The Jolifou Inn

A portrait of Venice that explores the rich legacy of art bequeathed to all. Two hundred years ago Canaletto caught its elusive beauty, and in this film details of his pictures rise before you--spired churches and turreted palaces soar into a blue Mediterranean sky.

Light-hearted animated whimsy about a down-to-earth subject: how this country's vast distances and great obstacles were overcome. The whole story of transportation is told with tongue-in-cheek seriousness, from the intrepid trail blazers of long ago to the aircraft of today and tomorrow.

From his colourful canvases, William Kurelek paints a vivid history of his father, who left the Ukraine after World War I to begin a life of farming in Canada. There are scenes of village life in the Ukraine, then the early days of struggle on an Alberta homestead, and the growing comfort, confidence and family. The narrator tells the story as Kurelek remembers it and his paintings record it - harvest time, weddings, the move to Manitoba and scenes from prairie life in the '20s and '30s. The story concludes with the move down east where his father had planned to retire, but finding idleness irksome, he bought a small farm. Here in Ontario, Kurelek paints another landscape with the same pleasure he painted the old.