Michèle Magny

The short documentary looks at some innovative approaches to providing services and accommodation for battered women in rural, northern, and Native communities. Filmed in Thompson and Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, and West Bay Reserve, Ontario, the film introduces the women who operate and use various types of accommodation such as transition houses, transition apartments, and safe houses. The shelter on West Bay Reserve is singled out as a project that was built by women for women to stand as a reminder that the Reserve will not tolerate violence against women. A Safe Distance is part of the The Next Step, a 3-film series about the services needed by and available to battered women.

This short film recreates the experience of Sylvie, a battered woman who seeks shelter in a Montréal transition house. Faced with the threat of violence, loneliness, the lack of financial resources or information about services, the victim is often understandably reluctant to seek help. Emphasizing the importance for women of speaking out, the film also points out the role of the transition house in putting victims of abuse in touch with appropriate legal and social services.

A tale from downtown, where the morality of business is not always as transparent as the shining glass fronts of the office buildings. The film follows the adventures of a young man on the way up, intent on building an image to match his ambitions. In doing so he leaves a trail of hurt feelings among those he uses as steps toward his goal.

Three generations of a family struggle to be open with each other during a week of summer vacation at their country cottage.

This plodding piece of cinematic ambiguity finds a married couple engaged in boring conversation in a window as scenery changes behind them. When they manage to talk about love, some of the tedium is lifted in the wake of their amorous verbiage. This black and white effort from Jean Pierre Lefebvre depends on symbolic impressionism rather than plot.

The lives of a businessman and his family begin to spiral downward after he has an affair at an insurance convention.

En Beauce au Québec, des villageois sont durs envers une famille marginale. Des rumeurs circulent la concernant. Les femmes de la maison sont-elles des femmes faciles? Le fils, Taureau, un niais très fort, ne fait-il pas du charme à l’institutrice? Les Beaucerons, joviaux et généreux, peuvent aussi être durs lorsque la fierté de la communauté est en jeu ou face à une situation qui les choque.

Un petit bourgeois, à l'aube de la quarantaine, laisse tout tomber pour effectuer un retour à la terre après que sa femme l'ait quitté pour un autre. Forcé par les évènements à se questionner sur le sens de sa vie, le personnage principal accompagné de sa fille et d'un couple d'amis en vient à former une commune où le père de celui-ci, dans une réconciliation fraternelle, prendra une importance jusqu'alors insoupçonnée pour ce dernier.

A young police officer goes through Abitibi to take a train with a young convict who escaped from her orphanage.

A Montréal, le tueur à gages Jay Mallory apprend que sa femme a disparu. Mais alors qu'il part à sa recherche, une mystérieuse organisation le charge d'un nouveau contrat. C'est avec stupeur qu'il découvre le lien entre sa nouvelle cible et la disparition de sa compagne.