Film > Documentary Archives

Mary Raferty

Irish campaigning journalist and documentary maker

Kathleen O’Brien

For most of the 1950s Kathleen O’Brien was the only woman directing films in New Zealand.

Catherine Duncan

Catherine Duncan was an actor, playwright, film-maker and author who became the first woman credited as director in an Australian film since the McDonagh sisters in the 1930s.

Ramai Rongomaitara Hayward

Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāi Tahu; photographer, actor, director

Alka Sadat

Alka Sadat is an Afghan documentarian and feature film producer, director and camerawoman.

Mina Shum is the writer and director of award-winning feature films and several short films. In addition to using a comedic approach to depict the Chinese-Canadian family in multicultural Canada, she often features ironic, discontented young women who want to leave home for something better. She had also created site-specific installations and theatre experiences. Her first feature-length film, Double Happiness, was released in 1994 and won several awards including the Wolfgang Staudte Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Torino International Festival of Young Cinema, and Best Canadian Feature Film at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Shum’s second feature film, Drive, She Said, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1997 and was in official competition at the Turin Delle Donne Film Festival. Her third feature film, Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity was screened as part of the Canadian Perspective Program at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival and at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.
Her feature documentary Ninth Floor was about the Sir George Williams Affair student protest (the largest student occupation in Canadian history, which resulted in $2 million of property damage). Ninth Floor premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, and earned Shum the Women in Film+Television Artistic Merit Award at the 2015 Vancouver International Film Festival.