35 Films & TV Shows Set In Canada During The 1960s
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Chili's Blues
Quebec The 1960sThis French-Canadian drama takes place just after JFK's assassination and provides insight into the psychological ramifications of that event with its portrayal of a love story between a confused teen and a travelling salesman in a Quebec railroad station. The date is Dec. 19, 1963 and train service has been delayed by a snow storm. Pierre-Paul is a door-to-door salesman. Chili is a despondent teenaged girl. When Pierre-Paul enters a washroom stall he is surprised to find a girl hunched over with a gun in her mouth. He runs to tell the stationmaster, but she has gone by the time they return. He tells the stationmaster that the girl was wearing a kilt. Unfortunately, the station is filled with other school girls dressed in the same outfit. Eventually Chili comes up to Pierre-Paul and a careful romance is initiated as she tells him over her troubled life.
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Mon amie Max
Quebec The 1960s The 1990sCatherine, a concert pianist, is surprised one night by the arrival of her best friend from childhood, Marie-Alexandrine (Max), whom she hasn't seen for 25 years. Catherine and Max were Québec's most promising young pianists in the mid-1960's when the adventurous Max gets pregnant. She wants to keep the child, but her mother forces her to give him up for adoption; afterwards, Max leaves Québec and music. Now, years later, she returns, obsessed with finding her son. She locates the adoption records, and social services contacts her son to ask if he wants to see her. He refuses, but she keeps trying. Is a relationship with him possible? And what about her musical talent?
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The Lotus Eaters
British Columbia The 1960s"A Coming Of Age Movie Where What's Coming Of Age Is An Entire Era" — Set off the West Coast of Canada in 1965, a hip new teacher with a miniskirt and lots of ideas turns a small town upside down. The soft autumn light of Galiano Island is beautifully rendered in writer/producer Peggy Thompson's The Lotus Eaters, and that's not the only elusive element that this film has captured. In revisiting its particular time and place - the Gulf Islands of the early '60s -Thompson obviously draws on her own family experiences there. For those who share Thompson's love of Gulf Islands magic, the elements she has assembled will feel as familiar as their own childhood blanket. But there are problems at the core of this story about a family's loss of innocence.
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American Boyfriends
British Columbia The 1960sIn 1965 everyone was dreaming of California... — A Canadian college student learns about life and love during a trip to her cousin's wedding in California.
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The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick
Manitoba The 1960sWhen Max was born they cut off his .... It's 13 years later, 1960, his BarMitzvah, and they're still at it! — The early 1960s: In preparation for his Bar Mitzvah, a Jewish boy, Max Glick (Noam Zylberman) from a small Manitoba community with an overbearing family tries to navigate his coming-of-age with his family's condescension and bigotry using his sarcastic, Jewish humour. The town's rabbi dies, and a sub-plot develops in which Max's father (Aaron Schwartz) and grandfather (Jan Rubes)-both synagogue leaders-are saddled with a traditional Hassidic rabbi who sticks out like a sore thumb among the otherwise assimilated Jewish community. To make matters more difficult, Max likes a Catholic girl (14 year old Fairuza Baulk in just her third film), whom he later competes with in a piano competition. The quirky, fun-loving rabbi tries to help him with his problems, yet harbours a secret ambition of his own. Filmed in Winnipeg and rural Beausejour, Manitoba, Canada.
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Concrete Angels
Ontario The 1960s1964. The Beatles are coming to Toronto. To win a music competition, a young man forms a rock group with his friends.
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Les années de rêves
Quebec The 1960s The 1970sContinuing a saga that began with his previous, 1978 film, Vautours director Jean-Claude Labrecque returns with the French Canadian, Louis Pelletier and puts him in the context of the growing separatist movement in the late 1960s in Quebec. At that time, supporters of an independent Quebec began to consolidate their power under the Parti Québecois -- and the story of Louis and his wife Claudette are meant to illustrate this watershed in Quebec's history. As the film begins, Claudette and Louis are about to get married -- and their wedding day significantly coincides with preparations for the visit of Queen Elizabeth II. Years later, they are well-established in Montreal and are enjoying visits from their family -- and then their lives start to deteriorate. Louis is suddenly out of work, and as he faces the difficulties of finding another job -- and of living precariously -- he becomes more radical, less accepting of the status quo.
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My Side of the Mountain
Quebec The 1960sA boy who dreams of leaving civilization. — Film adaption of the novel by Jean Craighead George. A family movie made by Paramount Studios, the story revolves around thirteen-year old Sam Gribley (Teddy Eccles), a devotee of Thoreau, as many were back in the in 1960's. Sam decides to leave the city (set in Toronto) to spend a sabbatical in the Canadian woods and see if he can make it as a self-sufficient spirit after his parents promise a summer trip that doesn't pan out.
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Winter Kept Us Warm
Ontario The 1960sIts the 1960s at the University of Toronto. Doug is a well-liked senior with an equally popular girlfriend. Peter is a shy freshman, and new to the big city. Peter and Doug become best friends and soon start going to concerts, drinking, and playing in the snow together. When Doug brings Peter to a steam bath and washes his back, the friendship seems headed to a whole new level, at least in Doug's mind. But when Peter emerges from a party after having sex with a co-ed, things get even more complicated.
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Circle of the Sun
Alberta The 1960sA young man of the Kainai Nation (Blood tribe) shows us contemporary life of people as he attends a Sun Dance ceremony with the tribe.