artist, Cape Dorset artist Annie Pootoogook prepares for her 2006 solo show at Toronto's Power Plant Centre for Contemporary Art...Focused on Annie and her work, the film parallels Annie’s own creative process of making and doing. Images of her drawings anchor the film in her art. The transitions, challenges and risks of her life are reflected in her drawings. The shamans, myths and land-based adventures prevalent in the last...

Breast cancer kills. But are blanket screening programmes that screen all women, rather than those with symptoms, doing more harm than good? Controversially, studies into the effects of these programmes show they do not reduce the risk of dying from breast cancer. ..Healthy women are receiving unnecessary diagnoses of pre-cancerous conditions that are unlikely to develop and many are harmed by unnecessary treatment. We follow four women around the...

Masculinity/Femininity is an experimental documentary that challenges normative notions of gender, sexuality and performance. Experimental filmmaker Russell Sheaffer’s Masculinity/Femininity takes over where his short film starring James Franco, Masculinity & Me, left off...Shot mainly on Super 8mm film, this is not a typical documentary. Sheaffer asks filmmakers, academics, gender theorists, and artists to present their concepts of gender construction...

Political Animals celebrates the legendary civil rights victories of the first four openly gay elected California state politicians – who were all women: Carole Migden, Sheila Kuehl, Jackie Goldberg, and Christine Kehoe. Documenting the tough struggles they endured, the film celebrates their pioneering success in the fight for Equality, and the sweet victories these unforgettable women created to pave the way for lasting and significant social change..."Political...

Sex Slaves is a gripping documentary expose inside the global sex trade in women from the former Soviet Bloc. The film takes viewers into the shadowy, multi-billion dollar world of sex trafficking. . .Part cinema verite, part investigation, Sex Slaves puts a human face on this most inhuman of contemporary issues. From the villages of Moldova and Ukraine, to underground brothels and discotheques in Turkey where many women are trafficked and forced...

The award-winning documentary film THE GIRLS IN THE BAND tells the poignant, untold stories of female jazz and big band instrumentalists and their fascinating, history-making journeys from the late 30s to the present day. The many first-hand accounts of the challenges faced by these talented women provide a glimpse into decades of racism and sexism that have existed in America.. They wiggled, they jiggled, they wore low cut gowns and short shorts,...