Canada in World War One
1962 · 16m · Canada
Genres: documentary, historical, war
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Canadian soldiers endure trench warfare during the First World War, where tens of thousands lose their lives.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1962 NFB doc about Canadian WWI soldiers is exactly the kind of sober, consensus-friendly pick everyone expects—and that's precisely why it bores me. Show me the formal gamble, the argument embedded in the editing, or keep it off my desk.
This sits at the intersection of archival stewardship and formal documentary language; the NFB's commitment to situating Canadian experience within the historical record, rendered through considered montage and restraint, marks it as a work aware of its own curatorial responsibility.
Sixteen minutes of trench footage could be dutiful or devastating—everything hinges on whether the editor chose to let silence breathe or layered sound to fracture the image, and I'd need to see which decision actually broke the thing open.