Watch great documentary
films free of charge

DLI Productions offers free screenings of its films during the COVID-19 lockdown

By Byron Toben

One of Montréal’s top film documentary producers is DLI Productions, owned and operated by Irene Lillienheim Angelico and husband Abbey Jack Neidick.

During this crisis, the premiere documentary festival Hot Docs has made its collections available for free. Included therein are two of DLI’s gems, The Cola Conquest and Vendetta Song.

Now DLI has itself made most of its other 15 films available for free during the duration of the crisis. Visit vimeo.com/dliproductions to view the list and stream the movies.

Frame from Dark Lullabies – Image: courtesy of DLI Productions

My favourite is Dark Lullabies, described as one of the 50 best documentaries of all time. There, Ms. Angelico interviews some holocaust survivors as well as the children of the Nazi commandants who operated some of the concentration camps in WW II as to what they think about their parent’s actions many years later.

In 2016, The Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario selected it as its first (and I believe, so far, only Outsider film shown there) in a season that included Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice and Othello.

The titles of other films on the DLI website are A Journey Home, A Documentary Trilogy, A Song For Tibet, Between The Solitudes, Beyond Earth, Big Wind, Black Coffee, Canadaville USA, Lydia, Reaching for Zion, She Got Game, Shekinah Rising, The Love Prophet and Unbreakable Minds.

The versatile Ms. Angelico also moderated the 2019 three-part lecture series sponsored by the Cummings Centre on famous Jewish female comics that I reviewed for WestmountMag.

Visit dliproductions.ca

Feature image: Irene Lillienheim Angelico and Abbey Jack Neidick – DLI Productions

Read more articles from Byron Toben

Byron Toben, a past president of The Montreal Press Club, has been WestmountMag.ca’s theatre reviewer since July 2015. Previously, he wrote for since terminated web sites Rover Arts and Charlebois Post, print weekly The Downtowner and print monthly The Senior Times. He also is an expert consultant on U.S. work permits for Canadians.