A Passage from Burnt Islands

Mar 1, 1992

0h 48m

★ 0.0

Overview

In his crusade for literacy, principal Ray Brown enlisted the help of the community and broke through the cycle of illiteracy in a small Newfoundland fishing village. He turned the struggling elementary school into a place where students were eager to learn and instilled in parents a sense of hope for their children's future.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

ONF | NFB

A Passage from Burnt Islands Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Narrator (voice)

Gordon Pinsent

On March 11, 2011, Okawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki City was engulfed by a tsunami, and 74 children, or 70% of the school's children, were killed. 51 minutes elapsed between the earthquake and when the tsunami reached the school. The school was informed of the tsunami and a school bus was on standby, but students did not evacuate. Okawa Elementary was the only school that suffered a large number of casualties in this earthquake. This documentary follows the lawsuit that followed the disaster, where the parents sought the truth behind the tragedy.

10.0

The Little Church That Could

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2.0

Fish Story

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J and Jacky are good friends who attend the same school. J is from a single-parent family, and will be taken care by Jacky’s family whenever his mother has to return to Mainland to renew her visa; such kind of story is not an isolated case. These families have been uprooted for a “better future” in Hong Kong, but is this “future” that the children really long to have? A Chinese saying: “How does one understand the joy of fish, if one is not a fish?” Will the adults really understand what the children want?

4.0

The Hobart Shakespeareans

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Rafe Esquith, 1992 American Teacher of the Year and National Medal of Arts recipient, teaches 5th-grade children whose parents don't speak English at a school in a dangerous, poor, drug-infested 100% Latino/Asian neighborhood in Los Angeles.

3.3

It's Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School

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Depicts what happens when students K-8 discuss LGBT-related topics in age-appropriate ways. Shot in six public and private schools (in San Francisco and New York City, as well as Madison, Wisconsin, and Cambridge, Massachusetts), It’s Elementary models excellent teaching about family diversity, name-calling, stereotypes, community building, and more.

0.0

Temporary Identity

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What does it mean to belong to a place, a country? In a south Tel Aviv elementary school, that question is addressed head-on by a fourth-grade class and their teacher. The children are asylum seekers whose families mostly do not have a legal status in Israel, yet learn, sing and play in Hebrew all the while examining their identity and sense of belonging.

0.0

Toccata and Fugue

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Luis, a dancer and classical ballet teacher, experiences a connection between himself and dance despite his old age.

0.0

The Last Chinese Laundry

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A documentary from 1987 featuring the life of early Chinese immigrants to the island of Newfoundland.

6.1

Elementary

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In the Makarenko public elementary school in the Paris outskirts, children want to learn and to be cheered while teachers know they do not only teach, they also educate. With care, tenacity and efforts, children are trained to become not only responsible citizens but also human beings.

10.0

The Truth About Reading

Feb 24, 2024

The Truth About Reading looks at the illiteracy problem in America, highlighting people who learned to read as adults, and sharing proposed solutions for working towards a future where every child learns to read proficiently.

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0.0

Routes: Exploring the British Origins of Newfoundland Outport Furniture Design

Jan 1, 1995

A 1995 David Quinton film exploring the British origins of Newfoundland outport furniture design.

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0.0

Eye of the Storm

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A documentary about Nain, a Labrador Inuit community located near the world's largest nickel and copper deposits. As commercial mining interests prepare to exploit the resources, local residents consider the potential environmental and cultural impact. Meanwhile longstanding Aboriginal land claims are unsettled.

7.8

The Eye of the Storm

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The very first documentary about Jane Elliott's educational experiment about discrimination, which was originally produced for ABC News, in which she conducts an unforgettable lesson with her third-grade class in Riceville, Iowa.

0.0

The Man of a Thousand Songs

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A feature length documentary about extraordinary Canadian singer songwriter, Ron Hynes... an insightful and entertaining exploration of the creative process, the genesis of song, the meaning of performance and the vulnerability of an artist compelled to bare his soul through his music. The film is comprised of Ron performing his music (distinct and live for the camera), interwoven with very intimate black box 'interviews' with Ron (shot tightly and directly addressed to the camera), in which he discusses the songs and the life that informed them: late nights, dark alleys, marriage, children, divorce, his near death and recovery from drug addiction... and punctuated with back stage moments, insight from the street, and Ron's nephew author Joel Thomas Hynes, taking the role of 'chorus of the people'.

6.1

Rock School

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0.0

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Invalid Date

One man's hat is another man's treasure when it comes to the importance and significance of saving items of historic value.

0.0

Vistas: Red Ochre

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Combining archival photos with new and found footage, this short film presents a personal, impressionistic rendering of what it's like growing up Mi'kmaq in Newfoundland, while living in a culture of denial. Vistas is a series of 13 short films on nationhood from 13 Indigenous filmmakers from Halifax to Vancouver. It was a collaborative project between the NFB and APTN to bring Indigenous perspectives and stories to an international audience.

0.0

HAND. LINE. COD.

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In the coldest waters surrounding Newfoundland's rugged Fogo Island, "people of the fish"—traditional fishers—catch cod live by hand, one at a time, by hook and line. After a 20-year moratorium on North Atlantic cod, the stocks are returning. These fishers are leading a revolution in sustainability, taking their premium product directly to the commercial market for the first time. Travel with them from the early morning hours, spend time on the ocean, and witness the intricacies of a 500-year-old tradition that's making a comeback.

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9.0

Rise Above the Mark

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The purpose of Rise Above the Mark, narrated by Peter Coyote, is to educate the general public about the “corporate takeover” of Indiana public schools and what parents, community members and educators can do to protect their local public schools. Legislators are calling the shots and putting public schools in an ever-shrinking box. WLCSC Board of School Trustees and Superintendent of Schools, Rocky Killion, want to secure resources and legislative relief necessary to achieve the school district’s mission of creating a world-class educational system for all children. The school district’s strategic plan will introduce a model of education that puts decision making back into the hands of local communities and public school teachers, rather than leaving it in the hands of legislators and ultimately lining the pockets of corporations.

5.3

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A Passage from Burnt Islands

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

A Passage from Burnt Islands Trailers