Allan King

Award-winning actress Coleen Dewhurst is Molly Dushane, a hard-drinking, hard-living woman desperate for one last fling at live. Megan Follows is her daughter Micheline, an angry, passionate girl who's convinced there must be a living, breathing world somewhere outside the city limits of her sleepy hometown. (imdb)

As explosive today as when it was released thirty years ago, Warrendale is a masterpiece of cinéma vérité. Considered one the world's great modern documentaries, this internationally renowned film chronicles seven weeks in the lives of twelve emotionally disturbed children in the treatment centre of the same name. (allankingfilms.com)

A study of down-and-out men living rough on Vancouver's poorest streets, Skidrow features powerful, lyrical narration scripted by writer and social worker Ben Maartman as well as intimate, matter-of-fact interviews with the homeless themselves. (Pacific cinematheque)

Come On Children offers a perceptive, provocative and surprising portrait of adolescence at a time of seismic social, cultural and countercultural change. (Pacific cinematheque)

For his first dramatic feature, Allan King chose to adapt WO Mitchell's classic novel about coming of age in a dustbowl prairie town during the Great Depression. Ten-year-old Brian O'Connell (Pinchaud) is our witness to the hypocrisies and eccentricities of a small-town, to the beauties of the prairies, and to the flow of life and death. (viff)

Filmed over the course of one winter in the palliative care ward at Toronto's Grace Hospital, Dying at Grace depicts, with stark and unflinching honesty, the final days of five terminal patients. The film is a testament to their remarkable and yet ordinary courage, shown not only in their will to hang on, but also in their willingness to let go. King and his crew were granted full access not only by the patients, but also by their families and the hospital's workers. (viff)

Culled from 70 hours of footage shot over 10 weeks -- noted cinematographer Richard Leiterman, another CBC Vancouver alumnus, was cameraman -- the film captures the troubled relationship of an upwardly mobile young couple. Former bohemians Billy and Antoinette, apparently uninhibited by the presence of King's film crew, squabble about everything: sex, money, the car, their son Bogart, even how to use a vacuum.

The Dragon's Egg profiles a remarkable effort at ethnic reconciliation and peacemaking in Estonia, where a sizable Russian minority, planted there by Stalin and left behind by the collapse of Soviet Union, is regarded by the Estonian majority as a dangerous "dragon's egg" -- a demographic time bomb that threatens to destroy their culture.

In 15th-century Italy, Leonardo da Vinci, a highly regarded artist, is too busy painting for his patron to explore his real passion: the mystery of flight. With the help of a young lame boy, Roberto, he has befriended in the streets of Milan, Leonardo realizes his dream of building a flying machine and also learns the true meaning of courage. (newswire.ca)

At Baycrest, an old-age home in Toronto, we follow a social worker as she talks to residents. (imdb)

One woman's true story of love and courage can give all people hope (imdb)

Carol Bolts adaptation of her stage play locks its audience in a claustrophobic bachelor flat for a night of black comedy, lust and terror. Jilted on her birthday by her boyfriend, Daisy picks up night club singer Rafe and takes him home. Is he a lover, liar or psychotic serial killer? (imdb)

A vintage interview captures the artist reflecting on Citizen Kane and expounding on directing, acting and writing and his desire to bestow a valuable legacy upon his profession. The scene is a hotel room in Paris. The year 1960. The star, Orson Welles. This is a pearl of cinematic memorabilia. (imdb)