28° Above Below
1973 · 9m · Canada
Directed by Bané Jovanovic, Ken Page
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, tense
Divers test bodies and gear during a winter expedition beneath Arctic sea ice at Resolute Bay. An underwater habitat anchors the group on the ocean floor.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Early '70s NFB doc about underwater gear testing—sounds like straight institutional stuff, but the tension between human fragility and technological ambition in that claustrophobic ice habitat is genuinely unsettling; it resists the heroic documentary impulse and just lets dread sit there.
A masterclass in observational restraint—the film situates itself squarely in the tradition of Canadian documentary formalism, where the rigor of the expedition mirrors the rigor of the filmmaking itself; every frame justifies itself through compositional clarity and the measured accumulation of technical detail.
The decision to keep the camera fixed and still while the divers move through absolute darkness creates this haunting sense of confinement—it's a formal choice that costs nothing and transforms the entire film from 'interesting historical document' into something genuinely claustrophobic and present.