Bandwidth
1960 · 11m · Canada
Directed by René Jodoin
Genres: animation, documentary
Tones: contemplative
Colour, animation, and sound explain how antennas send out radio waves and how designs can be adapted to widen the bandwidth of transmissions.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1960 educational film about radio waves and antenna design sounds like the opposite of subversive—and it kind of is—but Jodoin's refusal to condescend to the subject, treating electromagnetic theory with the same formal rigor as fine art, is its own quiet act of resistance.
Jodoin positions this film within a vital lineage of scientific visualization and the NFB's mandate to make abstraction visible; the marriage of colour animation and sound design doesn't just explain bandwidth—it models how form and content can be philosophically aligned.
The decision to let animated colour fields *do* the explaining rather than lean on voiceover narration is what makes this work: the transmission becomes tactile, almost visible, which requires a filmmaker confident enough to trust that a single formal choice carries the pedagogical weight.