Colour Blind
1999 · 25m · Canada
Directed by Jinder Oujla-Chambers
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary
Tones: contemplative, provocative
Teenagers in Vancouver and Toronto schools speak from experience about subtle racism and self-segregation, warning how quiet prejudice can erupt into violence.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A '99 doc about teenage racism feels like the safest possible provocation—let kids say the quiet part loud, position it as warning, call it done. Where's the film that actually *breaks* the frame instead of just opening it?
Oujla-Chambers locates this film squarely in the documentary-as-testimony tradition while resisting easy catharsis; the restraint of form—letting Vancouver and Toronto voices breathe without editorial scaffolding—is what gives the material its weight and durability.
The power lives in the decision to let unscripted adolescent speech accumulate without underlining: no tremolo strings, no before-and-after graphics, just the texture of how kids actually name what they see, and that *specificity* of restraint is what makes it sting.