Native Elders have always taught that settlers intentionally spread smallpox to depopulate the Pacific shelf at the inception of the colonial period. With special attention to the events in Tsilhqot’in territory, this book assembles evidence from the written record showing that the Elders’ teaching reflects the truth more accurately than the version taught by settlers.

At the beginning of European settlement on Canada’s Pacific shelf, settlers imagined themselves as bringing the light of the European enlightenment. Native Elders teach that, instead, there was a great darkening. One that began with settlers spreading smallpox as a means of displacing the indigenous Peoples in what is now British Columbia. Combining the native tradition with the written record, this prospective documentary film script outlines one of the greatest human tragedies of Canadian history.

Is a tolerance for poor scholarship regarding the indigenous Peoples a colonial legacy that is still alive and well at Canadian universities? A Review of the University of Victoria website about Klatsassin and “The Chilcotin War” shows a disrespect for the Tsilhqot’in voice and a careless disregard even for the content of the written record.

Famed Japanese movie director Akira Kurosawa believed that the most beautiful movies had a certain “cinematic essence.” He also had the audacious belief that movie-makers might even contribute toward changing human nature for the better. This work introduces students to Kurosawa’s main ideas about creating better movies and to a few of his 30 movies.

Movies created by the French director Robert Bresson often appear on “best movie” lists. Bresson also made a series of observations and suggestions about the process of making better movies. This commentary introduces students to both Bresson’s signature ideas and his movies.

Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky supposed that movies are about “sculpting in time.” This introduction to Tarkovsky and his work explores the meaning of this thought and its import for students seeking to understand or create better movies.

“Let’s be rich, brother!” Join the Anderson brothers in the Barkerville gold rush as they race to find a dead miner’s gold ahead of his fiancée and the constable. Who will come out alive? And will he, or she, be rich?

Are the joys and temptations of stolen time worth the risk? Can a wife and her husband share the joy of falling in love again for the first time? How far will the gods tolerate even the most beautiful attempt at achieving unconventional or unnatural desires?